Above is a self-portrait by Wystan Stevens, taken in a mirror in the shop window of Ragtop in 1977.

In 2017, two years after the death of local historian Wystan Stevens, an auction of his many collections was held.  The Ann Arbor District Library Archives at that time acquired what it considered the prize of the entire proceeding: a set of dozens of slide cases containing tens of thousands of photographs taken by Wystan, mostly in the 1970s.

At one time, everyone in Ann Arbor knew Wystan Stevens.  He was the pontificator sharing endless facts with the morning crew at Washtenaw Dairy.  He was the bookseller at the folding table hawking paperbacks all over town for ridiculously low prices.  He was the commenter on numerous Facebook and Flickr pages, adding voluminous detail to each post he encountered.  He was the guide with the booming baritone that carried across Forest Hill Cemetery as he gave his regular tours, familiarizing generations with the history written in stone.  And he was the historian who seemed to have the entire history of the city in his head but who rarely wrote anything longer than an article to get it all down for people.  

Wystan was also, for most of the 1970s, the man with the camera hanging around his neck who took photographs of seemingly any and everything in town in an attempt to create a photographic portrait of the city.  He photographed the grand and the ordinary.  People he knew and complete strangers.  Big events and typical days.  People at work and people at play and people who might be doing either (or both).  There seemed to be no topic in which he was not interested, no subject beneath consideration in his document of the community.

As it has now been nearly a decade since Wystan's death and there are many who never had the chance to know him in any of his incarnations, here is the briefest of summaries.  He was born and raised in Ann Arbor, graduating from Ann Arbor High School in 1961, and he added gown to town by majoring in history at the University of Michigan.  He then spent his adult life sharing facts about Ann Arbor history, sometimes paid and sometimes free of charge, sometimes as the official city historian and sometimes as just the person many considered the city historian when no person actually held that title.  He gave tours and wrote articles and sold books.  More importantly, he was a larger-than-life figure, a man with a deep Orson Wellesian voice who seemed somehow to take up more space in a room than his already sizeable frame demanded by the force of his personality.

But that doesn't really describe him.  The trouble with writing a piece about Wystan in order to introduce his collection is how exactly to capture him.  Various articles and obituaries have attempted to do so since his death, and none seem quite complete, none really describe the entirety of Wystan Stevens; that is one of the problems with being larger-than-life.  

The truth is that we don't need to describe him; he is already described in the collection itself.  The storefronts, festivals, shoppers, workmen, baseball games, restaurants, gravestones, art galleries, concerts, and architectural details stack up over time as you look at more and more of them, eventually forming not just the portrait of the community Wystan was attempting to compile but an unintentional self-portrait of the photographer.  We see Wystan reflected in the things he took images of; we see who he was in what he saw in Ann Arbor.  

An introductory collection of hundreds of Wystan's photos can be found on our website at aadl.org/wystanphotos.  Fittingly, it is not a complete collection, but one to which we will continue to add over the next several years as we continue to catalog and digitize images.

WCBN, the University of Michigan’s student-run freeform radio station, has been broadcasting the Local Music Show since 1993 when it was started by Dan Banda. 

For 31 years and counting the show has featured live performances from Southeast Michigan artists of all genres selected by a rotating cast of hosts.  The Local Music Show has always presented live performances by these artists, and listening to them gives a sense of what the clubs, bars, and basements of Ann Arbor have sounded like over the past two decades. This collection includes over 600 performances from 2002 to 2022 with favorites like Protomartyr, Saturday Looks Good To Me, Tyvek, Bonny Doon, Stef Chura, Frontier Ruckus, Chris Bathgate, and many more. 

Take a deep dive into the Local Music Show archive to discover the local talent that surrounds you!

Ann Arbor 200 is not the public library's first foray into celebrating a milestone in our community's history by creating resources about it.  For Ann Arbor's sesquicentennial back in 1974, the Ann Arbor Public Library produced a series of videos for television called I Remember When.  This series, produced by Catherine Anderson and hosted by Ted Trost, assembled newly-collected interviews with prominent Ann Arborites into episodes about various topics in history like city politics or the Greek and German communities.  The Ann Arbor District Library digitized all seven episodes of I Remember When from VHS tapes back in 2014 and made them available online.  It has since become beloved not just for its interviews with local people we can otherwise only read about but also for its delightfully goofy 1970s-ness.  It turned out there was more yet to come.

