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The collection consists of copy print photographs and negatives of the Leoni Seminary (later Michigan Union College) at Leoni, Michigan. Michigan Union College was the predecessor to Adrian College in Adrian, Michigan

Ann Arbor, Michigan, photography firm. Photonegatives, and some photoprints, of images largely relating to Ann Arbor and the University of Michigan, but including Ypsilanti and other Michigan cities: buildings, businesses, houses, street scenes, community activities, and organizations; also photos of automobiles, storm damage, etc. taken to support insurance claims.

The Ivory Photo collection consists of an impressive array of negatives and prints taken by Ann Arbor photographer Mel Ivory from the 1920s to the early 1970s. Most of the photographs were taken by Ivory for customers, whether the University of Michigan, local businesses, or private citizens. The collection is probably most valuable for its extensive documentation of Ann Arbor and the University of Michigan, the two areas in which it bulks largest. However, because it spans a relatively long time period, the collection is also useful for illustrating changes in photography as an art and as a business, and for documenting social trends in twentieth-century America. Finally, the collection documents the career of a commercial photographer.

As a photographer for the University of Michigan in the 1920s and 1930s, Ivory took the standard pictures of campus events, buildings, and people, but the value of many photographs from this period is as much aesthetic as informational. Producing cover art for the Michigan Alumnus allowed him to experiment with unusual angles, lighting, and subject matter. (See, for example, photographs of the Clements Library and of students strolling through the Diag in the 1930s.) In stark contrast to these images is a large group of photographs of car wrecks that Ivory took for insurance companies between 1937 and 1969.

Besides providing thorough documentation of the physical plant of the University of Michigan, the Ivory collection evokes the flavor of life on campus in the 1930s and 1940s through photographs of football games and crowds, dance bands, social events, professors at work in laboratories, the Michigan Daily staff at work, and students in classrooms, libraries, and dormitories.

The Ann Arbor subseries includes numerous photographs of houses and businesses, filed by address to facilitate research into a particular building or site, as well as a rich assortment of photographs depicting life in Ann Arbor through more than four decades. There are numerous photographs of men and women at work in factories, stores, and other settings. Some show women at work in unusual settings (as cab drivers for Ace Cab Company, for example) while others depict women in stereotypically female occupations (as secretaries, store clerks, and ditto machine operators). Photographs of drug and department store display windows and of products in grocery stores illustrate trends in merchandising.

The Ivory collection is also remarkable for its documentation of social mores. Wedding photographs taken from the 1930s to the 1960s depict a variety of settings, fashions, wedding rituals, and even fads, such as a 1940 wedding at a roller rink. There is also a small group of photographs of funerals and an extensive series of portraits of children, families, and individuals.

Photographs of a depression-era hobo cooking near a railroad car, of lawn parties and country clubs, of the soap box derby and sports teams reflect diverse aspects of life in Ann Arbor. The home front during World War II is documented in views of an aluminum drive, a blitzkrieg game in a local tavern, a commuter bus with a female conductor, and the Judge Advocate General's school exercises in the Law Quad.

Although the Ypsilanti subseries is considerably smaller than the Ann Arbor and University of Michigan subseries, it contains a number of valuable photographs, such as the Cleary College photographs showing rows of students at typewriters, students relaxing on boarding house steps and in Cleary lounges and recreation rooms, and annual graduation processions. The Washtenaw County subseries contains rural scenes such as farms, country roads, and a county fair. The remaining subseries consist of businesses, street scenes, railroad stations, and a variety of other photographs representing Michigan towns and counties.

A few copy negatives made by Ivory from existing photographs are scattered throughout the collection. A late nineteenth or early twentieth-century anatomy lesson in the Medical School, for example, is filed in the "Colleges, Schools, and other Divisions" section of University of Michigan 5"x7" negatives.

