Looking like a yellow stucco Italian villa of neoclassical design, the Anna Botsford Bach Home stands on the very crest of the long hill Liberty Street climbs on its way from town. Between it and downtown are suburban streets of the 1920's, but after it, Liberty takes on an air that is even today rather rural. The big house, with its curved front drive, its rolling lawns and meticulously maintained flower beds, and the alley of white pines just to the east, resembles a country estate so ample and well organized that it might well have provided its owners with milk and meat, fruit and vegetables, as well as splendid shelter.

Grace Shackman, the west side's diligent historian, informs us that the house was built by Dr. Robert MacKenzie, a prominent general practitioner and head of the U-M medical school's obstetrics department, who was instrumental in expanding St. Joseph Mercy Hospital from a remodeled house on North State into the large brick hospital on North Ingalls.

Most Ann Arborites of any pretensions in 1916 would have built on the city's new and stylish east side, especially if they were connected with the U-M. But Robert and Marian MacKenzie, who had been childhood sweethearts in the small town of Chester, Illinois, preferred to have more acreage on the west side. The west side was familiar territory for the doctor. He had an extensive practice among Ann Arbor's large German-speaking population on the west side because he spoke fluent German. His physician father, believing that proficiency in German would help his son in the medical career he intended him to follow, had sent him to a German-language Lutheran school in Chester.

Robert MacKenzie achieved prominence early. Graduated from the U-M medical school in 1907, he interned under its dean, Dr. Cyrenus Darling, and had his offices in the Darling Building on Liberty at Fifth Avenue, over the present-day Afternoon Delight. MacKenzie's excellent connections, his quiet, thoughtful character, his reputation as a skilled diagnostician, and his fluency in German all combined to get his career off to a fast start. In 1913, just six years out of medical school, he was elected mayor. A Republican, he profited from the candidacy of a Progressive that year, which split the Democratic vote. In those days of minimal city government in Ann Arbor, the position of mayor was more an honor than a daily responsibility.

By 1916 the MacKenzies were in a position to buy four and a half acres of land between West Liberty and a branch of Allen's Creek and to begin building their dream house. Marian MacKenzie vehemently vetoed the architect's plans for a third-story ballroom. "This additional piece of elegance was not at all to my mother's liking," recalled her son John later. "She was very upset that the architect would imagine that she and her husband were sufficiently wealthy to afford such a luxury." Since Dr. MacKenzie was extremely busy with his medical practice, his wife acted as superintendent of construction, negotiating large piles of dirt on the site despite her pregnancy.

Even without the ballroom, it was a grand house, with spacious rooms and verandas and a center hall big enough for sons John and Bob to play football in. And even without a ballroom, the family entertained a lot. Especially memorable were big neighborhood Fourth of July parties, where Dr. MacKenzie would shoot fireworks over the creek, and everyone would come in for cookies after the big display.

Dr. MacKenzie's health began to fail while he was still relatively young. He had contracted flu in the 1918 epidemic, and later discovered he had diabetes. Frequently staying up all night with patients didn't help, either. In 1926 he and his family decided to move to Frankfort, Michigan, near where they had a summer cottage. Dr. MacKenzie continued to practice medicine there until his death in 1934.

In 1927, the spacious downstairs rooms that had amply served a family of four soon proved that they could gracefully handle a much larger family--the seventeen elderly residents of the Anna Botsford Bach Home. Then on State and Kingsley, it had opened in 1909 to house women who were past working age and without family or without resources to live alone. Some women were able to pay their own entry fees. It was not unusual for others who had been useful members of the community but who had very little money to have their entry fees paid by a collection raised by friends and colleagues.

Shortly after the home was opened, its name was changed from the Old Ladies' Home to honor Anna Botsford Bach, the energetic clubwoman who had helped found it. (The name "Bach" is locally pronounced to rhyme with "law," rather than with the hard "ch" ending, reflecting the consonant-dropping Swabian dialect spoken by Ann Arbor's Germans.) Anna Bach, the third wife of Philip Bach (owner of the Bach & Abel drygoods store downtown that later became Muehlig's and the school board president after whom Bach School was named), also served on the school board, one of the first women to do so in Ann Arbor.

