What promises to be downtown Ann Arbor's first façadectomy doesn't look like it will be an easy process. CVS Pharmacy plans to tear out everything except the
facade in its new home next to the University of Michigan's campus.
The national pharmacy chain will be moving into 209 S State, which is the 2-story building between the State Theater and Buffalo Wild Wings. The challenge is that the building behind the storefront facade is a former single-family home.
"There isn't much historic work worth saving other than masonry facade," says Aaron Vermeulen, principal of Ann Arbor-based O-X Studios, which was redesigning the building a year ago before CVS purchased it. That sale became final last week.
Complicating matters more is that the building is surrounded by bigger structures and only accessible from its entrance and a crowded alley. That alley includes the back end of numerous businesses, and also is home to major power lines and transformers.
Vermeulen believes it's possible to claw the old building out from behind and send it out the back alley before moving the materials for the new business in the same way. In theory the pharmacy could be in place without much disturbance to street frontage.
The building started out as a small Queen Anne house in the late 19th Century with a bay window, wood shingle roof and small addition. By 1902 it had become a two-unit boarding house called the Chubb House named after its owner George Chubb. An eatery also opened around this time. Its current façade was added sometime between 1925 and 1930, a pattern repeated in several downtown homes at the time. By then it was known as the Ritz Dine and Dance and was considered a cabaret.
By 1936 it became Chubb's restaurant but within a year had morphed into the Michigan Wolverine Student Cooperative, as a response to the Depression. The cooperative disappeared during World War II. From that point a mix of retail tenants occupied the ground floor, including the Secretary of State, Ann Arbor Cooperative Credit Union, book shops, women's clothing stores and a lighting store. Residential apartments remained in the upper floors.
Source: Aaron Vermeulen, principal of Ann Arbor-based O-X Studios
Writer: Jon Zemke
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