Old Fourth Ward
Ann Arbor's oldest residential ground — Greek Revival, Italianate and Queen Anne houses on the blocks between Huron Street and the Huron River, protected as a city historic district since 1983
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About Old Fourth Ward
The Old Fourth Ward is the neighborhood directly north and east of downtown Ann Arbor, running from Huron Street north to the Huron River and from Detroit Street and Fifth Avenue east to Glen Avenue, where the University of Michigan's medical campus begins. The name records a political boundary that no longer exists: this ground was once the city's Fourth Ward, and today the whole of it sits inside the First Ward. What survived the redistricting is the housing, which the Ann Arbor District Library calls the city's most impressive collection of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century residential buildings, and a city historic district adopted in 1983 that keeps it that way.
It is also the neighborhood most often confused with its neighbors. Kerrytown — the market district bounded by Main, Depot, Division and Huron — laps against its western edge along Detroit Street, and the Farmers Market, Zingerman's and the old Treasure Mart building sit right on that seam. Water Hill is a different neighborhood entirely, northwest of downtown and bounded by Miller, Brooks, Sunset and the Ann Arbor Railroad tracks. The Old Fourth Ward proper is the residential grid east of those: Ann, Catherine and Kingsley, crossed by Division, State and Elizabeth, with churches on the corners and Community High School in the middle. It suits a buyer who wants to walk to the courthouse, the hospital and Central Campus and is prepared to own a century-and-a-half-old house under historic district review, and it is a poor fit for anyone who wants a modern floor plan or a free hand with the exterior.
If you are weighing this against Kerrytown or the Old West Side, ask me to walk the blocks with you — the differences are legible on foot.
- —The city's former Fourth Ward, now entirely inside the First Ward — the name outlived the boundary
- —Ann Street between Division and State is Ann Arbor's only residential block made up entirely of nineteenth-century buildings
- —City historic district since 1983; the district survey and final report were updated in 2024
- —The Wilson-Wahr house at 126 North Division carries an 1843 temple front detailed after the Temple of Artemis Agrotera
- —St. Andrew's (consecrated 1869) and St. Thomas the Apostle (dedicated 1899) stand inside the neighborhood; the 1886 Michigan Central depot marks its northern edge
- —Community High School occupies the 1922 Jones School building and admits ninth graders by lottery
From the Fourth Ward to the Old Fourth Ward
The name is a fossil of Ann Arbor's original ward map, which used Huron Street as one of its dividing lines. The Fourth Ward was the ground between Glen Avenue, Huron Street, Fifth Avenue, Detroit Street and the river, and it was, from the 1820s through the late nineteenth century, where a good share of the town's prominent citizens built. Silas Douglass, professor and mayor, put up a Gothic Revival house on East Huron Street in 1848 that is credited as the first architect-designed home in the city. Judge Robert S. Wilson built the temple-fronted Greek Revival house at Division and Ann whose 1843 temple front takes its details from the Temple of Artemis Agrotera in Athens; bookseller George Wahr bought it at auction in 1892, and the Wahr-Sallade family held it for 110 years before selling in 2002.
Ann Street tells the story in one block. From the county courthouse east, Greek Revival houses once stood at successive corners — a bank president at Fourth, an attorney at Fifth, the judge at Division, and a founder of the U-M medical school at State — and the block of Ann between Division and State remains the only residential block in Ann Arbor made up entirely of nineteenth-century buildings. The city recognized that with two separate ordinances: one creating the Ann Street Historic Block, and one creating the Old Fourth Ward Historic District, adopted in 1983. The district's survey and final report were updated in 2024.
The neighborhood association, formed in the early 1980s by residents of the new district, draws its map a little tighter than the district — Huron on the south, Glen on the east, High Street on the north, Detroit Street on the west — and describes its purpose as protecting the residential character of the city's oldest neighborhood. That word, residential, is the tension here: much of the Old Fourth Ward is student-rented today, in duplexes and apartments carved from nineteenth-century houses.
