Blog Post
Walter N. Koelz
by muffy
Currently on view at the University of Michigan Museum of Art is a collection of Buddhist Thangkas and Treasures from the Walter N. Koelz Collection, an exhibition in conjunction with the U-M Museum of Anthropology. Because of the fragile nature of these devotional objects, they are rarely exhibited. The show closes on June 9th, 2013.
The awarding-winning docents at UMMA were curious about Dr. Koezl and asked Old News to dig up the Ann Arbor News clippings on this local legend and his incredible collection, amassed through years of travel, with a shrewd collector's eye.
A retired U-M professor of Ecology, Koelz "never drove a car, never slept in a bed, never wed and rarely wore shoes even in winter". He left his estate valued at $1.6 million to the Nature Conservancy in his will. Besides his treasures, he is remembered for the collection of exotic flora and fauna donated to the University, brought back from his travels.
Blog Post
Guide to Old News for Low Vision Users
by monkk
There are a variety of features in the Ann Arbor District Library Old News that can be of use to users with low-vision.
Large Article Images and Photos
Articles in Old News are scanned at high resolution and are served up that way on the site. Simply click on any article image or photo you see in Old News to bring it up in its own window. Selecting the expansion button below the article image will blow it up to its full size--often as much as twice as large as it appeared originally in print!
OCR Text
Many of the articles in Old News appear with Optical Character Recognition text that is readable by screen readers. Look below the article image and look for the "View Uncorrected Scanned Text" section. AADL staff and patrons are working to correct the errors in this OCR and add OCR to articles from which it is missing.
PDF Copies of Historic Newspapers
Many of the newspapers in Old News have been digitized as full issues and are provided on Old News as issue PDFs in addition to being broken into separate articles. After selecting a newspaper from the Papers page, just pick any issue you wish to see by clicking on its date. You'll see an option to "Download PDF" on each issue. These PDFs have large images of each page and text underneath for any screen reader to access.
AADL Local History Podcasts
Old News isn’t just for reading, it’s also for listening. Take a step back in time while listening to Old News Podcasts. AADL talks to locals and “townies” on a variety of topics including Argus Camera, the turbulent 60’s, University of Michigan Sports, and heritage businesses such as Schlanderer & Sons and Vogel’s Lock & Safe, and more.
Blog Post
Martha Rock Keller, Local Artist and Ambassador
by oldnews
Martha Rock Keller (obituary), well-known local artist and educator died Wednesday, February 13, 2013. She was 86.
An alumnus and faculty at the University of Michigan and other local colleges, she is also a frequent contributor to the Ann Arbor News. She has served as a juror for the Ann Arbor Street Art Fair.
In 1985, her work was included among other American women artists in an exhibition at the United Nations Conference on Women in Nairobi (Kenya). In the summer of 1989, Martha Keller was selected to exhibit her paper fountains at Tubingen, one of the Ann Arbor Sister Cities, in the Ann Arbor-Tubingen Exchange Program to promote international understanding.
The Old News team had digitized many of the Ann Arbor News articles on and by Martha Rock Keller.
Blog Post
Inaugural Gowns - 1933
by Debbie G.
On March 4, 1933, the Ann Arbor News ran photos of Eleanor Roosevelt and Anna Roosevelt in the gowns they would wear for the Inaugural Balls. The designer of the gowns was Sally Milgrim and the light blue gown you see in the News photo of Mrs. Roosevelt was considered one of Mrs. Milgrim's triumphs. Later tonight we'll get the first glimpses of Mrs. Obama's Inaugural Ball gown. Jason Wu designed the 2009 Inaugural gown which is now part of the First Ladies collection at the Smithsonian.
Blog Post
Professor Shaun Jackson - Inventor and Mentor Dies at 63
by Debbie G.
As reported in the Michigan Daily, Prof. Shaun Jackson died Tuesday from burns suffered in a plane crash last weekend. We've digitized Ann Arbor News articles about Prof. Jackson, an award-winning designer and inventor who inspired generations of students at the University of Michigan School of Art and Design.
