Ann Arbor Murals

"The Ann Arbor African-American Heritage Mural Project"

This mural of the pioneers of Ann Arbor's African-American community, was designed and painted by Community High School students in 2016. From left to right, the people depicted are: Rev. C. W. Carpenter, Dr. Albert Wheeler (former mayor of Ann Arbor), Bryan Westfield, Coleman Jewett, Judge Nancy Wheeler, Rev. John A. Woods, Richard Blake, Rosemarion Blake, Richard Thompson, and Dr. Willis C. Patterson. For more information about this mural, see this article: "How Murals Celebrating Ann Arbor's African Americans Create Dialog" by Mike Mosher.

Mural that recently appeared on a high-rise building downtown.

The entire mural appears to be tossed out of the little
man's bucket.

Signature on the mural.

The Pretzel Bell Mural, painted recently. I like the pretzel in the painting, as well as the edgy style!

When I read that a new mural had been painted on the Pretzel Bell building, I assumed that the writer was talking about the building that houses the current restaurant by that name. Evidently, people have a long memory: this mural is on the building formerly belonging to the original Pretzel Bell, founded in 1934. For nearly half a century, students went to have their first legal drink on their 21st birthday. The current Pretzel Bell owners bought the name from some trademark merchant, and it has little to do with the many original traditions that are fondly recalled by at least some former students. 

The Pretzel Bell was the site of a historic Ann Arbor fable:

"The restaurant at Fourth Avenue and Liberty Street also served as an inspiration for U-M Professor Donald Glaser. Observing the action of bubbles in glasses of beer at the Pretzel Bell helped him develop the bubble chamber. In 1960, while a professor at Berkeley, he would win the Nobel Prize in Physics for the invention." (source: Michigan Alumnus)

This claim may be exaggerated, but one of the physicists we knew who remembered Glaser's time at UofM said that the inspiration may or many not have come from these particular bubbles, but that Glaser was known to have had adequate opportunities to observe them. Do any of the interesting sections of the mural refer to this fable? I can't tell.

Signature of the Pretzel Bell artist.

Text and photos copyright © 2019 Mae Sander for maefood dot blogspot dot com.