Detroit Built Ann Arbor? The Forgotten Story Behind the University of Michigan

[00:00:00]Most people think they understand the relationship between Detroit and Ann Arbor. Detroit is the motor city. Ann Arbor is the college town. Detroit built factories. Ann Arbor built classrooms.

[00:00:12]Detroit represents industry. And Arbor represents education. And depending on who you ask, the two cities can feel like complete opposites. But less than 50 m separate them. And once you begin following the history, that distance becomes even smaller. Because one of the most important institutions in Ann Arbor did not begin in Ann Arbor. It began here in Detroit. The University of Michigan officially traces its origins to Detroit in 1817 when this city was still the capital of the Michigan territory. The institution that would eventually become the center of Ann Arbor's identity was founded before Ann Arbor itself even existed. And that is only the beginning. Detroit residents helped finance the university's first building. Detroit donors paid for one of the university's first major scientific facilities. Detroit industrial fortunes became Ann Arbor classrooms, [music] libraries, laboratories, and scholarships. Detroit architects designed some of the most recognizable buildings on the University of Michigan campus. And during World War II, Detroit's automobile industry pushed west, creating an industrial and research corridor that helped transform the entire region around Ann Arbor and Ipsellandi. So, did Detroit build Ann Arbor? Not [music] by itself, and not in a way that erases Ann Arbor's founders, farmers, merchants, [music] immigrants, educators, manufacturers, or residents. Ann Arbor was never simply a suburb of Detroit. It had its own economy, its own government, its own ambitions, and its own story. But remove Detroit from that story. And the Ann Arbor we recognize today becomes almost impossible to explain. Because Detroit did not merely influence Ann Arbor.

[00:01:55]Detroit founded the institution that helped transform it. This is the forgotten, complicated, and sometimes uncomfortable story of how Detroit helped build Ann Arbor. Welcome to History Loves Company.

[00:02:17]>> [music] >> To understand this connection, we have to begin before either city looked anything like it does today. Long before the arrival of American settlers, the land surrounding Detroit, the Hiron River, and what would later become Ann Arbor was home to indigenous people, particularly the Ojiway, Ottawa, and Badawatami. These communities had lived, traveled, traded, and maintained relationships with the land for generations. The history of the University of Michigan is also connected to their displacement. In 1817, the Treaty of Fort Me transferred millions of acres from indigenous nations to the United States. Within the agreement, 1,920 acres were designated for educational purposes and eventually placed under the control of the institution that became the University of Michigan. The university later sold portions of that land and used the money to support its operations and settle debts. The University of Michigan now formally acknowledges that this transfer and the displacement surrounding it were part of the foundation upon which the institution was built. That history matters because that story does not begin with an empty wilderness waiting for Detroit or Ann Arbor to arrive. It begins on indigenous land. By the early 1800s, however, Detroit had become the governmental center of the Michigan territory. The city was still recovering from the devastating fire of 1805, [music] which had destroyed most of the settlement. Judge Augustus Woodward imagined that rebuilding Detroit would require more than new streets and buildings. He believed the territory needed an educational system. Woodward worked with Reverend John Monteth and Reverend Gabriel Richard to establish an institution with an extraordinary name, the Catholicismad or University of Michigania. The name would eventually disappear, but the institution would survive. Its first building stood on Bait Street near Congress in Detroit.

[00:04:12][music] It was a modest two-story structure measuring approximately 24x 50 ft. Detroit citizens contributed money towards its construction and the cornerstone was placed in September of 1817. Now, this is where the story requires some precision. The school founded in Detroit was not yet a modern research university that we know today.

[00:04:32]It did not offer college level classes.

[00:04:34]Its early programs operated more like a primary school and classical academy, teaching younger students at a time when organized public education in the territory was extremely limited. The classical academy opened in February of 1818. A primary school followed later that year. In 1821, the institution was reorganized and renamed the University of Michigan. So when someone says that the University of Michigan started in Detroit, that statement is historically correct. [music] But it does not mean that thousands of college students were walking through downtown Detroit in 1817. There was no sprawling campus.

