Ann Arbor
During Many Ann Arbor cultural attractions and
Ann Arbor is a city in the U.S. state of Michigan
and the county seat of Washtenaw County.
It is the state’s seventh largest city with a
population of 114,024 as of the 2000 Census,
of which 36,892 (32%) are university or college
students. The city, which is part of the Detroit-
Ann Arbor-Flint, MI CSA, is named after the
spouses of the city’s founders and for the
stands of trees in the area.
Ann Arbor was founded in January 1824 by
John Allen and Elisha Rumsey, both of whom
were land speculators. On May 25, 1824,
the town plot was registered with Wayne
County as “Annarbour”. The city became the
seat of Washtenaw County in 1827, and was
incorporated as a village in 1833. The town
became a regional transportation hub in
1839 with the arrival of the Michigan Central
Railroad, and was chartered as a city in 1851.
During the 1960s and 1970s, the city gained a
reputation as a center for liberal politics.
the 20th century, the economy of Ann Arbor
underwent a gradual shift from a manufacturing
base to a service and technology base, which
accelerated in the 1970s and 1980s.
Ann Arbor is home to the University of Michigan,
established in 1837. As the dominant institution
of higher learning in the city and one of the top
public universities in the world, the university
provides Ann Arbor with a distinct college-town
atmosphere. The university shapes Ann Arbor’s
economy significantly as it employs about 30,000
workers, including about 7,500 in the medical
center. The city’s economy is also centered on
high-technology, with several companies drawn
to the area by the university’s research and
development money, and by its graduates. On
the other hand, Ann Arbor has increasingly
found itself grappling with the effects of sharply
rising land values and gentrification, as well as
urban sprawl stretching far into the outlying
countryside.
events are sponsored by the University of
Michigan. Several performing arts groups and
facilities are on the university’s campus, as
are museums dedicated to art, archaeology,
and natural history and sciences (see
Museums at the University of Michigan).
Regional and local performing arts groups not
associated with the university include the Ann
Arbor Civic Theatre; the Arbor Opera Theater;
the Ann Arbor Symphony Orchestra; the Ann
Arbor Ballet Theater; the Ann Arbor Civic
Ballet (established in 1954 as Michigan’s first
chartered ballet company); and Performance
Network, which operates a downtown theater
frequently offering new or nontraditional
plays.
The Ann Arbor Hands-On Museum, located
in a renovated and expanded historic
downtown fire station, contains more than
250 interactive exhibits featuring science and
technology. Multiple art galleries exist in the
city, notably in the downtown area and around
the University of Michigan campus. Aside from a
large restaurant scene in the Main Street, South
State Street, and South University Avenue areas,
Ann Arbor ranks first among U.S. cities in the
number of booksellers and books sold per capita.
The Ann Arbor District Library maintains four
branch outlets in addition to its main downtown
building; in 2008 a new branch building replaced
the branch located in Plymouth Mall. This new
branch is called the Traverwood Branch, and
opened on June 30, 2008. The city is also home
to the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library.
Sunday Morning by Carl Milles in Ann Arbor
Several annual events – many of them centered
on performing and visual arts – draw visitors
to Ann Arbor. One such event is the Ann Arbor
Art Fairs, a set of four concurrent juried fairs
held on downtown streets, which began in 1960.
Scheduled on Wednesday through Saturday in
the third week of July, the fairs draw upward
of half a million visitors. One event that is
not related to visual and performing arts is
Hash Bash, held on the first Saturday of
April, ostensibly in support of the reform of
Customer Service Center
marijuana laws. It has been celebrated since (Located diagonally across the street from City
1971. Hall)
City Center Building, 1st Floor
A person from Ann Arbor is called an “Ann 220 East Huron
Arborite”, and many long-time residents call Ann Arbor, MI 48104
themselves “townies”. The city itself is often (734) 994-2700
called A² (“A-squared”) or A2 (“A two”), and, Fax: (734) 994-1765
less commonly, Tree Town. Recently, some E-mail: customerservice@a2gov.org
youths have taken to calling Ann Arbor Ace
Deuce or simply The Deuce. With tongue-in-
cheek reference to the city’s liberal political
leanings, some occasionally refer to Ann
Arbor as The People’s Republic of Ann Arbor
or 25 square miles surrounded by reality, the
latter phrase being adapted from Wisconsin
Governor Lee Dreyfus’s description of
Madison, Wisconsin. Ann Arbor sometimes
appears on citation indexes as an author,
instead of a location, often with the academic
degree MI, a misunderstanding of the
abbreviation for Michigan.