Kerrytown
A market district built out of lumber yards and grain warehouses — named for a County Kerry grandmother, anchored by a WPA market shed from 1938
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About Kerrytown
Kerrytown occupies the blocks just north of downtown Ann Arbor, around the Ann Arbor Farmers Market at 315 Detroit Street. For most of the nineteenth century this was the city's working end — lumber, warehousing, feed, and grain — and the district's character today comes directly from that. The brick buildings at Fourth and Detroit that now hold shops and a delicatessen were built for trade, and their exposed beams and heavy timber are not a decorative choice.
The residential side overlaps the Old Fourth Ward, one of the first residential areas in Ann Arbor and a locally designated historic district since 1983. So a Kerrytown address can mean a Victorian on a protected street, a brick rowhouse, a converted loft, or one of a small number of newer condominiums — four quite different purchases within a few blocks of one another, all of them close to the market.
- —Named by a local lawyer for his mother-in-law, from County Kerry, Ireland
- —Warehouse and grain buildings from 1874, converted to shops beginning in the 1970s
- —Michigan's second continuously operating farmers market, running since May 1919
- —A 124-stall market shed built by the WPA between 1938 and 1940
- —Inside the Old Fourth Ward Historic District, locally designated in 1983
Where the name came from
Kerrytown is a relatively recent name for a very old place. According to Ann Arbor historian Wystan Stevens, it was coined by the late Ann Arbor lawyer Art Carpenter, who named the district for his mother-in-law, Marie O'Leary, a native of County Kerry, Ireland.
The buildings it names are considerably older. Three historic structures at the district's core — the oldest built in 1874 — housed the working trades of the nineteenth-century city: lumber, warehousing, feed and grain. Beginning in the 1970s those buildings, along with the adjacent three-story Godfrey Moving and Storage building on North Fourth Avenue, were converted into what is now Kerrytown Market & Shops at the corner of Fourth and Detroit.
That conversion is why the district reads the way it does. Rather than clearing a warehouse block and building a shopping center, someone reused the bones — and fifty years on, the timber, the brick, and the awkward interior geometry are exactly what gives Kerrytown a texture that newer retail cannot manufacture.
The Farmers Market
The market began in May 1919 as a curb market, organized by the Community Federation — a coalition of women's organizations — with an explicitly practical goal: cut out the middleman and bring food costs down. It is the second continuously operating farmers market in Michigan, and it has been at its Detroit Street site since the following decade.
The building most people picture came later. Between 1938 and 1940 the federal Works Progress Administration built the present 124-stall market shed — a Depression-era public works project that has outlived the program that funded it by nearly ninety years and still does exactly the job it was built for.
For a household living within a few blocks, the market is less an attraction than an operating part of the week. It runs multiple days across the growing season, with produce, flowers, bread, and makers, and it sets the rhythm of the district around it. The People's Food Co-op adds a neighborhood grocery, and Zingerman's Delicatessen sits at the district's edge drawing visitors from well outside the city.
The Old Fourth Ward
Much of Kerrytown's housing sits inside the Old Fourth Ward Historic District, which the city adopted in 1983. It covers the area bounded roughly by Glen Avenue, Huron Street, Fifth Avenue, Detroit Street, and the Huron River, and it holds what is generally regarded as Ann Arbor's most substantial collection of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century residential architecture — Greek Revival, Gothic Revival, Italianate, Queen Anne, Shingle style, and Colonial Revival, often within a block of each other.
The practical consequence matters more than the stylistic one. This is a local historic district, not merely a designation of honor: exterior work on properties within it is subject to the city's historic district review process. Windows, siding, porches, roofing, and additions are all review questions rather than purely matters of an owner's taste and budget. Anyone buying inside the district should establish what work has been done, whether it went through review, and what any planned changes would require — before an offer, and ideally in conversation with the city's historic preservation staff.
The homes
Four distinct kinds of housing share the district. There are preserved Victorians and Italianates on the Old Fourth Ward's streets, most dating from the mid-1800s onward. There are brick rowhouses and townhomes. There are industrial loft conversions, a direct legacy of the warehouse stock. And there is a limited number of newer boutique condominiums built as infill.
They do not trade as one market. A protected single-family Victorian under design review and a loft condominium with an association are entirely different purchases, with different obligations, different buyers, and different comparable sales. The first question about any Kerrytown listing is which of the four it actually is.
The older housing asks what nineteenth-century housing asks: foundation and sill condition, the roof, the sewer lateral, electrical service and any remaining knob-and-tube, heating systems, and the state of original windows and millwork. Parking generally is worth checking for any specific address; this district was platted long before anyone needed to store a car.
Schools
Kerrytown is served by Ann Arbor Public Schools, with the assigned elementary, middle and high school set by address. Community High School sits in the district a few blocks away and admits by lottery rather than by attendance area; it is not the default high school for a Kerrytown house, and proximity to the building does not confer a place in it.
Getting around
Kerrytown sits directly north of downtown, which puts Main Street, the State Street district, and the University's Central Campus and medical center each a short distance away. The Blake Transit Center is downtown, and M-14 and US-23 are close for regional trips, with Detroit Metro Airport roughly forty minutes out.
Just north, the Huron River corridor opens up — Argo Park, the Argo Cascades, and the border-to-border trail put paddling and riverfront paths within easy reach. It is an unusual pairing for a city this size: a nineteenth-century market district with a river greenway immediately behind it.
Buying or selling in Kerrytown
Two things govern value here, and both are structural rather than cosmetic. The first is which of the district's four housing types a property is — protected Victorian, rowhouse, loft conversion, or newer condominium — because they carry different obligations and attract different buyers. The second is whether a property sits inside the Old Fourth Ward Historic District, since that determines whether exterior work runs through review. Comparable sales that ignore either distinction will produce a number that does not hold.
For buyers, do the homework that matches the property type. On a historic single-family house, that means the district's review requirements plus the full condition review any house of that age deserves. In both cases, establish the parking situation concretely rather than assuming, because the answer varies block to block in a district laid out in the 1800s.
For sellers, the district's own history is the strongest material available and most listings never use it. The buyer choosing Kerrytown is choosing a place with a market that has run since 1919, a WPA shed from 1938 still in daily use, warehouse buildings from 1874 turned into shops rather than demolished, and a protected streetscape that will look much the same in twenty years because the ordinance says so. Naming what is original in the house, what has been through review, and what is actually within a few blocks reaches that buyer far more effectively than a bedroom count does.
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.