It recalls the ebullient optimism of the 1920's

On February 21, 1929, the First National Building, the tallest and most lavish office building yet built in Ann Arbor, was opened amid great fanfare. More than 5,000 people attended the grand opening of the ten-story building at Main and Washington.

The building was designed by local architects Paul Kasurin and Lynn Fry, who also served as general contractors. Work had begun on the building on February 1, 1928, with the demolition of the three-story Wadham's Department Store, which had been on the site since 1887. Using local contractors as much as possible--Muehlig and Schmid for hardware, Mack and Company for linoleum flooring, Rohde for lime and plaster, and Killins for sand and
gravel--they were done in less than a year.

The 1920's were the golden age of the U.S. auto industry, and the whole state was booming. The First National's owners, a group of investors, spared no expense in their pursuit of elegance: the building had a granite base, bronze doors, and steel casement windows. Inside, they installed black terrazzo floors, Italian travertine walls, and a richly decorated paneled ceiling. They named it for its main tenant, the First National Bank, which occupied the two-story main lobby, a mezzanine, and the basement.

The grand opening was like a city wide party, with refreshments, live music performed by the U-M music school's symphony orchestra, and favors: corsages, nosegays, cigars, blotters, and picture postcards of the building.

By the end of the evening 2,700 corsages and 1,500 nosegays had been given away. The only untoward incident occurred when two university students managed to get themselves locked in the bank's basement vault during a demonstration of the door's mechanism. Bank officials quickly assured onlookers that the students were in no danger, since the vault had a fresh air supply and even a telephone. They had to obtain the master key to release the pair.

The bank opened for business the following Saturday. On the mezzanine opposite the bank president's office, Merrill Lynch opened one of its earliest branch offices. The new building itself was presumably part of the lure, but the choice was probably also influenced by the fact that founder Charles Merrill was a former U-M student.

The remaining eight stories were fully rented before the building was even finished, mainly to doctors, dentists, lawyers, real estate agents, and insurance businesses. Fry and Kasurin took ninth-floor offices for themselves. The whole eighth floor was rented to two prominent U-M doctors, R. B. Canfield and A. C. Furstenburg, while the entire tenth floor was taken by lawyers Frank Stivers and Joseph Hooper. Street-level storefronts on Washington were filled by the John Tice Confectionery and Sandwich Shop and Germanis Brothers shoe repair.

The space had rented out so quickly that the First National's owners decided immediately to build an addition on the south side to match the five-story section on the back. They finished it a year later. But by then the Depression had hit, puncturing the ebullient optimism of the Twenties. Demand for office space disappeared, and the owners never completed the rest of their plan, to enlarge both of these five-story sections to match the ten-story height of the building's central part. You can still see where the additions were expected to be: the south and east sides of the tower are finished in simple brick instead of the luminous white granite that covers the rest of the building.

Downtown never regained the buoyant, pre-Depression optimism symbolized by the First National Building. After World War II, new commercial development followed the housing expanding out toward the edges of town. The First National Building stood unchallenged as Main Street's tallest for almost sixty years. It was surpassed by the ill-starred One North Main only in the mid-1980's.

In 1936, the First National Bank moved out as part of a merger with the Farmers and Mechanics and Ann Arbor Savings banks to form the Ann Arbor Bank (which has since merged with First of America). The two mezzanines were then connected to form a second-story floor, which was rented out to various businesses. Over the years, the elegant details became obscured as the marble floors were carpeted, the painted ceilings hidden by a dropped ceiling, the bronze mailbox converted to a fire alarm, and the Main Street facade altered to accommodate various storefronts, the last being Daniels' Jewelry.

In 1981, local developer Bill Martin bought the building and began the slow process of restoration. He removed the Main Street storefront and restored the original bronze entryway and terra-cotta detailing. Inside, he took out most of the later additions, restored the floors, walls, bronze elevator doors, and bronze mailbox to their original condition, and had the decorated ceilings cleaned and repainted.

Martin lured Merrill Lynch back to town, and today they occupy their former quarters. Other tenants are the same kinds of genteel business services that occupied the building in its heyday--from Michigan National Bank at street level to Beacon Investment on the tower's top floors.

[Photo caption from original print edition]: (Left) Built at the height of the 1920's boom, the First National Building was the tallest, most lavish office building in Ann Arbor's history. But the Depression killed plans to expand the wings on either side upward to match the main tower, and the building lost its namesake bank shortly after this picture was taken in the mid-1930's. (Below) During the 1980's, local developer Bill Martin re-created the two-story arched entryway and other obscured original details as part of a comprehensive restoration. But Martin, too, cautiously decided against completing the long-delayed expansions--a smart move that anticipated the present glut of office space downtown.

