museum

Join in the Sesquincentennial celebration of the Washtenaw County Historical Society on Saturday, June 16th, 2-4 p.m. at the Museum on Main Street. They’ll be dedicating a 1857 American flag and hosting a garden party so come stroll through the beautiful grounds and take a tour of the Sesquincentennial Exhibit inside the Museum.

Does anyone have a picture of the Ann Arbor Buggy Factory in its early days before the storefront was added?

The only photo of it that I know of it, pre- the George Brigham show window addition, is a small one, printed on a publication of the Ann Arbor Cooperative Society (the building was the Ann Arbor Co-op store then). This is with other papers of the co-op that my dad donated to the Bentley Library in the 1950s.

-- Wystan Stevens

aapd

The Ann Arbor District library's web site is now home to an online pictorial exhibit and history of the Ann Arbor Police Department. The exhibit, one of four local history collections on the library's research page, features a large assemblage of images of the police department and its officers, police vehicles, artifacts and documents. The pictorial collection is accompanied by the complete text of Lieutenant Michael Logghe's True Crimes and the History of the Ann Arbor Police Department which traces the history of the department from its beginnings in the 1870s to the late 1990s. The narrative is filled with fascinating accounts of the organization, development, and controversial issues which faced the department, as well as inside information on the large array of major criminal investigations which have been part of that history, such as the 1908 student riot at the Star Theater, the murder and aftermath of Officer Clifford Stang in 1935, the student unrest of the 1960s and and 1970s, the shocking co-ed murders, and numerous others.

Reference Questions of Local Interest:

Who Designed the Viaduct (Bridge, Tunnel) and When Was It Built?

Frederick Blackburn Pelham (Fred Pelham), according to an Ann Arbor News article on February 22, 2000 (page D-1), "designed 18 to 20 bridges for the Michigan Central line between Detroit and Chicago."

"Amtrak passengers whiz over two of them in Dexter. One over Dexter-Pinckney Road at the village edge is familiar to drivers who must slow down to pass under it. The narrow opening creates a bottleneck for today's heavy auto traffic and has sparked debate about possible traffic rerouting." The bridge was built in 1890.