is Hash Bash, held on the first Saturday of
April, ostensibly in support of the reform
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 Dis-
trict 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
of marijuana laws. It has been celebrated
since 1971.
A person from Ann Arbor is called an “Ann
Arborite”, and many long-time residents
call themselves “townies”. The city itself
is often called A² (“A-squared”) or A2 (“A
two”), and, less commonly, Tree Town.
Recently, some youths have taken to
calling Ann Arbor Ace Deuce or simply
The Deuce. With tongue-in-cheek refer-
ence 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 Wiscon-
sin 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 aca-
demic degree MI, a misunderstanding of
the abbreviation for Michigan.
Customer Service Center
(Located diagonally across the street from City Hall)
City Center Building, 1st Floor
220 East Huron
Ann Arbor, MI 48104 Welcome to
Ann Arbor
(734) 994-2700
Fax: (734) 994-1765
E-mail: customerservice@a2gov.org

Ann Arbor, Michigan
Ann Arbor is a city in the U.S. state of
Michigan and the county seat of Washt-
enaw 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 ar-
rival 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.
During 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 learn-
ing 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, includ-
ing 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 grap-
pling with the effects of sharply rising land
values and gentrification, as well as urban
sprawl stretching far into the outlying
countryside.
Many Ann Arbor cultural attractions and
events are sponsored by the University
of Michigan. Several performing arts
groups and facilities are on the univer-
sity’s campus, as are museums dedicated
to art, archaeology, and natural history
and sciences (see Museums at the Uni-
versity 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 Michi-
gan’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 featur-
ing 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