The Ann Arbor Fluff Rug Company turned old carpets into new

For more than forty years, from 1895 to 1936, thrifty home owners from all over the United States sent their old carpets to Ann Arbor for recycling. At the Ann Arbor Fluff Rug Company, 409-421 West Huron (now replaced by the Performance Network building), worn, shabby carpets were cut and rewoven using machinery developed by owner Henry Schlemmer. The end product was a new rug of a more mottled color than the original but sturdy and strong and usable on both sides.

Schlemmer initially modeled the business after a similar one in Toledo that was, according to his daughter, Geraldine Schlemmer Seeback, "more of a rug cleaning outfit." He offered every conceivable service connected with rugs: sizing, cutting, laying, sewing, repairing, scouring, trading, and buying and selling used rugs. But his biggest business soon became making new rugs out of old.

Schlemmer was born in Ann Arbor in 1864 and grew up on the family farm, which was bounded by the present-day Hoover, Davis, Brown, and Main streets. His father, who had immigrated from Stuttgart, supported the family by drilling wells. Before starting in the rug business, Schlemmer worked as a blacksmith for Staebler and Elmer, makers of road carts and wagons. His training as a blacksmith no doubt gave him some of the know-how to build his rug machines. "He never patented them," says Seeback of the machines. "If he had, we might be rich today. Of course, they are obsolete by now."

Rug prices were high enough back then that recycling was cheaper than buying a new carpet. But even with Schlemmer's machines, the operation was still relatively labor-intensive. When they arrived, all rugs were cleaned and disinfected with formaldehyde. Seeback remembers they were put in a wire bin that spun, shaking the dirt out the bottom. Next, a man named Shepard cut and discarded the totally worn areas. The good parts were then cut into strips approximately two inches wide, with a machine created by Schlemmer. Next, the strips were twisted vertically, again by a machine created by Schlemmer. The strips were then woven with conventional looms. The new rugs, which were softer (if not exactly fluffier) than the originals, could be any size up to nine by twelve feet, depending on the amount of material. The last step was hand-tying the warp into Turkish knots, leaving about four inches of fringe at each end of the rug.

Several old rugs could be combined into one, with the different colors used as stripes or borders. Customers always got back rugs made with their own materials; the only exception was when they needed a larger size than their old carpets could produce and so authorized the company to add extra rugs they had on hand. Some also requested additional materials to brighten the finished product or give it more of a pattern. Chenille curtains and rugs too light or loosely woven to be made into fluff rugs could be made into lighter-weight rugs using the same technology.

When the rugs were finished, they were delivered by horse-drawn cart, either directly to the customer's home if it was in town, or to the Ann Arbor Railroad station on Ashley to be shipped. The cart was pulled by a horse named Nancy, who lived in a barn behind the factory.

Geraldine Schlemmer and her sister, Catherine, made their contribution to the family business by modeling for its advertisements. A picture of Geraldine, still a tiny baby, lying nude on a roll of carpet, was used as the company's logo.

Schlemmer also relied on personal advertising, appearing in parades with floats that displayed his carpets and exhibiting at fairs. He almost lost Geraldine at the 1908 State Fair in Detroit. Still under a year old, she was lying on a fluff rug when a man picked her up and started to run away. Her father sped after him and quickly retrieved her.

The advertising paid off. At one time Schlemmer had fifty agents around the country who could take orders, advise customers on what size rug they could expect from their old one, and arrange for shipping. A 1912 Ann Arbor Fluff Rug Company brochure boasted, "Today you will find our rugs from coast to coast in the most up-to-date homes, churches, theaters, offices, stores, hotels, state capitals, hospitals, charitable institutions, YWCA's, etc."

The staff of the fluff rug company ranged from fifteen to twenty-five and included many Schlemmer family members. Henry Schlemmer's sister, Lydia Schlemmer Carlough, and his widowed sister-in-law, Elizabeth Schlemmer, worked as finishers. Younger brother George worked closely with Henry in the early days, serving as his right-hand man as they developed the rug business. Brother Charlie Schlemmer was a foreman and also drove the wagon. Brother Jake sometimes worked as a cutter. During busy seasons other members of the family were called in.

