I asked a neighbor further south on S. Maple if
she could tell me what the general neighborhood was like before I came.
She and her husband contributed the following:
David Singer says:
I moved to Ann Arbor in 1958, and in 1960 decided with my first wife to shift from renting to buying. My wife and I looked around and found this tiny farmhouse in 2.25 acres of cornfield. It was very inexpensive, needed a lot of work, could be bought on a land contract, and was less that 3 miles from the campus, although outside the city limits. The house, while small, seemed to be a very solid piece of old-fashioned construction. Shortly after moving in, we began serious renovations.
By the mid-60s we had added a raised and screened back deck. With two growing children and the cost of housing in AA (even then!), we decided to expand rather than to move, and began adding and changing. Much of the early work, such as adding a sunroom to the south exposure, increasing closet space and so forth, was done by myself and my students, although I did hire a contractor to build a large room connecting the previously free-standing garage to the house.
In the early 60s, we had bought and planted several hundred evergreen seedings, of which scores have survived to become large adults. We reoriented the house, turning the original living room into a bedroom, adding two doors to the outdoors, upgrading windows, and so on.
Throughout this time, Maple Road was an "improved" road, graveled and unlined except by two rows of massive maples. In the 1980s, the City claimed all its setbacks, chopped down all the trees, and widened and paved the road.
Diane Macaulay says:
In the 1990s, I began stripping 50 years of paint off the original woodwork and wallpaper off the walls, replacing the remaining original windows, and turning the "yard" from impenetrable woods of buckthorn and honey suckle back into the light woods and prairies of native plants. This process continues. We removed the original oil tank and had the site treated and inspected, and switched to gas heating. In the first decade of this century (yikes, this sounds like HISTORY), we concluded our final expansion, removing half the roof and turning the unfinished attic into sitting room, bedroom, and a study.
We are here to stay.
From what I can tell, our neighborhood was "in the
country" in the 1960's. Maple Meadows was built in 1971,
but the area
was still sparsely developed at that time. In spite of recent
developments, I still look out at woods on three sides of my
house.
Three things have happened since I moved here that
are
worth adding. Shortly after I moved in, the West Liberty
Road Construction project began and seemed to last a long, long
time.
The road in front of my house was dug up and completely rebuilt.
The sidewalk used to end at the west end of my property; it was
extended westward to the I-94 bridge. The road was widened, sewer
and water connections were added, and bicycle lanes and curbs
installed.
The second thing was the proposed rezoning of the
northern portion of 775 S. Maple (the Discovery Center site). Click here to view the
timeline of this event.
And the third is the ongoing construction of the West
Towne
Condominium development. There is a 2-acre wetland on this site,
with peepers in the spring, mallard ducks, and geese. Click
here
to view the continuing timeline for this project.
In a letter stamped February 18, 1977, to
the Scio Township Tax Review Board, Robert McConnell (who used to live
at 2536 W. Liberty (the West Towne site) wrote, "I own one and
one half
acres at 2536 W. Liberty Rd., A2 48103. When I first
bought this property in 1949 there was a 'swamp hole,' to the
back or
north of my property, which would rise or fall depending on the season
of the year, and it never gave me any real problem. Now as this
area, to the north of me and the 'swamp hole' has been developed and
fill dumped in around the water and along Maple Rd., there is a
flooding, of a portion of my property, which stays all year."
To see aerial views from 1947 on the left and 2005 on
the right and
compare the wetland area click
here. The property is outlined in red.
Of course, you will also notice the evolution from
sparsely developed farmland pre I-94 to the 2005 picture of suburbia.
Note that the zoning suggested in the 1995 West Area Plan for neither the 775 S. Maple site nor the West Towne Condominium site was followed. Recall that the West Area Plan recommended zoning office, research, or light industrial for the West Towne site, which is now zoned R4B, multifamily residential, and that the recommendation for the 775 S. Maple site was office, and the northern half of the parcel is still zoned C-1, commercial. Since the West Area Plan is now 13 years old, perhaps a revision is in order.