The MacKenzie house was deemed an excellent new location for the Anna Bach Home when its directors decided to seek larger quarters. There were no structural problems in adding a third story, since the building had been designed to hold a ballroom. Other changes included a west addition for a director's quarters and larger kitchen, enclosing the back porch as a dining room, and screening the east porch. The renovations were completed and the home's move was made in 1927. The first floor's main rooms remain much as they were in the MacKenzie's day, with some of their original furniture still in use.

The two upper stories are divided into seventeen rooms, one for each of the home's residents, who today range from seventy-three to ninety-five years old. All are, under the terms of the home's state license, capable of self-care and getting around by themselves, sometimes with walkers or canes. (For temporary nursing care, residents go to full-fledged nursing facilities.) The home is really a small, homelike retirement center for women only. Residents pay a fee, augmented by the home's trust fund, that varies with the size of their rooms and covers three meals a day, linens and laundry, and a nurse and aide in attendance around the clock.

[Photo caption from original print edition]: the house from the east before it was remodeled in 1927

[Photo caption from original print edition]: the Anna Bach home today, with third story

[Photo caption from original print edition]: Though the neoclassical exterior would suggest a lot of plaster ornamentation inside, the interior of the MacKenzie house was actually quite plain. Two big fieldstone fireplaces gave it a rather rustic air. Marian MacKenzie, daughter of the owner of a large flour mill complex in Chester, Illinois, preferred to use family antiques in a simple setting, rather than buying furniture to help create a period look. According to her daughter-in-law, Eleanor MacKenzie of MacKenzie Insurance, she was a dynamic and independent woman who remained active--and drove cars fast--into her eighties.