[00:05:09]There was no football stadium. There was no medical school. There's [music] no law school. There was one small building and an ambitious idea, but ideas can build cities. And this particular idea would eventually transform a settlement that had not even been founded yet. 7 years after the university's creation in Detroit, two men arrived near the Hiron River. John Allen came from Virginia.

[00:05:32]Elijah Ramsey came from New York. In February of 1824, they purchased approximately 640 acres from the Federal Land Office and laid out a new settlement. Their town plat was recorded that May under the name Ann Arbor.

[00:05:45][music] Later that same year, the settlement was selected as the county seat for the newly created county. That designation was important. County seats attracted lawyers, judges, government offices, hotels, stores, and people conducting business. Ann Arbor was not founded as a university town. [music] It was founded as a speculative settlement and quickly gained importance as the center of county government. The community began growing before the university arrived. [music] By 1827, Ann Arbor had ins stores, blacksmith shops, tanneries, mills, and private homes. Its economy served the farms developing throughout the surrounding countryside.

[00:06:25]Merchants stored and sold agricultural products. Craftsmen supplied tools and household goods. Lawyers and public officials conducted business connected to the county seat. The village was incorporated in 1833.

[00:06:38]Ann Arbor, in other words, already existed. Detroit did not create the town, but something was coming that would dramatically accelerate its growth. In 1837, Michigan became a state. That same year, the state reorganized the University of Michigan and located its new campus in Ann Arbor.

[00:06:57]Local leaders offered the university 40 acres on the edge of the village. The original parcel became the heart of the modern central campus and includes the area now known as the DIA. The decision was not simply a university choosing a pleasant college town. There was not yet much of a college town to choose. Ann Arbor's leaders recognized that a state university could permanently change the future of their community. [music] They provided the land. The state provided the charter and institutional support.

[00:07:25]Detroit provided the university's legal and historical origin and indigenous land transfers had helped provide part of its financial foundation. The first college level classes in Ann Arbor began in 1841. The student body consisted of six freshmen and one sophomore. There were two professors. [snorts] Four years later, in 1845, the university held its first commencements in Ann Arbor and graduated 11 men. That is how small this began. Seven students, [snorts] two professors, a handful of buildings, and 40 acres beside a growing village. One of the university's earliest surviving structures is the President's House. It was built in 1840 as one of four residences constructed for faculty members. The other original faculty houses were eventually removed, but the President's House remains the oldest surviving building on the University of Michigan campus. Even the university's official founding date has a complicated history. For decades, the University of Michigan used 1837 on its seal because that was the year the university was reorganized and established in Ann Arbor. In 1929, the Board of Regents changed the date on the seal from 1837 to 1817, formally emphasizing the institution's Detroit origins. Both dates describe an important part of the story. [music] 1817 represents the legal and historical beginning in Detroit. 1837 represents the creation of the university's permanent home in Ann Arbor and 1841 marks the beginning of college level instruction [music] there. That distinction may sound technical, but it tells us something important. Ann Arbor did not simply receive a fully developed university from Detroit. It received an institution with Detroit roots and transformed it into something much larger. Detroit planted the seed. Ann Arbor provided the place where it could grow. Moving the university on paper was one thing. Connecting [music] it to students, supplies, information, and markets was another. In the 1830s, traveling between Detroit and Ann Arbor meant crossing miles of rough roads through a landscape that was still being surveyed and settled. [music] Then the railroad arrived. The Detroit and St. Joseph Railroad had been chartered in 1832 [music] with the ambitious goal of building west from Detroit. Construction began in 1836. The line reached Ipsellani in February of 1838. In October of 1839, it reached Ann Arbor. The railroad later became part of the Michigan Central Railroad and continued west, eventually creating a continuous Detroit to Chicago route in 1852. Think about that timing. The university was formally located in Ann Arbor in 1837. [music] The railroad from Detroit arrived in 1839. College classes began in 1841.

