Pittsfield Village

Built for the bomber plant

Ford Motor Company began building a plant at Willow Run in April 1941, in Ypsilanti Township on the edge of what became Willow Run Airport, on ground that had been farm fields. Production began in the summer of 1942, and the plant was the largest factory under a single roof anywhere in the world, with 42,500 employees at its peak. The bomber-an-hour rate came later — by 1944 the line was finishing a B-24 Liberator about every 63 minutes.

Housing forty-two thousand workers in a region that had not been expecting them was its own enormous problem, and Pittsfield Village was part of the answer. Pittsfield Village was part of the answer: construction began in 1940 on former farmland and finished by May 1944. When the war ended, the same units housed returning service members. At 422 units it remains the second-largest housing community in the city.

That origin explains the design. The units are modest, efficient, and durable rather than grand, and the plan puts the shared green space at the center rather than dividing the ground into private lots. Eighty years on, those parklike common yards and the mature trees over them are the community's most distinctive physical feature, and they exist because the development was never platted as individual house lots in the first place.

Co-op, then condominium — and the name changes

The ownership history is unusual and matters practically. The development was converted to a co-operative form of home ownership in the late 1980s, and as part of that conversion the name was changed to Village Townhomes.

It changed back. In January 2009 residents voted to convert from a co-operative to a condominium form of ownership, and in May of that year a new Master Deed was filed with the State of Michigan, restoring the original Pittsfield Village name.

For a buyer, the difference between a co-op and a condominium is not cosmetic — it affects what you actually own, how financing works, and how transfers are approved. Since 2009 this has been a condominium development, but anyone encountering older listings, older financing guidance, or the Village Townhomes name should understand which era it refers to. Confirm the current structure and read the Master Deed and bylaws before an offer.

The homes

The units carry the mid-1940s vocabulary throughout: wood floors, cove ceilings, and partial basements. They are modest in size by contemporary standards, which is a large part of what they offer — this is among the more attainable ways to own inside the Ann Arbor city limits, and the reason is that the units were built for wage workers rather than for a speculative market.

As a condominium community approaching eighty years old, the association's documents are the primary diligence rather than an afterthought. In a development of 422 units with buildings of this age, reserve adequacy is the question that governs everything else.

Inside the unit, the questions are the ordinary ones for the era — windows, mechanical systems, electrical service, and whether any updating was done to the association's requirements. Establish clearly which elements are the owner's responsibility and which are the association's, because that division is where surprises live.

The setting

Sixty-four acres for 422 units is a generous ratio, and the plan uses it. Winding streets and broad common yards give the development the feel of a park with buildings in it rather than a complex with landscaping, and eighty years of tree growth has reinforced that considerably.

The location is east-side Ann Arbor, between Washtenaw and Packard along Platt Road, which puts the Washtenaw commercial corridor, Buhr Park, and County Farm Park all close. Downtown Ann Arbor and the University campuses are a short drive west, and US-23 is close to the east for regional travel.

Charles Noble

The architect is worth knowing, because he was not a housing-tract specialist. Charles Noble came to Ann Arbor in the mid-1930s after a Detroit career that included the Art Deco Lee Plaza of 1929 and the Kean Apartments of 1931, the Art Moderne Elwood Bar and Grill of 1937, and at least four houses in Grosse Pointe. Pittsfield Village was a wartime commission from a designer with a body of serious urban work behind him.

He kept going after the war. In 1946, to help with the housing shortage for returning University of Michigan students, Noble designed and developed University Terrace Apartments — 193 units in nine buildings on East Washington, between University Hospital and the Arboretum. He was also president and architect of Pittsfield Park, developed on land abutting Pittsfield Village to the east along Pinecrest and Yost: small one-story houses aimed at people coming home from the war.

Taken together, that is an unusual concentration of one architect's work on the problem of housing a city under sudden pressure. It also explains why Pittsfield Village is better designed than its modest unit sizes might suggest — the site plan, the common yards, and the proportions were the work of someone who had built for the Detroit of the 1920s and 30s.

Schools

Pittsfield Village is served by Ann Arbor Public Schools.

Buying or selling in Pittsfield Village

This is a single-development market, which simplifies comparable sales and concentrates risk. With 422 units of broadly similar vintage and construction, comps come from inside the community and the differences between them are unit size, location within the site, condition, and updating. Reaching outside for comparables is rarely necessary and usually misleading, since nothing else in Ann Arbor is quite like this.

For buyers, the association's finances are the transaction. Get the budget, the reserve study, recent minutes, and any assessment history, and read them properly — a large development of eighty-year-old buildings has real capital obligations, and how well they are funded determines whether dues stay predictable. Then confirm the current ownership structure in writing, since this community has been a co-op and a condominium at different points and the paperwork trail reflects that.

For sellers, the history is genuinely interesting and almost never used. These units were built in the middle of a world war to house the people making a bomber an hour, and then handed to the service members who came home. They have wood floors and cove ceilings, they sit in sixty-four acres of common green, and they are inside the city. Naming that, alongside a clear account of what the association covers and what has been updated in the unit, reaches a buyer who is choosing this deliberately.