[Photo caption from original print edition]: The MacKenzies on the front steps

Winter and summer, one of Ann Arbor's livelier recreational attractions seventy years ago was Weinberg's coliseum and swimming pool, down at the end of Fifth Avenue where it intersects with Hill Street. The concrete building that housed the indoor ice rink was erected by masonry contractor Fred Weinberg, probably in 1909. It survives today as the U-M Coliseum, which was the home of Michigan's ice hockey team until 1973. Weinberg's indoor ice rink, the first in town, boasted a huge Wurlitzer player organ, akin to a player piano, which imitated the sounds of an entire orchestra. Songs like the Skater's Waltz, The Blue Danube Waltz, and the Poet and Peasant Overture were played again and again, so often that a generation of older Ann Arborites who used to patronize the place can still vividly recollect the sound as if it were being played today. The organ was so loud, in fact, that it could be heard all over the neighborhood. Fred Weinberg's son Nate (of the old Nate's Boat Shop) recalls that the music carried clearly over to their house on Mary Street, some four blocks away, whenever the windows were open and the rink was in session, which was frequent. The building had no heat and no refrigeration equipment. To freeze the ice, the windows were simply opened to let in the cold air. New layers of ice were added to build up the surface in case of warm spells. Because conditions at his ice arena were unpredictable, Weinberg arranged with State Street merchants to post flags in front of their stores on days when there was enough ice for skating. If you came to the rink on Saturdays before noon, you could get in for ten cents and stay all day, a practice that many Ann Arbor children followed. They would either bring a lunch or buy one at the snack bar. The ice rink also had a balcony for roller skating, but roller skaters had to climb down the stairs in their skates and cross over part of the ice to get a snack. Weinberg's Coliseum supplemented the older outdoor ice rink next to it, which Weinberg had built some twelve years earlier. In fact, the coliseum's doors opened onto the outside ice, which extended all the way to John Street. That rink, which doubled as a swimming pool in summer, was fed by springs on nearby city property, where the Michigan Stadium now stands. At first, the swimming pool was a rather primitive affair. Jonas Otto, Weinberg's nephew, remembers how he earned spending money as a boy by pulling frogs out of the pool. A cement pool bottom was poured about the same time the indoor rink was built. Skating on Weinberg's original outdoor rink was preferable to skating on the Huron River or other ponds around town because of the live music provided by Weinberg's brother-in-law, Louis Otto, leader of Otto's Band, and seven or eight of his musicians. They would sit and play in a small hut in the middle of the rink, closing the windows periodically so they could warm up. When it was too warm for ice skating, the Coliseum was often used for circuses, speeches, horse shows, indoor carnivals, dances, roller skating, and other special events. Weinberg's Coliseum played host to the U-M's first ice hockey game, in 1920, and to over fifty hockey seasons thereafter. Weinberg himself did not live to witness that first in Michigan athletic history, however. He died in 1917, the victim of a collision between his automobile and one of the interurban trains that ran through town along Packard, Main, and Huron. His wife and son, Julius, took over the ice rink and Julius installed an auto paint shop in the rear. Famed U-M neurosurgeon Edgar Kahn was on the first Michigan ice-hockey team. He remembers that the natural ice caused some problems. Players might be playing in a pool of water by the last period, and occasionally, if the weather were unseasonably mild, a game would be called off, sometimes after the visiting team had traveled a long distance for the contest. In 1924, a fire starting in the paint shop burned the wooden roof and partitions, but the cement walls survived and still form the building's basic shell. The U-M bought the Coliseum in 1925 and installed artificial ice equipment the following year, thus overcoming the vagaries of weather. But the main problem with the rink as a hockey arena was that there was never enough room for spectators. Even after the 1949 remodeling put seats all around, the building's size necessitated very steep seating, so that anyone sitting on top was unable to see the whole rink. In 1973, after the ice rink was moved to Yost Field House, which had just been converted to Yost Ice Arena, the building was turned into a gymnasium, now used for women's athletics and an occasional special event like the U-M Artists and Craftsmen's Guild Christmas Art Fair. [Photo caption from original print edition]: Postcard of Weinberg's Coliseum published by A.S. Lyndon. Folding chairs around the periphery provided very limited seating. The player organ in the balcony was flanked by a bandstand where live music was played on special occasions. (Middle left) Members of Otto's Band inside their hut at the old ice rink. (Middle right) Charlie Swarthout scraping the ice on Weinberg's old outdoor ice rink. (Bottom) Nate Weinberg (fourth from right) was one of the gang of enthusiastic "rink rats" who helped maintain the ice in the Coliseum's middle years in return for skating privileges. The Michigan hockey team played there, and the rink was also open to the public at certain times. 1938 photo, left to right: Marv Olson, Aldin Ratti, Bob Ingold, Bob Flory, Bill Carpenter, Sam Otto, Bill Mast, Phil Brier, Nate Weinberg, Bill Bush, Bill Folske, and Don Wright.

[Photo caption from original print edition]: Views of the huge swimming pool show the adjoining houses, barns, and sheds of South Division as they climb the hill to Packard and Madison. [Photo caption from original print edition]: Extra decks were added to the primitive diving tower. [Photo caption from original print edition]: The Coliseum today. [Photo caption from original print edition]: The Coliseum sometime before 1919, when the swimming pool was still in operation.

When the Ann Arbor Central Mills on First Street opened in 1882, the increased use of farm machinery, especially the thresher, made wheat growing so profitable that over a million bushels a year were being grown in Washtenaw County. This mill exported flour to New England, the Midwest, the South, and even abroad. It operated from 1882 to 1927, spanning some of Washtenaw County's best and worst years for agriculture.

The property, originally the site of a brewery, still has the basement tunnel vaults which were used to store and age the beer. G.F. Hauser's City Brewery first occupied the site, which was next to Allen's Creek, in 1860. By 1868 it was called John Reyer's City Brewery and in 1872, the Ekhardt Bros. Brewery. The brewery property was probably chosen as the mill site in 1882 because of its location beside the Ann Arbor Railroad tracks, which had been laid only four years earlier. Much flour was shipped by rail, and in later years Ann Arbor Implement, the building's present occupant, used the train to transport farm implements.

The Central Mills' principal owner, Robert Ailes, retired in 1884. He sold his interest to his two partners, G. Frank Allmendinger and Cottlieb Schneider. The 1884 Industrial Census records that the mill employed twelve men, who worked twelve hours a day each, except for one minor, who worked ten. By 1894 three more employees had been hired. The salaries ($1.25 to $1.87 a day) were enough for a working man to buy a house on.