[00:10:09]Those developments happened within a period of only 4 years. The railroad gave Ann Arbor a direct passenger and freight connection to Detroit and through Detroit to a much larger national transportation network.

[00:10:20]Students could reach the university more easily. Mail could travel more quickly.

[00:10:24][music] Books, scientific instruments, construction materials, and manufactured goods could move into Ann Arbor. Farm products, and locally produced goods could move out. The railroad also made Ann Arbor more attractive to new residents and businesses. Ann Arbor would eventually become famous for its pedestrian campus, treeline neighborhoods, and educated population.

[00:10:45]But one of the major forces that allowed that community to expand was an industrial transportation system beginning in Detroit. The university may have moved to Ann Arbor in 1837. The railroad helped make that move practical.

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[00:11:51]One building in Ann Arbor may provide the clearest physical evidence of Detroit's [music] influence. It is not named after an Ann Arbor professor. It is not named after a university president. It was named after the city that helped pay for it, the Detroit Observatory. By the early 1850s, University of Michigan President Henry Philip Tapen wanted to transform the school into a serious research institution modeled partly on European universities. An astronomical observatory would allow professors and students to conduct original scientific research, but conducting and equipping one would be expensive. Detroit attorney Henry Nelson Walker asked Tapen how Detroit residents could help the university. The answer was an observatory. A fundraising meeting was held in Detroit on December 29th, 1852.

[00:12:37]Approximately $7,000 was pledged almost immediately. Prominent Detroititers including Walker, Lewis Cass, Henry Porter Baldwin, and Zachariah Chandler made substantial commitments. Walker personally contributed thousands of dollars and led the larger campaign.

[00:12:53]Detroit donors eventually supplied approximately $15,000 towards the project. The board of regions provided roughly $7,000 more, including its scientific instruments. The observatory cost approximately $22,000. [music] The building was completed in 1854. It became one of the most advanced observatories in the country and helped establish scientific research as a central part of the university's mission. It is also the oldest surviving academic building on the University of Michigan's campus. And until 1931, it officially carried the name Detroit Observatory in recognition of the community that financed most of its construction. This was not an abstract connection. [music] Detroiters literally helped build this building in Ann Arbor.

[00:13:35]Their money purchased its bricks. Their money acquired its instruments. Their money helped the university move beyond classroom instruction and into original research. The Detroit Observatory became a symbol of the type of institution the University of Michigan wanted to become.

[00:13:49]And as the university's academic reputation grew, Ann Arbor grew with it.

[00:13:54]More professors arrived. More students arrived. More houses were constructed.

[00:13:59][music] Businesses expanded to serve the university community. Scientific research became part of the city's identity. Detroit's contribution to the observatory did not simply give Ann Arbor another building. It helped give Ann Arbor one of the foundations of its future economy. The Detroit Observatory was not an isolated example. [music] As Detroit grew into an industrial and commercial powerhouse, some of the wealth created there flowed west into the University of Michigan. This relationship had existed from the university's earliest days. Merchants and civic leaders connected to the Detroit River Trade helped finance the first school building on Bates [music] Street. Figures including James May, William Woodbridge, James Abbott, [music] members of the Campo family, and John R. Williams supported the institution during its earliest Detroit period. By the late 19th century, the scale of Detroit wealth had grown dramatically. Shipping fortunes, manufacturing fortunes, and eventually automobile fortunes helped fund buildings, collections, [music] scholarships, and research in Ann Arbor.

[00:15:00]Detroit philanthropist Helen Newberry contributed $18,000 towards Newberry Hall. In 1890, Detroit businessman Dexter Mason Ferry donated land and money to support university facilities.

[00:15:13]Frederick Sterns, whose pharmaceutical company operated in Detroit, gave the university an extensive collection of musical instruments that became the foundation of the Sterns collection.