About five years ago, a box was unearthed from a back corner of the basement of the Downtown Library that contained a set of old videotapes in a format with which no one was familiar.  AADL Archives staff took a closer look and realized that what had been found were the original interviews performed to create those episodes of I Remember When.  These were on a long-obsolete format of magnetic tape called EIAJ-1, briefly used by the television media in the early 1970s.  Having sat neglected for nearly 50 years, we had little hope we would get much out of them.  They were shipped to a specialist digitization company in Pennsylvania who knew how to extract the audio and video from these tapes (not as simple as just having a player; these tapes need to be baked in an oven before they can even be played).  

As it happened, almost all of the contents were salvageable, and those contents were more than we could have hoped for.  Interviews with over 30 prominent Ann Arborites of the twentieth-century, each between 20 and 60 minutes long.  We had of course seen bits of these, but at most there might be six minutes in an episode from any given interview, so there was a great deal of material we had not seen before.  In addition, an eighth episode of I Remember When was discovered; whether this episode was never aired or just never transferred onto the VHS tapes we originally digitized we do not know.  

This lost episode, School Days, featuring segments with Lela Duff, Linda Eberbach, David Inglis, Bill Bishop, and Ashley Clague, is now available on aadl.org.  

The complete set of interviews is also available below, offering a wealth of archival material from Ann Arbor's past.  These have been fully transcribed and indexed by AADL Archives staff.  Enjoy hearing voices and seeing faces from Ann Arbor's past, but take note before you do: the sensibilities of 50 years ago are not the sensibilities of today, and some of the things you hear may be surprising coming from these storied citizens.  But the heroes of Ann Arbor history were people, and people of their times, and that knowledge alone is worth the unearthing.

Osias Zwerdling	Linnia Knox Carpenter	John Feiner	Emanuel & Elizabeth Haas
Gerald Hoag	Guy Larcom	Edith & Paul Kempf	Helen Kokales & Frank Kokenakes
Fred Looker	A.D. Moore	Anthony Preketes	Alva Joanna Sink
Nan Sparrow	Burnette Staebler	Neil Staebler	Fred Wahr
Letty Wickliffe	John Hathaway	Ashley Clague & Frances Danforth	Lela Duff
AAHS Class of 1924 50th Reunion - Linda Eberbach, David Inglis, Bill Bishop	1974 Gemutlichkeit German Festival - Albert Duckek, George Sauter, Hans Rauer	Yassoo Greek Festival - Frank Minikes, Andrew Kokenakes

Art Fare, a local news publication, began in 1973 when David Friedo saw an opportunity to cover the vast array of arts, cultural, and social events in Ann Arbor. The Ann Arbor Art Fairs inspired the play on words in the title, but its coverage went beyond the arts. Articles touched on many changes in town (including issues of housing and urban design) and offered a counter-perspective to dominant narratives in papers like the Ann Arbor News. Music, cinema, plays, art exhibits, and nightlife were included in an events calendar that predated the Ann Arbor Observer's own. Friedo and his small team worked to publish the magazine through 1979 when it briefly became known as the Ann Arbor Entertainer and then subsequently ceased publication. Issues are available for reading or downloading at aadl.org/artfare.

In 2023, David Friedo, Mary Bleyaert, Paul Wiener, Mary Dolan, and Barbara Torretti sat down with us for an interview to discuss the initial inspiration for the magazine, how it developed, and its reception by the public. Each recounted their roles in the production of the magazine, and reflected on the changes in the Ann Arbor art community and beyond.

Most of the materials in the AADL Archives fit neatly into boxes (both literally and figuratively): bound volumes of newspapers, photographic slides, years of magazine issues. But there are also things in our collection that are a bit harder to categorize and are a bit harder to handle--but that are an awful lot of fun. Some of these things fall under the heading of "advertising ephemera". You've all seen this type of thing before, especially from mid-twentieth century businesses:  things a business might giveaway to promote themselves. Postcards with images of dining booths. A calendar that would keep their company name on your desk year-round. And of course, that most ubiquitous bit of advertising ephemera, the matchbook.

We've digitized and presented a small part of our advertising ephemera collection here to (hopefully) amuse you. Sometimes these pieces were related to the business being promoted, sometimes one scratches one's head at the connection. Ponder over what that elegantly begowned parrot-owner has to do with an exterminator. Picture yourself owning your very own Markwell Punchmaster (available at George Wahr). And just appreciate the design and illustrations from another era.