From 1905 to 1909, family members operated a related business, the Ann Arbor Steam Carpet Cleaning Works, out of the Germania Hall at the corner of Second and William streets (now the parking lot for GT Products). First run by Reuben Schlemmer, husband of Elizabeth, the business was taken over by George Schlemmer after Reuben died. But in 1909 George disappeared and was never seen by the family again. The steam cleaning operation, which also included feather renovation, was absorbed by the fluff rug company and moved to Huron Street.

Henry Schlemmer met his wife, Cortland Ferguson Schlemmer, when she came to work in the rug company office. A widow (her first husband, Jay Ferguson, had been killed in a trolley accident) with a young son, Lee, to support, she was twenty years Henry's junior. Even after the birth of Geraldine and Catherine, it was not unusual for Henry and Cortland to return to work at night, taking the young children with them. When the girls got tired they would just lie down on the piles of rugs and go to sleep. Their parents would wake them when they were ready to go back to their home at 537 Third Street, five blocks away. Catherine usually walked with her mother, while Geraldine rode on the handlebars of her dad's bike. (They never did own a car. If they had somewhere farther to go, for instance to Cortland's parents' farm on Wagner Road, they would ride the company cart with Nancy pulling them.)

Henry Schlemmer retired in 1919. Although he was only fifty-five years old, his health was failing and he no longer felt up to the demands of the business. He sold the company to his longtime bookkeeper, Clarence Cobb, who moved some of the equipment to 1003 Broadway, now a barbershop next to the St. Vincent De Paul store. Elizabeth Schlemmer also stayed with the business. She and Cobb ran the fluff rug company until 1936, but it was never again as big an operation as when Henry Schlemmer owned it. The original building was bought by machine tool innovator Francis La Pointe, who tore it down and built his American Broach factory (now the Performance Network) on the site.

In retirement Schlemmer continued his involvement with the Odd Fellows Lodge, then located in the brick house on Liberty that's now the Moveable Feast. Although totally untrained in music, he could play by ear, and played for all the Odd Fellows' drill teams and marching work. He died in 1945 at age eighty-one.

Geraldine Seeback still has two of her father's rugs, which she is saving to pass on to her two sons. Although both were used in her family's house for many years, they are still in excellent condition, a testimonial to the sturdiness of the product.

[Photo caption from original print edition]: Henry Schlemmer employed many relatives in the business and drafted infant daughter Geraldine to pose for the company's logo. Above right: a fluff rag today (Geraldine Schlemmer Seeback is behind it, holding it up).

After almost a century in eclipse, epitaphs are making a comeback

When immigrant stonemason Vincel Arnet started work at Lockridge Monuments in Ypsilanti in 1887, most Washtenaw County gravestones were made of limestone sent by wagon from Bedford, Indiana. The soft stone was easily carved, and a trip to any of the area's older cemeteries reveals wonderful examples of monuments decorated with symbolic pictures, such as lambs for dead children, weeping willows signifying sadness, or tree stumps marking people who died in the prime of life. Some include epitaphs, often long ones; like James Warble's 1861 stone in Stony Creek Cemetery in Augusta Township:

Sleep on dear Father
Thy toils and cares are o'er
It was God that called thee home
Where we shall meet to part no more

Even the simpler stones often include information such as the place of death, close relatives, or the deceased's age down to the day.

Unfortunately, these beautiful stones are prey to the elements; the wear over the years makes the engravings harder to discern. Vincel Arnet arrived from Pilsen, Bohemia, at the end of an era. In 1889, granite, a harder, much longer-lasting stone, began to be mined in Barre, Vermont, and later in St. Cloud, Minnesota, and Elberton, Georgia. Previously the only granite available was from Scotland, and shipping costs made it too expensive for general use.

Larry Arnet, Vincel's great-grandson and the owner of Arnet's Monuments on Jackson Road, has become an expert in gravestones, both from his own involvement in the industry and from listening to stories about his family's eighty-five-year-old business. People readily switched to granite for its durability, he says, although it had the drawback of being much more expensive to engrave since it was so hard. Arnet estimates that engraving limestone was about 7 percent of the final cost of the stone, while engraving granite reached about 25 percent. The expense meant that people not only stopped putting symbolic pictures and extra information on gravestones, but sometimes even reduced the engraving to the name and the years of birth and death, omitting the day and the month.

The advent of the automobile and the subsequent scattering of families around the county also affected the burial business. In the nineteenth century, people would buy cemetery lots in groups of eight, twelve, or even sixteen, intending that the mortal remains of the entire family would lie together. Often they identified the area with a big central monument bearing the family name, which they surrounded with smaller stones for each family member.. But as this century progressed and families dispersed, people switched to buying only one or two lots at a time.