[00:15:24]Then came Horus H. Rackman. Rackman was a Detroit attorney. In 1903, he prepared legal documents connected to the incorporation of the Ford Motor Company.

[00:15:33]He also became one of the company's 12 original stockholders and served on its first board of directors. That investment made him enormously wealthy.

[00:15:42]Rackman died in 1933. His estate provided money for a new graduated school building in Ann Arbor and created a graduate education endowment initially valued at approximately $4 million. The total value of the Rackman gift eventually exceeded $10 million. The Horus H. Rackman School of Graduate Studies was dedicated in 1938. Its building was designed by Smith, Henchman, and Gorillis, one of Detroit's most important architectural firms.

[00:16:09]Consider the chain of events. A Detroit attorney helped organize a Detroit area automobile company. The wealth generated by that [music] company flowed into his estate. That estate funded graduate education in Ann Arbor students and researchers supported by those funds went on to work in medicine, engineering, [music] science, law, education, and business.

[00:16:31]Detroit industrial money became Ann Arbor education, and Ann Arbor education helped produce the professionals and ideas that supported Detroit's economy.

[00:16:40]This is not a one-way relationship. It's a feedback loop. [music] Another example stands in the Simpson Memorial Institute. Christine Macdonald Simpson of Detroit gave money for a building and permanent research endowment devoted to the study of periculous anemia and blood disorders. The building was designed by Albert Khan and opened during the 1920s.

[00:17:01]Once again, wealth connected to Detroit became a permanent scientific institution in Ann Arbor. Detroit factories were not merely hiring people educated in Ann Arbor. The fortunes created by those factories were becoming Ann Arbor's buildings, laboratories, libraries, fellowships, and research [music] programs. The connection is visible not only in who paid for the university's buildings. It is visible in who designed them. Albert Khan is often remembered as the architect of industrial Detroit. His firm designed automobile factories that changed the way products were manufactured. Khan worked on Ford's Highland Park plant, the River Rouge complex, and hundreds of other industrial, commercial, and institutional buildings. His designs helped create the physical landscape of Detroit's industrial age. But Khan also helped create the architectural identity of the University of Michigan. [snorts] His firm designed or contributed to an extraordinary collection of buildings on the Ann Arbor campus. Hill Auditorium opened in 1913. [music] The natural science building followed in 1915. The General Library, now incorporated into the Hatcher Graduates Library Complex, opened in 1920. [music] The William L. Clemens Library followed in 1923.

[00:18:13]Angel Hall and the East Physics Building opened in 1924. The former University Hospital opened in 1925. The University Museum's building arrived in 1928.

[00:18:24]Burton Memorial Tower was completed during the 1930s. These buildings span different architectural styles and purposes, but many came from the same Detroit firm that was designing factories and institutions throughout the industrial capital of Michigan. Look at the classical columns of Angel Hall.

[00:18:41]Look at the grand interior of Hill Auditorium. Look at the dignified stone exterior of the Clemens Library. Then look at Albert Khan's industrial work in Detroit and Dearborn. The buildings serve completely different purposes, but they came from the same architectural world. The same firm that helped Detroit manufacture automobiles helped Ann Arbor manufacture knowledge. Ann Arbor's academic skyline and Detroit's industrial skyline were shaped by many of the same hands. And Khan's connection to both cities would become even more important when America entered World War II. The next part of the story does not happen inside the city limits of Detroit or Ann Arbor. It happens between them.

[00:19:19]Near Ipsellani, east of Ann Arbor, Ford Motor Company constructed the Willowrun Bomber Plant. Designed by Elbert Khan, the enormous factory brought Detroit style automobile production to Washno County. This was not a small industrial facility. The plant contained approximately 5 million square ft of covered workspace. And its height, more than 42,000 people worked there.