The homes
The range of styles is wider here than anywhere else in the city: Greek Revival, Gothic Revival, Italianate, Queen Anne, Shingle style and Colonial Revival houses, plus a run of early twentieth-century apartment buildings and the stone churches. The city's own guide to historic building styles points to dated examples inside or at the edge of the district — the Schumacher House at 506 East Kingsley from 1891 and the Wahr house at 120 North Division from 1894 for the Queen Anne work, and the 1835 and 1843 phases of the Wilson-Wahr house at 126 North Division for the Greek Revival. The bulk of the building stock is nineteenth and early twentieth century; Jones School went up on North Division in 1922.
What that means in practice is that almost nothing here is one thing. A house that reads as an 1850s Italianate from the sidewalk may have an 1890s rear wing, a 1920s porch enclosure and a 1970s conversion into two or three units, each layer with its own wiring, plumbing and structural logic. Original material — heavy trim, tall windows, plaster, wide-board floors — survives at a high rate because the historic district has blocked wholesale replacement since 1983, but the systems behind that material are whatever the last several owners left. Rental history matters too: a house that has been student housing for forty years has been used harder than one held by a single family, and the difference shows in stairs, floors and basements.
The other thing to understand before you look at a single listing is that this is a locally designated historic district, and the city regulates all exterior work. Replacing a roof, replacing a non-original door, rebuilding a porch, adding a fence, deck or patio — each requires a Certificate of Appropriateness from the Historic District Commission. Minor work that does not disturb historic material can be approved by staff; anything larger goes to the full Commission, and approval means the work meets the Secretary of the Interior's Standards for Rehabilitation. That process is the reason the neighborhood still looks like itself. It is also a schedule and a budget item, and I want buyers to know it before they fall for a porch.
Churches, the depot and the corners
Three stone buildings anchor the neighborhood's skyline. St. Andrew's Episcopal Church, at the northeast corner of Division and Catherine, is the city's oldest operating church — the parish organized in 1827, three years after Ann Arbor was founded — and its fieldstone English Gothic Revival building was designed by Detroit architect Gordon Lloyd, cornerstone laid June 1868, consecrated November 10, 1869, with the tower finished in 1903. St. Thomas the Apostle, at East Kingsley and Elizabeth, is Spier & Rohns' Richardsonian Romanesque granite church: fundraising began in 1896, the cornerstone was laid in 1897 and the church was dedicated in 1899, and its 125-foot bell tower was the tallest in the city until 1936. The same firm designed the Michigan Central Railroad depot at 401 Depot Street in 1886, at the neighborhood's northern edge where the streets drop toward the tracks and the river. It served passengers for the better part of a century, became the Gandy Dancer restaurant in 1970, and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1975.
The Detroit Street edge is where the Old Fourth Ward and Kerrytown blur, and the landmarks there are the ones visitors know. The Ann Arbor Farmers Market, founded in 1919 on the courthouse square, has been at 315 Detroit Street since 1930; the Works Progress Administration built the present 124-stall shed between 1938 and 1940, and it runs Saturdays year-round and Wednesdays from May through December. Zingerman's Delicatessen opened in March 1982 at 422 Detroit Street. Up the street, John G. Miller's old brick planing mill at 529 Detroit became the Treasure Mart in 1960, when Grace Bigby and Demaris Cash opened a consignment shop there.
Parks and the river
The Huron River is the neighborhood's northern boundary, and the parks are on it rather than in it. The Old Fourth Ward has no large interior park; what it has is a short walk to the river valley. Wheeler Park, just under two acres at the Kerrytown end, holds a playground, a basketball court, a small paved walking loop, a picnic shelter and an open field, and sits across the street from the Allen Creek Berm Tunnel, which passes under the railroad to join the Border-to-Border Trail at Argo Dam and Argo Park & Nature Area. Riverside Park runs fifteen acres along the river from Maiden Lane to Broadway just north of downtown, and the two Broadway bridges — one over Depot Street and the tracks, one over the river — connect the depot end of the neighborhood to it and to the Broadway Dog Park.