The Arnet Monument Company (originally Zachmann and Arnet - Gus Zachmann was a partner for a few years) opened during the switch from limestone to granite and shortly before the rise of the automobile. Founder Joseph L. Arnet, Vincel's son and Larry's grandfather, followed his father and trained to be a stonemason, apprenticing in Flint. In 1904, at the age of twenty-five, he started his own business in Ann Arbor, using the $25 insurance proceeds he received when his father died. His first shop was simply an open lot on the corner of Main and Ann, most recently the site of the Salvation Army Store and now a temporary county park. Says Larry Arnet, "In those days they worked outside. They didn't feel they had to have air conditioning in the summer and heating in the winter."

According to family stories, there were six monument companies in Ann Arbor when Joseph Arnet started in business. After two years there were only two, the other four having joined Arnet. The business was given a good start when it received as its third commission a $5,000 stone - 200 times the $25 average at the time. An unmarried schoolteacher died without heirs and, not wanting her money to go to the state, designated that her entire estate be used for a burial stone. Arnet spent a year carving an 8 by 10 foot monument and decorating it with acanthus leaves. (It's in York Cemetery, at the corner of Platt and Judd roads in York Township.)

In 1917 Joseph Arnet finally gave his workers a break from Michigan's inclement climate by moving to an inside location at 208 West Huron, most recently the Whiffletree Restaurant. Up until the restaurant's 1988 fire, Larry Arnet says, it was still possible to see the beams that had held the chain falls used to lift stone in his grandfather's day.

Joseph's son, Frederick, began working in the family business after graduating from the U-M in 1931 with a degree in architecture. He took over completely in 1937 after Joseph suffered a debilitating stroke. Under Frederick's leadership, the company branched into producing architectural features, such as stone facings and copings around walls, a natural outgrowth of his architectural training.

In need of more space for the expanding business that Frederick was bringing in, Arnet's moved in 1933 to 924-936 North Main, the building that now houses Robey Tire.

Larry Arnet grew up in the business, watching his father and grandfather work at the various locations and helping when he was old enough. But when he came of age, he had doubts about whether he wanted to follow the course laid out for him. Frederick Arnet, thinking he would need to sell the business, attempted to shrink it to a manageable size. He moved it in 1960 to a smaller location, 218 Chapin, across from West Park, now the New Hope Baptist Church. But Larry relented and took over the business in 1965. Following the trend of heavy industries leaving downtown for cheaper, more accessible space on the edge of town, he moved Arnet's to its present location at 4495 Jackson Road in 1970. He has since been joined in the business by his son Steve, daughter Carol Bondie, and son-in-law Jim Moomey.

Larry Arnet is a warm jovial man, and it's obvious that his original reluctance has turned into an enormous enthusiasm for the profession. Although he admits the trend is to spend less on funerals and gravestones, Larry Arnet says there is also increased awareness of the importance of formally recognizing a loved one's death and of the comfort that comes from knowing where the physical remains lie. He says a rise in family feeling among young people has led to an increase in requests for memorials with special carvings, symbols, and epitaphs.

Fortunately, technical improvements in the industry now allow more designs and information to be put on granite stones, despite their hardness, at a reasonable cost. Computer-generated stencils are used for sandblasting, and skilled artisans can etch the designs into the stone with a vibrating diamond-tipped pen.

Larry Arnet has worked on unusual gravestones, including those for stunt pilot William Barber and his wife, Elaine, which when viewed together form an airplane, and a monument that resembles a space capsule. Erected at the Jackson Space Center, it honors Roger Chafee and Gregory Jarvis, the two Michigan astronauts who died in the line of duty.

[Photo caption from original print edition]: After three moves, current owner Larry Arnet (in suit) carries on the monument trade with son-in-law Jim Moomey, son Steve, and daughter Caryl Bondie.

[Photo caption from original print edition]: From 1904 to 1917, founder Joseph Arnet (in vest) and his crew worked outdoors at the corner of Main and Ann.

Its huge Huron Street factory is now a haven for low-budget arts groups.

The factory building at 408 West Washington, now the home of numerous arts groups, including the Performance Network, was from 1919 to 1963 the headquarters of American Broach, a pioneer machine-tool maker. American Broach flourished during the heyday of the U.S. auto industry, supplying broaches (specialized metal-cutting tools) and broaching machines to the Big Three auto companies, their suppliers, and farm machinery manufacturers. At its peak during World War II, American Broach employed 500 people and ran around the clock making equipment for munitions factories. Unlike many of its competitors, it weathered the long decline of the U.S. auto industry, and it still survives, on a smaller scale, in a modern factory on Jackson Road.