[00:19:41]Approximately 1/3 of the workforce was female. Workers came from Detroit, from rural Michigan, and from communities across the United States. The assignment was to build the Consolidated B24 Liberated Bomber. A B24 contained hundreds of thousands of individual rivets and required an enormous number of parts. Aircraft had traditionally been built in smaller numbers using production methods very different from automobile assembly. Ford attempted to apply the scale, speed, and organization of Detroit's automobile industry to the military aircraft. At peak production, Willow Run completed a bomber approximately every 63 minutes. By the end of production in June of 1945, Ford counted 8,685 B24s associated with Willow Run. 6,792 complete aircraft and 1,893 knockdown kits shipped elsewhere for final assembly. Willow Run transformed the surrounding area. The sudden arrival of tens of thousands of workers created an enormous housing shortage. Temporary housing, dormitories, and the large Willowrun village development were constructed to accommodate workers and their families. Businesses expanded.

[00:20:52]Roads became more crowded. Schools and public services face new demands.

[00:20:57]Communities that had once been separated by miles of farmland became part of a growing industrial corridor. It is important to be geographically accurate.

[00:21:05]Willow Run was not Nan Arbor. It was associated primarily with Ipsilani township and the area around the Willow Run airport, but its workforce, infrastructure, and economic impact affected eastern county and the larger Ann Arbor Ipsellani region. Detroit's automobile industry had physically expanded [music] west. And when the war ended, the story did not simply stop. In 1946, at the request of the War Department, the University of Michigan established the Michigan Aeronautical Research Center at Willow Run. This operation was later renamed Willowrun Laboratories. Researchers worked on radar, optics, remote sensing, and other technologies connected to national defense and aviation. The laboratory became an important center for advanced scientific and engineering research.

[00:21:50]Think about the transformation. The Detroit automobile industry created a massive wartime production complex near Ipsilani. That complex helped bring workers, housing, [music] roads, and industrial infrastructure into the region. After the war, the University of Michigan established a major research operation at Willow Run.

[00:22:09]Industrial capacity became research capacity. The assembly line helped create the conditions for the laboratory. And the corridor between Detroit and Ann Arbor became more than a road between two cities. It became a regional network of factories, universities, airports, laboratories, and communities. Willow Run may be the clearest place where Detroit's industrial world and Ann Arbor's research world physically met. But the title of the story can only take us so far. Because Detroit did not spend 200 years giving while Ann Arbor simply received. The relationship moved in both directions. As the University of Michigan expanded, it educated physicians, engineers, attorneys, architects, educators, business leaders, and researchers who worked throughout Michigan. [music] Many of them built their careers in Detroit and its growing metropolitan region. Detroit industries needed technical knowledge. Detroit hospitals needed medical professionals. Detroit companies needed attorneys, chemists, engineers, and executives. The university helped supply them. [music] At the same time, Detroit companies funded research, recruited graduates, donated equipment, and supported university programs. The two cities became parts of the same regional system. That relationship became especially visible in 1959. Ford Motor Company donated slightly more than 200 acres and approximately $6.5 million to establish what was originally called the [music] Dearborn Center of the University of Michigan. The new campus offered cooperative programs in engineering and business that combined academic study with practical work experience. [snorts] It later became the University of Michigan Dearborn. Here was the relationship made physical again. A university founded in Detroit, [music] developed in Ann Arbor, and supported by Detroit Industrial Wealth established a new campus in Ford's hometown. Detroit helped build the university. The university helped educate Detroit's workforce. Detroit industry helped finance the university's growth. University research helped support new industries. It was never as simple as one city building the other.

[00:24:10]They were building each other. Now, we have to return to the central question.

[00:24:14]Did Detroit build Ann Arbor? Not completely. Ann Arbor was founded independently in 1824. It became the county seat before the university moved there. Local farmers, merchants, attorneys, craftsmen, and property owners created an economy before the arrival of college students. German [snorts and music] immigrants later became an important part of the city's population and culture. Local mills, furniture companies, manufacturers, shops, and service businesses provided jobs that had nothing to do with university. Ann Arbor developed its own civic institutions, neighborhoods, industries, and political culture. The university was also shaped by Ann Arbor.