If you have some of these sorts of delightful items in your collection and you would like to share them with the world, let us know by emailing oldnews@aadl.org. We are happy to add to our collections or simply borrow materials to be scanned and put online so the entire community can enjoy these artifacts of Ann Arbor's bygone businesses.

Ann Arbor Federal Savings and Loan Association, April 1955	This local financial institution was originally founded as the Huron Valley Savings and Loan Association in 1890. In 1939 it converted to a federal savings and loan association known as Ann Arbor Federal Savings and Loan Association. Through a series of acquisitions and mergers it was known as Great Lakes Federal Savings and Loan, Great Lakes Bancorp, Great Lakes National Bank, and TCF. The most recent change took place in 2021, when TCF merged with Huntington Bank.
Fred W. Gross operated a clothing store for 25 years, first at 115 E Liberty St and then at 309 S Main St. The store specialized in clothing for boys and men. After the store’s closure in 1930, Fred was a traveling salesman trading in clothing and gloves, and continued to provide tailoring services to the community.	Fred W. Gross, April 1920
Goodyear's	Goodyear's was an Ann Arbor institution for 95 years. Founded in 1888, it evolved from a dry goods store into a department store 4 times its original size. Despite the store’s growth, it maintained a philosophy of personalized service including free gift wrapping and deliveries. A second store operated at 213 S State St from 1950 until 1958. The Main Street staple, located at 122 S Main, met its demise in 1983 when the state closed it for a failure to pay taxes. It had been unable to withstand migration of retail to Briarwood Mall and the recent recession.
Harold C. Eastman, a real estate dealer and community leader, founded the Eastman Realtors and Insurance Company in the early 1950s. A resident of Ann Arbor for almost 40 years, he held numerous local, state, and national Optimist Club positions. After his death in 1981, the Ann Arbor Breakfast Optimist Club created the annual “Harold C. Eastman Outstanding Youth Award” in his memory.	Harold C. Eastman Agency
J. F. Wuerth Company	J. Frederick Wuerth became known for his ownership of the Wuerth and Orpheum theaters in Ann Arbor, but got his start in business in 1900 when he established Staebler and Wuerth, selling boys and mens clothing. The store eventually became J. F. Wuerth Company and was located next to his Wuerth Theater. In 1923 Albert Fiegel purchased an interest in the store and four years later he became the sole owner, subsequently changing its name to Fiegels.
Kurtis Exterminating was a pest control company that operated in the Ann Arbor area for most of the twentieth century.  Stephen Kurtis emigrated to the US from his birthplace in Karatoula, Greece and started his business in 1930, two years after his arrival in Ann Arbor.  In the 1960s, he passed the business along to his daughter, Constance Opal, who ran it until its closure in 2001.  Kurtis Exterminating was a long-time supporter of local ball clubs, participating in the business softball league and sponsoring boys’ baseball teams.	Kurtis Exterminating Company
Master Furrier	Master Furrier was a shop that provided sales and services such as fur repair, cleaning, and cold storage.  Opened in 1947 by Max and Ella Deess, the business thrived at 215 S Main enough to move in 1950 to the larger space at 221 E Liberty that was once home to Osias Zwerdling’s famed fur shop.  It remained on E Liberty for over 25 years when it was sold to David and Marion Rumford, who moved it to the Lamp Post Plaza then later to the Courtyard Shops, where it operated until the early 1990s.
In 1908, Oscar David Morrill organized the O. D. Morrill Co. in Ann Arbor, selling stationery and office supplies. His brother Ralph became manager of the store in 1925, and owner when Oscar died in 1949. The business evolved by focusing on mechanical implements including typewriters, adding machines, dictation machines, and wire recorders. Customers could also buy or rent office furniture from the outlet. In 1972 it briefly became Morr’s On State before closing for good a few years later.	Morrill's
Mundus & Mundus, 1959	Mundus Insurance Agency, an independent insurance brokerage, was founded in Ann Arbor in the early 1930s by Joseph W. Mundus. The firm became Mundus & Mundus in 1949 when his son William joined the family business. William J. Mundus managed the firm until his retirement in 1983. In 2004, Mundus & Mundus was acquired by ALCOS, Inc., one of Michigan's largest privately held insurance and benefits agencies.
When the Sugar Bowl opened in 1910, it was a penny candy store featuring homemade ice cream and hand dipped chocolates made in the Preketes family apartment upstairs. Greek brothers Paul and Charles Preketes ran the original business, soon joined by two more brothers, Frank and Tony. Over the years the store grew into a beloved restaurant, cocktail lounge, and mainstay of downtown Ann Arbor--though members of the Black community tell a different side of things, remembering it as a place they were not welcome. In 1965, after 55 years of business and the death of Charles Preketes, the remaining brothers sold the Sugar Bowl and retired.	Prekete's Brothers Sugar Bowl
George Wahr, Publisher and Bookseller	George Wahr, publisher and bookseller, operated for over 80 years in Ann Arbor. The first store was located on Main Street, followed by a second location on State Street. Founded in 1887 after Wahr bought out his business partners George Osius and Charles H. Ludlow, the store stocked books for students and residents, wallpaper, pens, stationery, and even sporting goods for a time. The firm’s publishing output included textbooks, novels, children’s books, and calendars. Ownership passed from George to his daughter, Nathalie Wahr Sallade, who handed it on to her son, George Wahr Sallade. The bookstore’s stock was sold to Tom and Louis Borders in the 1970s, but the publishing business continued under the younger George's leadership.
George Wedemeyer started out as a teenager operating the “wireless” on board a ship.  After earning his electrical engineering degree (and helping with Ann Arbor’s first commercial radio station, WQAJ), he became a radio designer and repairman.  His shop, first opened in 1927, was located in a succession of buildings from 110 E Washington to 221 E Liberty to 215 N Fourth (the “Wedemeyer Block”, now a parking lot) and finally to 2280 S Industrial.  The business grew to include all types of electronics and had additional locations in Ypsilanti, Adrian, and Lansing.  The company was purchased by Wichita-based RSC Electronics in 1994 after Wedemeyer’s death and the local location had closed within a decade.	Wedemeyer Electronic Supply Company
W. J. Landers, Contractor	Rev. Willard Jess Landers & his wife Crelia, opened their family business, Landers Contracting Company, in 1945. They operated it together in Washtenaw County until Willard’s retirement in 1971. Their son Doyle Landers took over management until the business was sold in 1978. While overseeing the contracting business, Rev. Landers also served as a minister in the Pentecostal Church of God.