Broaching is a method of machining in which a series of rotating cutting teeth are used to shape an edge or an opening in a piece of metal. Invented in the mid-nineteenth century, broaching was improved by J. L. Lapointe, who created a faster and more accurate broaching machine at his factory in New London, Connecticut, in 1901.

American Broach was founded by Lapointe's son, Francis, who is often called the father of modern broaching. According to John Podesta, chief engineer under Francis Lapointe and later general manager of American Broach, "Lapointe had a genius for knowing and inventing tools. He could throw out ideas as fast as you could catch them."

Francis Lapointe was a practical businessman, too. He was one of the first to appreciate the usefulness of broaching to the newly emerging automobile industry. In 1919, accompanied by about six skilled employees, he left his father's broaching company and moved to the Midwest to be closer to potential customers and to take advantage of the good labor market. With the help of the Ann Arbor Chamber of Commerce, he found land on Huron Street just west of the railroad overpass, where he built a small factory on the eastern edge of the property.

Lapointe's optimism was vindicated. Driven by the burgeoning growth of the auto companies and their suppliers, American Broach grew rapidly over the next two decades. Lapointe added sections to the factory until it reached Third Street, then built a wing stretching to Washington. During World War II, he built a second wing on the western edge of the property, parallel to the railroad tracks.

Just as it shared in the prosperity of the auto industry, however, American Broach was touched by its labor problems. In 1937, Francis Lapointe sold the business to an Illinois-based machine-tool company, Sundstrand, but stayed on as general manager. Later the same year, American Broach had the distinction of hosting Ann Arbor's first sit-down strike. The immediate cause was the refusal of management to grant a nickel-an-hour raise.

Inspired by the successful sit-down strike in Flint's GM plant earlier that year, a group of workers locked the shop doors from the inside at 10:01 a.m. on Tuesday, August 3. Then they pulled the main switch, stopping all the electric machinery. Since the shop was on the first floor, food was easily delivered to the strikers through the windows on Huron Street. Management continued working in the second-story offices, entering and leaving by outside stairways.

Strike supporters picketed in front of the Washington Street parking lot. Sophie Reuther, who, along with her husband, Vie Reuther, was the UAW organizer assigned to Ann Arbor, took an unintentional ride on the hood of a car that drove through the human barrier the picketers had formed. Tacks were then strewn on the driveway, causing several flat tires. But no irreversible harm was done, and after thirty-six hours, the strikers were persuaded to leave the building by Ann Arbor mayor Walter Sandier, who sneaked in a back door to tell them that Michigan governor Frank Murphy had agreed to mediate the dispute. The strikers returned to work after both sides agreed to collective bargaining.

American Broach's finest hour was during World War II. Working twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, the factory built broaching machines and broaching tools needed to "rifle" guns and artillery. Rifling creates grooves inside a gun barrel so that the bullet spins when fired, giving it greater accuracy and distance.

John Podesta remembers accompanying Lapointe on a trip to the Springfield Arsenal in Massachusetts, early in the war. On the way home, the two men sat up all night in their Pullman sleeper designing a faster broaching method. When they ran out of paper, they drew on the cardboard their shirts had been wrapped in. When they arrived back in Ann Arbor the next morning, they were, ready to begin producing machines that could rifle a gun barrel in one hour instead of the six hours it had taken.

After the war, the broaching business waned. In 1946, Lapointe left American Broach to start a new company in Kentucky. Podesta took over as general manager until 1957, when Sundstrand moved the broaching-machine business to their headquarters in Rockford, Illinois. In 1961, two employees, Harold Holly and Everett Vreeland (whose father was one of the six men Lapointe had brought from Connecticut in 1919), bought the broaching-tool division. In 1963 they moved it to Jackson Road, where it still thrives, now under the ownership of Ed Kohmeyer.

After American Broach left West Washington Street, the huge building was partitioned off and rented to a number of businesses, including Bonavia Bedding Co., Seyfried Printers, the Breast Cancer Detection Center, Sears Roebuck's advertising office, Sycor, and Ann Arbor Circuits. By 1980 it was down to a couple of tenants, and the owners renamed it "The Technology Center" in hopes of attracting electronics companies.