[00:24:54]Local residents provided land. They constructed housing. They opened boarding houses, restaurants, and stores. They created the community in which students and professors lived. As the institution expanded, Ann Arbor residents debated its influence, benefited from its growth, and adapted to the pressure it placed on land, housing, and local government. The relationship was not passive. And Arbor did not merely receive a finished institution from Detroit. It helped turn a small territorial school into a major university. We also cannot tell the story honestly without remembering the indigenous people whose land made both cities and the university possible. Nor should we reduce two centuries of Ann Arbor history to a single outside influence. The title Detroit built Ann Arbor is not a claim of ownership. It is a claim of connection. Detroit founded the institution that became central to Ann Arbor's identity. Detroit citizens financed some of its earliest ambitions.

[00:25:50]A railroad beginning in Detroit connected Ann Arbor to larger [music] markets. Detroit philanthropist paid for university buildings and programs.

[00:25:58]Detroit architects designed major portions of the campus. Detroit automobile industry expanded west into county. and the industrial infrastructure created around Willow Run became part of the university's post-war research network. Remove all of that and Ann Arbor would still have existed, but it would not have become the same city that it is today. More than 200 years later, after the university began in Detroit, the relationship is still developing. [music] The University of Michigan is now constructing the University of Michigan Center for Innovation in downtown Detroit. The approximately 200,000q ft academic facility is currently expected to open in the fall of 2027. It will stand roughly 43 mi from the university's main Ann Arbor campus. Some people may describe that project as the University of Michigan's coming to Detroit.

[00:26:47]Historically, that's not quite right.

[00:26:49]The university is not coming to Detroit for the first time. It is expanding in the city where its story began. The first Detroit schoolhouse is gone. Bates Street itself was transformed as downtown Detroit was rebuilt. The small institution founded there in 1817 could not have imagined the modern university that now stretches across Ann Arbor, Dearbornne, [music] Flint, and Detroit. But the connection remains. Detroit gave the university its beginning. Ann Arbor gave it a permanent home. Detroit's merchants and industrialists helped finance its growth. Ann Arbor's professors and students expanded its influence.

[00:27:25]Detroit's architects shaped its campus.

[00:27:28]Ann Arbor's research helped shape the modern region. Detroit industry moved west toward Willow Run. University research moved east toward Detroit [music] companies, hospitals, and communities. These were never two completely separate stories. They were chapters in the same Michigan story. So, did Detroit build Ann Arbor? Here's the most historically accurate answer.

[00:27:49]Detroit did not build Ann Arbor alone, but Detroit helped build the institution that changed Ann Arbor more than anything else. It helped finance that institution. It helped connect it to the world. It gave him buildings, architects, scientific facilities, and industrial partnerships. And the relationship helped transform a small county seat beside the Hiron River into one of America's best known university communities. Ann Arbor in return helped educate generations of people who built Detroit companies, hospitals, law firms, cultural institutions, and neighborhoods. The cities are not opposites. They are not isolated rivals.

[00:28:28]They are partners whose histories have been connected for more than two centuries. The evidence is still standing. [music] You can see it inside the Detroit Observatory. You can see it in Rackman's stone walls. You can see it in the columns of Angel Hall. You can see it in Albert Khan's architecture.

[00:28:44]You can see it at Willow Run. And you can see it in the new connections still being built between downtown Detroit and Ann Arbor today. The next time someone tells you that Detroit and Ann Arbor have nothing in common, remind them of one simple fact. Before the University of Michigan belonged to Ann Arbor, its story began in Detroit. Once that university moved west, the two cities never stopped building each other. I'm Chris Hubble. This is history loves company. Every city has a story. Let's discover the next one.