Anson Brown and Early Lower Town

Anson Brown and Early Lower Town. . New York native Anson Brown erected his Exchange Block on Broadway in 1831-32 (see map). He was determined to make this side of the river, Lower Town, the center of Ann Arbor. Where the Potawatomi Trail crossed the Huron River, a wooden bridge had been built in 1828 to carry traffic from Detroit, Plymouth, and Pontiac. Brown and his partners, Edward L. Fuller and Dwight Kellogg, had bought river power rights in 1829 "including the water privilege or right to dig a canal or race" from an upstream dam to power a grist mill and a saw mill north of the bridge., The partners laid out streets with New York City names: Broadway, Maiden Lane, Canal, and Wall. By 1832 Brown and his wife Desire, sister of his partner Edward L.. his partner d Fuller, had built a home on a bluff overlooking his store and office in the I a Exchange Block Block. The next year Brown captured the appointment of postmaster, angering the upper village "Hill-Toppers" who then had to come to his store to get their mail. At the same time, Brown was working to convince federal authorities to cut a northern route from Detroit to Chicago through Lower Town. To accommodate the expected traffic, Brown and Fuller built the Washtenaw House, a thirty-two-room hotel with bar and ballroom, which fit well into Brown's transportation hopes., Brown's ambitious dreams died with him in the cholera epidemic of 1834. A "Hill-Topper" quickly replaced him as postmaster, and the post office moved back up the hill. Brown's widow and heir, Desire, married Dr. Caleb Ormsby two years later, and they, along with her brother Edward Fuller, gradually sold off Anson's extensive Lower Town properties., The arrival of the railroad on the other side of the river in 1839, the opening of the University of Michigan in the upper village in n 1841, and failure to achieve a Lower Town route to Chicago worked together to deny realization of Anson Brown's hopes for the future., Lower Town, however, survived as a distinct neighborhood with its own school,industry, and commercial center. Workers and business owners lived in homes that still stand on Broadway, Pontiac, and Traver. The area was incorporated into Ann Arbor as the Fifth Ward in 1861., Anson Brown's Exchange Block remains the oldest surviving commercial building in Ann Arbor., The 1908 postcard photo below shows a combination of brick buildings constructed across Broadway from the Exchange Block in the 1830s. They came. to be known together as "The Huron Block." The two-story structure on the far right was erected in 1831 by Asa Smith for his home and cabinet shop. In 1834-35, a few steps north, Josiah Beckley built two three-story step-gabled buildings that gave the Huron Block its name. Josiah had a general store on the first floor. Upstairs, from 1841 to 1847, Josiah's brother Guy Beckley published an influential statewide newspaper, the Signal of Liberty, that called for the abolition of slavery. Over time the block housed grocery, general and dry goods stores, saloons, a cobbler, a broom factory, a cooper, a hatter, milliners, lawyers, physicians, and insurance agents. One of Ann Arbor's earliest newspapers, the Argus, began publishing there in 1835. A meat market was located at the corner of Wall Street for over a century. Small businesses and residents, later U-M students, occupied the upper stories. Wooden sidewalks and cobblestone gutters edged the dirt street. The badly neglected block was demolished in 1959.