Instead, they found an important tenant in the Performance Network, which in turn attracted a number of the small artists and arts groups--including dancers, musicians, and painters--that make up an important (if poorly paid) segment of Ann Arbor's current economy. The complex is now home to more than 100 groups, many of whom, in the words of one of the owners, Dan Hussey, "couldn't find any other place to be, either because of the cost or because of what they are doing."

[Photo caption from original print edition]: American Broach thrived during the golden age of Michigan's auto industry, growing from half a dozen people in 1919 to 500 workers during World War II. This early 1940s photo includes Ev Vreeland (fourth from left in the front row), who later became an owner of the company. The woman at far left is plant nurse Leanna Delhey, mother of the longtime county prosecutor.

[Photo caption from original print edition]: The J. Parker Copley Dance Company rehearses at the Broach's former west side factory. The sprawling complex is now rented to over 100 small tenants, including ^musicians, painters, and the Performance Network theater.

Once the object of neighbors' wrath, Lustron homes have emerged as winsome modernist antiques.

Lustron homes were one of the most innovative solutions to the post-World War II housing shortage. Nine of them can still be found in Ann Arbor, in close to their original condition despite dire predictions at the time of their construction (1948-1950) that they would soon be a pile of rust.

Except for the cement slab they rest on, Lustron homes are made entirely of steel. The outside walls consist of two-foot square, porcelain-finished steel panels in either yellow or tan. The roofs are made of interlocking steel tiles. The inside walls are also of steel, as are the doors, ceilings, and the built-in furniture. A clever room layout of halls, sliding doors, and large windows makes maximum use of the space, and the 1,025-square-foot, two-bedroom houses feel much roomier than they are. Jane Barnard, owner of the Lustron at 3060 Lakeview, says, "The use of space is perfect. There is nothing I would change."

Lustron homes were the brainchild of Carl Strandlund, an industrial engineer who worked for a Chicago company that manufactured porcelainized steel panels for gas station exteriors. Strandlund's great inspiration was to use essentially the same material for housing.

For start-up money, Strandlund got a $15.5 million loan from the federal Reconstruction Finance Corporation, followed by several other loans. He used the money to take over a huge, twenty-three-acre factory in Columbus, Ohio. There he set up his sheet-metal presses, high-speed welding rigs, enamel sprayers, and drying ovens. His house kits, designed to be set up like giant Erector sets, began coming off the line in 1948. Each kit consisted of 3,300 individual parts and weighed 10 tons. The original price was $7,000.

Lustrons came to Ann Arbor through the efforts of visionary businessman Neil Staebler, who heard about them while working in Washington for the Federal Housing Administration in the years just after the war. He recalls, "I thought they were a swell idea. Lustron promised to be a durable material, which it has proved to be." When he returned to Ann Arbor to live, he applied for the local Lustron franchise.

In all, Staebler was able to arrange for nine Lustron homes to be built: at 605 Linda Vista; 3060 Lakewood; 1121,1125, and 1129 Bydding; 1711 Chandler; 800 Starwick; 1910 Longshore; and 1200 S. Seventh. All but one were put up by Clarence Kollewehr, a carpenter who went on to become the business manager of Local 512 of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners. Kollewehr and his crew, which consisted of two other carpenters and two laborers, had some trouble erecting the first few Lustrons, but soon became so adept that they hardly had to refer to the building manual. If there were no snags, they could erect a Lustron home in less than a week.

Kollewehr has fond memories of the Lustrons, which he describes as "an engineering monument when you consider how they were built." The only problem he remembers is that the outside panels would sometimes get chipped while being pounded in. But the kit was so well designed that it even included enamel paint in the color of the model, so that the crew could do quick touch-ups at the end of the day.

The Lustrons' practical, progressive aura appealed especially to people at the U-M. But probably the best-known Lustron buyers were Ray and Olive Dolph, builders of the Dolph mansion in the Lakewood subdivision off Jackson Road. When they decided to move to a smaller house, leaving the mansion for their son, Charles, and his family, the Dolphs chose a Lustron, appreciating its nice house plan and new materials. Says Charles's ex-wife, Marge Reade, "We were liberal about those things."

Few people, it turned out, were as liberal as the Dolphs. "The city didn't care much for [Lustrons], or the neighbors either," recalls Clarence Kollewehr. "There were comments wherever we worked. The neighbors were not tickled." After selling nine Lustrons, Staebler decided to switch to more conventional prefabs, finding the opposition to Lustrons "a hornet's nest." Lustron was going out of business anyway. Although the houses were well designed, the company never became financially stable and went bankrupt in 1950.