Allmendinger was the partner with marketing and financial connections. A U-M graduate in engineering, he belonged to the big Allmendinger clan, descended from early (circa 1830) German pioneers to Ann Arbor. Organ manufacturer David F. Allmendinger was his cousin. A leader in many other organizations, ranging from the Farmers' and Mechanics' Bank and the Michigan Bean Jobbers' Association to the University School of Music and the First Congregational Church, Allmendinger was active in city and county Republican politics. He ran for mayor and lost by one vote, and he led a successful fight to prevent Felch Park (in front of the present-day Power Center) from being sold to private developers. Allmendinger's impressive home on South Main is now the American Legion hall. Nearby Pauline Street is named after his wife.

Schneider was the operations half of the Central Mills team. A German native, he had farmed and had worked in other mills. He lived just around the corner at 402 West Liberty, in the house next to The Moveable Feast. Edith Kempf, who grew up across the street, remembers that the neighbors called him Mr. "Miller" Schneider to differentiate him from Emanuel Schneider, a plumber who lived on the corner. In later years some of his customers thought his name really was Mr. Miller. Schneider dressed as his workers did, in one-piece washable denim overalls, which by day's end were covered with flour. Arthur Reiff remembers Schneider as a man uniformly good natured and always friendly to farmers. Reiff's farmer father used to bring wheat and grain to the mill. He would trade the wheat for flour, taking back the leftover middlings and bran to feed his livestock. The grain, mainly oats and corn, was also used as feed. It was ground in a device that was something like a big coffee grinder. In addition to regular flour the mill sold graham flour, rye flour, granulated meal, and buckwheat flour. It also had a cooperage that made flour barrels, usually for a hundred pounds of flour.

The 1896 Headlight magazine promoting Ann Arbor boasted that the Central Mills probably had Michigan's most complete milling equipment, including a steel roller system. Steam-powered steel rollers had been replacing water-driven millstones in the 1880's because they were more efficient and easier to control. The Central Mills had had rollers since 1884, if not earlier. No record of a water-driven millstone exists.

About 1900 the present brick building replaced the earlier wood structure. Actually, it appears the original wood frame was kept and brick walls were added. The vaulted basement tunnels were used to store vinegar and possibly wine from the Ann Arbor Fruit and Vinegar Company, another Allmendinger and Schneider business just across the tracks. In 1902 the company was consolidated with two other Ann Arbor mills to form the Michigan Milling Company. Allmendinger was secretary-treasurer and Schneider the plant supervisor.

As the years went by, Washtenaw's wheat became less competitive. Flour consumption decreased due to Americans' changed eating habits. Vast wheat fields opened on the Great Plains and grew hard wheat (preferred for bread) as well as the soft wheat grown in Michigan. By 1910 the county's wheat production was a third of what it had been in 1880. By the end of World War One the mill was operating at a loss. It kept going until 1927, but flour milling stopped soon after 1925, when Gottlieb Schneider died. Only feed was ground after that.

In 1929 Ernie Lohr, owner of a farm implement store on South Ashley, bought the building and continued using it as a feed store. He remodeled it in 1939 and moved in his implement business, now run by his son, Paul, and grandson, Fred. Big farm implements like tractors, combines, and milking machines have given way to lawn and garden supplies, chain saws, and the like.

Many reminders of the old mill survive. Painted exterior signs still advertise the firm's products. The vaults now house large lawn tractors and display the Lohrs' collection of antique farm implements, which visitors may see upon request. The original Central Mills safe may be seen next door at The Blind Pig cafe, which had been the old mill's office. Today the safe stores wine, not money.

[Photo caption from original print edition]: Viewed from the railroad tracks, the back of the old mill buildings looks much as it did around the turn of the century.

[Photo caption from original print edition]: Diagram (circa 1880) of a roller mill, showing the steel rollers that crush the grain as it falls from floor to floor. Steam-driven roller mills like these gradually replaced water-powered mills and their mill wheels.

[Photo caption from original print edition]: Old flour bags from the Michigan Milling Company (which operated the First Street mills). "Every kernel sterilized " is the legend on MIMICO golden corn meal.