Ann Arbor Hills
Where Michigan's architecture faculty built for each other — Brigham, Metcalf and Osler houses on wooded ravine lots east of the Arboretum
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About Ann Arbor Hills
Ann Arbor Hills occupies the rolling, wooded ground east of Nichols Arboretum, between Geddes and Washtenaw, and it holds the densest concentration of significant modern residential architecture in the city. Between 1950 and 1970, architecture professors at the University of Michigan designed houses here for their colleagues and for other professionals — a rare circumstance in which the people commissioning the work and the people designing it knew each other, and cared more about the building than about resale.
The result is a neighborhood where the architect's name is a meaningful part of what a house is. Alongside the modern work sit traditional houses — Georgians, Tudors, and Colonials from the 1920s onward — on lots that frequently run half an acre or more, heavily treed, cut by ravines and slopes that the better houses were sited to take advantage of rather than flatten. It is all minutes from Central Campus and the medical center.
- —Fifteen Robert Metcalf houses — more of his work than any other Ann Arbor neighborhood
- —George Brigham's flat roofs, wide eaves and glass, from a 29-year Michigan teaching career
- —David Osler's firm, founded 1958, collected more than 22 AIA awards
- —Houses sited to ravines and slopes rather than dropped onto graded lots
- —Nichols Arboretum and its 1922 Upjohn Peony Garden at the neighborhood's edge
The architects
Three names form the core of the neighborhood's modern legacy, and they are worth knowing by sight. George B. Brigham (1889–1977) taught at Michigan for twenty-nine years beginning in 1930 and built more than thirty modernist residences around the area. His houses are recognizable: large windows, warm wood finishes, flat roofs with wide eaves, and patios placed to pull living space outdoors.
Robert Metcalf trained at Michigan and worked as head draftsman in Brigham's office before opening his own practice in 1952. Local inventories credit him with 68 houses in Ann Arbor — more residential work than any other local modern architect — and a notable share of them stand in Ann Arbor Hills, including his own house on Arlington Boulevard. Metcalf's houses are known for detailing and for siting: he placed buildings to take the light and the view a particular lot actually offered, rather than dropping a plan onto it.
David Osler, an Ann Arbor native, founded his firm in 1958 and took a deliberately different approach — he was known for treating each commission fresh rather than working a signature style, and his firm collected more than twenty-two AIA awards. Robert Pond and Alden Dow also built in the area; Dow's work on campus includes the Fleming Administration Building. The University of Michigan Museum of Art recognized this circle directly with its Three Architects exhibitions, showing Osler from December 2013 to March 2014 and Metcalf from April to July 2014, followed by a symposium that October.
One name over eleven plats
"Ann Arbor Hills" is a collective name rather than a single subdivision, and that trips buyers up. The area runs about 1.4 square miles — bounded by Geddes Avenue on the north, Washtenaw Avenue on the south, Oxford Road on the west, and Huron Parkway on the east — and within it sit a series of separately platted neighborhoods: Baldwins Eastern, Vinewood, Heatheridge, Tuomy Woods, Devonshire Heights, Tuomy Washtenaw Hills, Lawry Hills, Tuomy Farm, Riverside Hills, Hunting Valley, and Mallory Hills among them.
Unlike a subdivision built out on a developer's schedule, this ground filled in organically across several decades beginning largely in the 1920s and 1930s, with the plats laid out to follow the existing landscape rather than flatten it. That is why the streets bend the way they do, why lot sizes and shapes vary so much from one pocket to the next, and why two houses a few blocks apart can sit in quite different markets. Anyone comparing sales here should know which plat a house is actually in, not just that it carries the Ann Arbor Hills name.
The homes
The neighborhood is not exclusively modern, and buyers should not arrive expecting it to be. Traditional houses from the 1920s onward — Georgians, Tudors, Colonials — stand alongside the postwar architect-designed work, and both benefit from the same thing: land. Lots here are large by city standards, frequently half an acre or more, with mature canopy and enough grade that houses sit well back and well apart from one another.
The modern houses share a set of preoccupations more than a look. Glass is used generously and placed deliberately. Roofs are often flat or low-pitched with deep overhangs. Materials run to warm woods and masonry rather than applied ornament. And siting is treated as part of the design rather than a constraint on it — which is why so many of these houses turn away from the street and open toward a ravine or a stand of trees.
That is also the source of their fragility as a housing stock. A mid-century house that has been renovated without sympathy loses most of what made it valuable, and the difference between a careful restoration and a gut job is enormous here in a way it is not in a conventional neighborhood. The best-preserved examples have been updated for modern systems and comfort while keeping the plan, the glazing, and the material palette intact.
Nichols Arboretum
The neighborhood's western edge is Nichols Arboretum — 123 acres owned jointly by the City of Ann Arbor and the University of Michigan and managed by the university, with the Huron River separating a northern section of floodplain woods from the main body. It was laid out in 1907 by O. C. Simonds, a landscape designer who studied at Michigan and whose other work includes parts of Chicago's park system and Graceland Cemetery.
Its best-known feature is the W. E. Upjohn Peony Garden. The collection was given by William Erastus Upjohn, founder of the Upjohn pharmaceutical company, along with other peony enthusiasts; it was planted in 1922 and opened to visitors five years later. It remains one of the largest heirloom peony collections in North America, and for a few weeks each spring it draws people from well outside the city.
Beyond the Arb, the Huron River corridor continues east through Gallup Park and the Furstenberg Nature Area, adding riverfront trails, paddling, and restored prairie and woodland within a short distance of the neighborhood.
Schools
Ann Arbor Hills is served by Ann Arbor Public Schools, with Angell Elementary, Tappan Middle School, and Huron High School serving the area.
Getting around
The location is a substantial part of why the neighborhood developed as it did. Central Campus, Michigan Medicine, and the VA hospital are all a few minutes away, which is precisely why university faculty and physicians were the original clients for these houses. Geddes and Washtenaw carry local traffic, and US-23 is close for trips east, putting Detroit Metro Airport around half an hour out.
Inside the neighborhood, the streets wind with the terrain rather than running a grid, which keeps through traffic out and is one of the reasons the place feels considerably more remote than it is.
Buying or selling in Ann Arbor Hills
Provenance is a real component of value here, and it is worth establishing rather than assuming. If a house is presented as architect-designed, find out by whom, in what year, and whether original drawings survive — they often do, and they matter both for valuation and for any future work. A documented Metcalf, Brigham, or Osler house occupies a different position in the market than a similar-sized house of the same era without that attribution, and buyers who care about this care about it a great deal.
The condition questions are specific to the architecture rather than generic. Flat and low-pitched roofs with deep overhangs need to have been maintained properly and reroofed with the right system. Large expanses of original single-glazed glass are beautiful and thermally expensive, and replacing them sympathetically is a specialist job. Ravine and slope lots raise drainage, grading, and foundation questions that a flat-lot inspection will not surface. And on any house of this vintage, the mechanical systems have been through at least one full replacement cycle, sometimes two.
On comparable sales, this neighborhood resists averages more than most in the city. Lot size, topography, architectural attribution, and the quality of past renovation all move value independently, and a house that has been unsympathetically remodeled can sit well below a smaller one that has been left intact. For sellers, that cuts in a clear direction: the story of the house — architect, year, what is original, what has been restored and by whom — is the marketing, and it reaches a specific and motivated audience. Presenting an architect-designed house as a generic listing with a bedroom count leaves money on the table and, frequently, finds the wrong buyer.
Not to be confused with
Community details reflect public records and local knowledge and can change — always verify what matters to your purchase. Explore more of Ann Arbor's neighborhoods, or browse active listings.