During the Lustron bankruptcy hearings, it was revealed that Wisconsin Senator Joe McCarthy, one of Carl Strandlund's staunchest supporters in his loan requests, had been paid $10,000 by Lustron to write a 36-page article explaining how veterans could get housing loans. Although a direct connection between payment for the article and McCarthy's support for the Lustron loans was never proved, many found it curious that McCarthy earned more per word than Winston Churchill, whose war memoirs then held the record.

In spite of the scandal and the warnings of early death by rust, ihe local Lustrons and others around the country have held up remarkably well. Ron Hin-terman, a former owner of the Lustron on Seventh, says, "It looks the same now as it ever did." Of the Lakewood Lustron, Marge Reade says, "It looks as good as it first did. It will be recorded by history as quite a little card."

Some Lustron owners have had to endure quite a bit of teasing. Rachel Massey, who recently moved from the Lustron on Chandler, says her friends dubbed it "the little Fleetwood." Richard Sears, who lives on Bydding, says his friends compare his home to a refrigerator, asking him if a light comes on when he opens the front door.

When Bob Preston moved into the Lustron on Linda Vista, his friends threw a housewarming party. Most of the gifts were magnets, plus a can opener that came with a note: "In case you forget your house key."

Owners find Lustron maintenance relatively easy once they get used to it. The outside is easily cleaned with a garden hose, while the inside walls respond nicely to soap and water. Rust is a problem only when the walls chip, and then it can be treated with a car-body product such as Rustoleum or Bondo. Over the years, owners have also taken highly divergent approaches to interior decorating. Massey had fun with Art Deco. Claire and Paul Tinkerhouse, the current owners of the Lustron on Linda Vista, have painted the walls with textured paint and decorated with antiques to downplay the shiny steel look. Jane Barnard keeps her decor clean and open so as not to let the lines dividing the steel panels make the house seem too fussy.

Jazz musician Ron Brooks, owner of one of the Bydding Lustrons, moved one of the walls to enlarge his living room and added dry wall. (Brooks was intrigued to hear of the Staebler connection, since his jazz club, the Bird of Paradise, is located in the garage that was part of Staebler and Sons car dealership, a business begun by Neil Staebler's father.) The only current owner not to sing the praises of his Lustron is artist Richard Sears. "It's not terribly efficient, hard to insulate," says Sears. "If I could afford it, I'd tear it down and donate it to the landfill." Sears has also made the most dramatic interior changes of any Lustron owner: he's removed all but the bathroom walls so he has room to stand back and view his paintings.

[Photo caption from original print edition]: The innovative all-steel Lustron kit house made the cover of Architectural Forum in June 1947. When production started in 1948, the ten-ton, 3,300-piece prefab houses sold for just $7,000.

[Photo caption from original print edition]: Lustrons' diverse room layout made the small homes feel surprisingly roomy. "The use of space is perfect," says owner Jane Barnard. Barnard's Lustron in the Lakewood subdivision was built as a retirement home by Ray and Olive Dolph; they moved into it from the nearby Dolph mansion.

Once a thriving industrial town, it never recovered from the tornado of 1917

On summer weekends, many Ann Arborites escape to Delhi Metro-park, five miles west of town on the Huron River. Picnicking on the riverbank or jumping from rock to rock in the river, few realize that the rapids that make the park so impressive contain the foundation stones of five nineteenth-century mills, or that the small settlement nestled southwest of the park was once a thriving village.

When Michigan was settled, water was the main source of energy, so most early towns were founded on rivers. Delhi, where the Huron River drops steeply as it rounds a bend, was a particularly good place for mills. At its peak in the 1860s and 1870s, Delhi was a small industrial village, with two grist mills, a woolen mill, a sawmill, and a plaster mill; its own post office (called Delhi Mills); and a railroad station with four scheduled train stops per day.

The first to see the possibilities of the location was Jacob Doremus, a shoemaker who emigrated from New York state in 1831. He bought a tract of land along the river, built a small sawmill, and started clearing the land and selling rough-cut lumber to local farmers. In 1836, he platted a town, which he called Michigan Village, and began selling lots. He built a primitive dam with timber, stone, and earth. A local resident, Isaac Place, built a millrace on the north side of the river to channel the water.

Delhi, looking north, in 1874 when it was still a thriving mill town, with homes and mills lining both sides of the Huron. It was all downhill from there: the first mill closed the same year.