Matchbooks from Ann Arbor's Past

Bicycle Jim's Matchbook	Bill Knapp's Matchbook	Bolgos Restaurant Tuebingen Room Matchbook	Bolgos Restaurant Tuebingen Room Matchbook	Bolgos Convenience Store Matchbook
Campus Inn Matchbook	Clint Castor's Village Bell Matchbook	John Leidy Shop Matchbook	Leo Ping's Matchbook	Lim's Matchbook
Maude's Matchbook	Overbeck Book Store Matchbook	Tee and Ski Matchbook	Thano's Lamplighter Matchbook	The Pretzel Bell Matchbook
The Real Seafood Company Matchbook	The Real Seafood Company Matchbook	University Motel Matchbook

The Andrea Fulton Concert Collection includes over 500 photos from local concerts featuring rock, soul, R&B, and blues bands performing, recording, and sometimes just posing for promotional shots. Several local and regional bands from the late 1960s and 1970s are here in Andrea's collection -- from Guardian Angel, Carnal Kitchen, and the Mojo Boogie Band to Sixto Rodriguez, Mitch Ryder, and Bob Seger. 

Andrea Lee Fulton grew up with music from all cultures and genres. The first music she heard -- on the day she was born -- was Bach. She recalls an enlightened and exciting childhood: "My dad was hip, my mom was groovy. We all kinda became hippies together.” 

So it was no surprise that when rock-n-roll came to Ann Arbor, Andrea was all ears. And as she grooved to the music, she picked up a camera. Her father, Doug Fulton, an editor at the Ann Arbor News, was an accomplished photographer, so photography was in her blood. Most of the photographs in the collection are Andrea's; a few are Doug's. (Additional concert photos are available in AADL's Doug Fulton Online Exhibit.) 