The practical effect is that a household on Kingsley or Catherine can be on the river trail in a few minutes on foot, through the tunnel to Argo upstream, or over the Broadway bridges to Riverside downstream. That is a real asset for a neighborhood whose own lots are small and whose yards are often shared between units.
Schools
The Old Fourth Ward is served by Ann Arbor Public Schools, and assignment is set by address. The school inside the neighborhood is the one most people ask about, and it is not an assigned school: Community High School at 401 North Division is a school of choice that admits ninth graders by lottery, with 132 seats offered in the incoming-class drawing and a waitlist behind them. Living across the street confers no advantage.
The building itself is worth knowing. It opened in 1922 as Jones Elementary School, replacing the earlier Elisha Jones School after bond issues in 1920 and 1922. Jones closed in 1965 as part of the district's redistricting to end racial segregation — the school had anchored North Central, the historically Black neighborhood on the Kerrytown side — and in 1972 the building reopened as Community High, an alternative program that has been there since. The district marked the building's hundredth anniversary in 2022 by honoring Jones School and that history. Before 1997 admission was first come, first served, and families camped outside the district's administration building on South State Street to be first in line; the lottery replaced that in 1997.
Getting around
This is one of the few Ann Arbor neighborhoods where a car is optional for daily life. Downtown is across Huron Street; the county courthouse is at the foot of Ann; Central Campus is a few blocks south; and Glen Avenue leads straight into the University hospital complex on the east. The Michigan Daily's student guide puts the neighborhood between Kerrytown on the west, Central Campus on the south, the medical campus on the east and Fuller Street on the north, which is a fair description of what is within walking distance in each direction.
The trade-offs are the ones that come with that position. Huron Street is a major east-west route, so the southern blocks carry through traffic. The railroad and Depot Street define the north edge, and the Broadway bridges are the neighborhood's link across the river. And because much of the housing is student-rented, the block rhythm follows the academic calendar — move-in week, football Saturdays and finals feel different from July. Walk a block you are considering on a Saturday night in October and again on a weekday morning in June before you decide.
Buying or selling in the Old Fourth Ward
Comparable sales here are read house by house, not street by street. Two houses of the same footprint on the same block can be a single-family Greek Revival with its original plan and a three-unit conversion with a rental history going back to the 1970s, and they are different products with different buyers. When I pull comps in the Old Fourth Ward, I sort first by use — owner-occupied single-family, legal multi-unit, or something in between — then by how much original fabric survives, and only then by size and location. A sale on Ann Street between Division and State, on the city's only all-nineteenth-century residential block, is not a comp for a duplex on Elizabeth, even though they are three blocks apart.
For buyers, the diligence is layered like the houses. Establish the legal use and unit count with the city before you assume anything from the listing. Find out what exterior work has been done since 1983 and whether it carried a Certificate of Appropriateness, because unapproved work in a historic district is the buyer's problem after closing. Then treat the systems as a separate question from the architecture: wiring, supply pipe, waste lines, roof and foundation on a building that may date to the 1840s or 1890s. If you plan to change the exterior — add a dormer, rebuild a porch, replace windows — read the Commission's staff-approval list and the Secretary of the Interior's Standards first, and budget time for review.
For sellers, the historic district is the selling point, not the obstacle. The buyer who wants a house on these blocks is coming for the temple front, the tall windows, the stone church at the end of the street and the fact that none of it can be torn down for something taller. Present the house's history honestly — the city updated its survey of the district in 2024, and that record is worth handing a buyer — and document the permitted work. Where a house has been a rental, decide before listing whether you are selling it to the next landlord or to a family who will convert it back, because those buyers value different things and the listing should speak to one of them clearly.
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.