Blog Post
Frank Lloyd Wright's Legacy in Ann Arbor
by oldnews
Frank Lloyd Wright in Ann Arbor, a Then and Now article by local historian Grace Shackman detailed history of the house, and the continued efforts of the architectural community to restore and conserve Ann Arbor's beloved Frank Lloyd Wright home - one he built for Bill and Mary Palmer, just because they asked, known locally as the Palmer House.
Though he never built another home in Ann Arbor, his legacy is woven into the fabric of the community. Many of the local architects, among them Alden Dow and Lawrence R. Brink were students of FLW, while others like George R. Brigham, Jr. were known for designs inspired by FLW's philosophy.
This generation of architects in turn passed along the FLW influence to the next generation - well-known architects Robert Metcalf was in fact, a protege of George R. Brigham.
Read up on local architects and browse through AADL's Architecture Archive to discover more of Ann Arbor's architectural history.
Blog Post
Powering Ann Arbor: The Huron River Dams
by Debbie G.
Ann Arbor may be known as "Tree Town" but it was the Huron River and it's potential for industry and commerce that brought settlers to the area. Grace Shackman's Then & Now article The Broadway Bridge Parks provides a succinct history of dam-building on the Huron beginning with Anson Brown's in 1830. Old News has assembled articles on the dams including the tragic tale of a 1913 accident at Barton Dam and the lone survivor.
Architect Gardner S. Williams designed nine dams along the Huron River including Barton in 1912, Argo in 1913 and Geddes in 1919. The dams were on-again, off-again sources of hydroelectric power for the city. Read Shackman's article on the old Municipal Beach at Argo Park, the precursor to the great recreational facilities now available at Argo Park.
Blog Post
Ann Arbor Goes to the Movies
by oldnews
In 1908, 5 cents would get you into a movie at The Casino. The Theatorium on Maynard, built on a former skating rink, showed one-reelers. The Majestic, a W.S. Butterfield theater, opened on December 19, 1907, quickly followed by the Whitney on Main Street the next January. The chain also operated the Michigan, the State, the Wuerth, and the Orpheum.
On Saturday afternoon September 11, 1915, 2000 Ann Arborites poured into the new Rae Theater (capacity 385) on Huron Street to see Pearl White in the Iron Claw. But the big hoopla occurred on Sunday September 12, when the first legal and public showing of a motion picture took place on a sabbath day in Ann Arbor history, and it took a special election to accomplish that.
The Old News team has digitized many of the news articles on the early history of Ann Arbor's movies theaters.
Blog Post
New York Times Historical
by pkooger
The New York Times is available online to library users all the way back to its first issues from 1851. Over 150 years of historic news coverage is available at your fingertips, digitized and fully searchable. Select ‘Page View’ to see complete newspaper pages as they originally appeared in print, or select ‘Full-text PDF’ to see only the article you choose.
Access to all our reference databases and resources is available at every AADL branch and from outside the library with a valid library card. To access New York Times Historical, go to the Research page and from the Newspapers tab, click on New York Times Historical.
Blog Post
Oh, to live on Sugar Mountain
by amy
Forty-four years ago, on November 10, 1968, Neil Young (whose critically-acclaimed autobiography, Waging Heavy Peace: A Hippy Dream is currently a New York Times bestseller) recorded the song "Sugar Mountain" here in Ann Arbor at the now-legendary Canterbury House, then located at the end of this alley at 330 Maynard.
Recorded between the time of Young's membership with and , this ode to lost youth written four years earlier was acknowledged by fellow Canadian Joni Mitchell (who also played the Canterbury House) as the inspiration for her similarly-themed, The Circle Game. It's one of Young's earliest and more traditional folk songs, and the sincerity evident in this live recording is underscored by its remarkable intimacy.
Check out Sugar Mountain: Live at Canterbury House in our CD collection and some of our Oldnews articles about Ann Arbor's Canterbury House, at the time a coffee house music venue and center for outreach programs associated with St. Andrew's Episcopal Church. Local writer Alan Glenn wrote a great article about the Canterbury House in a recent issue of Michigan Today.