While Doug is best known for his photographs of outdoor environmental activity and the blues greats who came to the Ann Arbor Blues & Jazz Festivals, Andrea was on the scene in the 1970s to snap photos from the backstages and front rows of over 100 concerts. Andrea (then known as Andye) also worked for concert organizers as a Psychedelic Ranger to assist with crowd control, parking, security, and first aid. At 17, legendary Ann Arbor concert promoter Peter Andrews hired her as the box office manager for Daystar Productions where her job included picking up tickets at the airport, selling seats in the Michigan Union, and manning the box office at Hill Auditorium or Crisler Arena. Andrea recalls some highlights from this period:

"I remember getting cheeseburgers for Yoko Ono, burning one with John Prine behind the P. Bell, and the night Bonnie Raitt stayed in my bedroom after one of dad's famous all-night BBQs following the Sunday Blues Festival. I’ve seen Bob Seger a dozen times. Mitch Ryder. The Rationals. The Lost Planet Airmen with Commander Cody. SRC. Savage Grace. The Up. MC5. I hung out at 1510 Hill Street [home of the Trans-Love Commune, John Sinclair, and the MC5], and was friends with the Mojo Boogie Band, brothers Jim & Terry Tate, and sax genius, Steve Mackay. Venues included the 5th Dimension, Flood’s, Flicks, and the West Park Love In’s at age 15. That was my Ann Arbor life! I was so in the moment and had no idea how incredible my life was. So I’m grateful to have these images now. Revisiting my young self 55 years later, I can tell you -- I’m still that rock and roll hippie at heart.”  

Browse the Andrea Fulton Concert Collection

Some of the subjects of these photos aren't recognized by us and are beyond our ability to identify. If you recognize a performer or venue, please add a comment to the photo to help enrich this collection!

In celebration of the first day of the year for the Ann Arbor Public Schools, AADL has made available online digitized versions of every yearbook in our collection from 1885-2000.  This collection includes yearbooks from Ann Arbor High School, its successor Pioneer High School, Huron High School, and Community High.  Each yearbook is available to view and search within our pdf viewer in your browser and is also downloadable to your own computer.  Take a look back at your own school days with our digitized yearbook collection--or see what your parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents got up to when they were students!

A Brief History of Parker Mill

Ann Arbor's Fleming Creek is the namesake of Robert Fleming, who built a sawmill on the water in 1824. His business provided some of the boards used to build the first homes in the city. In the early 1860s, newly-married William & Mary Parker left Buckinghamshire, England, and made their way to Fleming's former sawmill property, which had been abandoned and was in ruins. According to the Washtenaw County Parks Department, the Parkers used money Mary had saved while working as a maid to purchase 61 acres of land and establish a farm. In 1873, they constructed a grist mill to produce flour and corn feed. The grist mill was built directly on the fieldstone foundation of Fleming's long abandoned sawmill, and consisted of building materials found on the property like timber, riverbed gravel, and more field stones. The Parkers made their mill available to other nearby farm families, and played a vital role in the area then known as "Geddesburg".

William Parker ran the grist mill until his death in October 1906. His son George then took over leadership, expanding the business into a commercial flour mill which sold pancake mix, graham flour, buckwheat flour, cornmeal, and cracked wheat breakfast cereal to Ann Arbor area stores until the late 1950s. The Parker brand of "Flemings Creek Mills" products lasted until George's death in 1956.

Today, Parker Mill County Park is a historic operating grist mill and public park operated by the Washtenaw County Parks and Recreation Commission. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1982. Together with the City of Ann Arbor's Forest Park, it covers 45 acres of mostly wooded land that encompasses the tail end of Fleming Creek, including its mouth where it joins the Huron River. After the mill pond dam was destroyed in a flood, Washtenaw County refitted the mill to run on electricity. Visitors may tour the operational mill, or stroll the many nature trails along the water. This collection of photographs from photographer Erin Helmrich, dating from 2014 to 2019, documents an area which once played an important role in pioneer industry.

"During my 21 years living in Ann Arbor, exploring the abundance of parks and taking pictures of what I see is one of my favorite hobbies. Parker Mill is near my home and became a favorite spot since it's a really perfect walk in the woods. The Hoyt G. Post trail is my go-to trail because it's a loop walk, and with the boardwalk, it's accessible all four seasons.  The trail curves along Fleming Creek and includes a platform along the Huron River which is one of the most peaceful spots in town. Some of my best nature encounters have occurred at Parker Mill too. Over the years I have spotted a water snake, a fox hunting prey, a young hawk trying to get a dead duck from the creek in the dead of winter, a mottled sculpin under the train bridge, and so many mushrooms and birds!" - Erin Helmrich

Visit this link to view the complete collection of photos of the Parker Mill County Park.