Taking advantage of the increased water power, Doremus replaced his original sawmill with a better one at the end of the Place race and then built two additional mills, also on the north side of the river--the Ithaca Flour Mill and a four-story brick woolen mill that he named the Doremus Carding and Clothing Works.

Doremus was one of the founders in 1833 of the Webster Church (still extant, it is the oldest continuously used church in Michigan) and an organizer of the local school. In 1846, he tried to change the name of the town to Doremusville, a move that Delhi historian Nick Marsh theorizes may have been to honor his wife, Esther, who died that year. But the other residents objected and decided to rename it Delhi after the dells and hills in the area.

Doremus died the next year, and the mantle of town leader was passed to his younger partner, Norman Goodale. Goodale built a new flour mill on the south side of the river, which he called simply the Delhi Mill. (A millrace, called the Church race, had already been built on that side of the river for a short-lived scythe factory.) The new mill, four stories high, with an unusual indoor water wheel, could be seen for miles around.

With Goodale's death in 1869, ownership passed to his nineteen-year-old son, Frank, and his partner, John Henley. Frank was the senior partner since he owned more of the stock, but Henley, who knew more about the business, continued to run the mills.

By then, however, the rise of steam power was freeing industry from its dependence on flowing water. Small mills like Delhi's were already facing competition from large urban factories that bought and sold on a national scale. The woolen mill was the first to go: it closed in 1874, done in by competition from larger clothing mills in the East that were being supplied by larger sheep herds in the West. After Henley died in 1881, the other mills' profits also began to go down drastically, due to a combination of hard economic times and Frank Goodale's inexperience. In 1889, Goodale and his mother lost ownership of the remaining mills.

Delhi after the 1917 tornado, looking south.

In 1900 the Delhi mills merged with the Michigan Milling Company, which razed and sold for scrap the Ithaca Flour Mill, the sawmill, and the plaster mill. In 1903, the company closed the last operating mill, the Delhi Mill, and dismantled it in 1906.

Delhi had lived on water power, and it withered as water power became unnecessary. In 1903 the post office closed, replaced by Rural Free Delivery out of Ann Arbor, and the railroad station was torn down and replaced by a shed, where the occasional passenger flagged down passing trains.

Much of what remained of industrial Delhi was devastated by a tornado on June 7, 1917. The storm, the worst in half a century, destroyed the school, the wrought iron bridge, what was left of the Delhi Mill and the woolen mill, and many houses. Future Ann Arbor parks superintendent Eli Gallup, then a young graduate of U-M's forestry school, was living in a rented house in Delhi when the tornado hit. The house was demolished and his Ford was thrown to the other side of the road.

Luckily, no one was fatally hurt in the storm, but with little reason to rebuild, many of the remaining residents moved away. The town continued to be home for a handful of families who lived in the remaining houses on two streets, one parallel to the river and the other perpendicular, running straight from the bridge. Many of the residents were tradesmen who worked elsewhere--carpenters, railroad workers, American Broach employees. "We enjoyed living there," says Richard Darr, who grew up in Delhi in the 1930s. "Nobody was wealthy, but we knew everyone and took care of each other." His brother Bob remembers, "In the spring we would take off our shoes and leave them off all summer."

The tornado demolished the house that Eli Gallup was renting and threw his Model T across the road.

In the suburban migration after World War II, Delhi began to grow again, with small ranch houses built mainly along Railroad Street and a few spurs. The long-timers called the new homes "the subdivision." Today a second building boom is occurring, this time with much larger and more expensive houses, filling in the area to the west up to the river.

In 1957, the fifty-acre Delhi Metropark opened, east of the bridge in what had been a cornfield. The park is part of the Huron-Clinton Metropolitan Authority, which was organized after World War II to save some southeast Michigan land for parks before it was all filled by development. A third Darr brother, Arnold, remembers that when the park opened it consisted of just a few roads and some benches by the river. There are now picnic tables, playground equipment, a shelter, fishing sites, and canoe launching and rental.

Today Delhi has forty-nine houses and an estimated population of 123. The Goodale house burned down, but the Henley house is still there, albeit with a different roof. The schoolhouse still stands, although it hasn't been used as such since Delhi consolidated its schools with Dexter's in the 1960s. Crossing the wrought iron bridge (built about 1889 and replaced after the tornado, using some of the old parts) one can easily make out the two millraces. Also still discernible are faint traces of a mill on either side of the river, plus some stones from the dam--the last testaments of the mills that ceased operating almost 100 years ago.