The contents of the various subseries and sub-subseries are for the most part self-evident, but a few words of explanation about the Ann Arbor subseries are in order. "Buildings and Views" consists largely of exterior views of buildings. However, there are many interior scenes of people and activities in the "Churches," "Hospitals," and "Schools" sections. For example, photographs of Ann Arbor churches include views of the pastor and congregation, choirs, recreation rooms, meetings, and athletic teams in addition to interior and exterior views of the buildings. "Schools" contains photographs of sports teams, classroom scenes, social events, and buildings representing Ann Arbor public and parochial schools, but also Ann Arbor Secretarial School and Concordia College.

Researchers seeking images of commercial enterprises will find material in the "Buildings and Views" sub-subseries (listed under the street address in the "Houses and Businesses" section) and in the "Businesses" sub-subseries (under the name of the enterprise).

The "Houses and Businesses" negatives within the "Buildings and Views" sub-subseries are arranged alphabetically by street name and then numerically by address. Most of these photographs are exterior views, but interior scenes of businesses have been filed here in order to keep exterior and interior views of a particular business together. Photographs of products, equipment, people at work, and special events are filed in the "Businesses" sub-subseries when no building exteriors exist or when the address of the business was unknown. Researchers should look both places for photographs of businesses. Although some "see also" references have been added, they are by no means exhaustive. Researchers may also wish to examine the "Motor Vehicles" sub-subseries, which contains photographs of trucks owned by Ann Arbor businesses.

In the University of Michigan subseries, "Buildings and Views" consists of exterior and interior views of buildings, whereas "Colleges, Schools, and Other Divisions" contains photographs of professors and students in laboratories and classrooms as well as group photographs of staff and students.

Photographs by Allen Stross for the Historic American Buildings Survey, Central Michigan Project; include exterior and interior views of buildings in Battle Creek, Brighton, Charlotte, Eaton Rapids, Grand Rapids, Ionia, Kalamazoo, Lansing, Marshall, Mason, Ovid, Vermontville, and Williamston; also data sheets describing the buildings.

This is a collection of photographs taken by Allen Stross for the Historic American Buildings Survey, Central Michigan Project. Included are exterior and interior views of buildings in Battle Creek, Brighton, Charlotte, Eaton Rapids, Grand Rapids, Ionia, Kalamazoo, Lansing, Marshall, Mason, Ovid, Vermontville, and Williamston. Accompanying the photographs are data sheets describing the various buildings. The photographs are arranged by location of building. Each building has a code number which refers to a survey reports. These reports will be found in the last two folders of the collection.

Photographs (positive and negative), slides, and transparencies taken by the company's photographers to document company activities, products, services, employees at work and at leisure, company exhibits and commemorations, and the response of the company to natural disasters and civil disturbances.

In 1993, Michigan Bell as a corporate entity was subsumed within the Ameritech Corporation. As a by-product of this reorganization and the downsizing resulting from it, the company agreed to deposit with the Bentley Historical Library its extensive archive of photographic images. Totalling approximately one million images, the Michigan Bell Telephone Company photo archive consists of negatives, copy prints, and color transparencies taken in the period since World War II (the bulk beginning in 1949). The collection does not include photos taken since 1983; interspersed throughout, however, are numerous images from before 1949.

The collection has been maintained in the order received with two principal series: Positives and Negatives.

The content of the photographs in the two series varies considerably. Naturally the collection documents the products of the company (phones and other communication devices) and the services provided (e.g. employees at work or the company reacting to a specific customer need). These photos were taken both to inform the general public as accompaniment to press notices and advertising copy and as a communications vehicle within the company, informing employees through the company news publication, Tielines, of activities going on in other divisions of the company or among the various regional Bell offices.

More importantly perhaps, the collection has value for its documentation of events and activities that are common to all large companies. These include images relating to: 1. The activities of employees within the corporation at their work (office workers, repairmen, operators, various support personnel, managers, etc.); 2. The activities of employees outside their work routine as members of corporate social groups (i.e., the company baseball or ice hockey team), at home engaged in leisure time activities, or involved in company-sponsored charitable or public service functions; and 3. Commemorations of specific milestones or events (company parade floats, area office open houses, corporate displays at public events such as fairs, etc.).

In addition, the collection documents the extraordinary and unforeseen as the phone company reacts to events and emergencies not within its control (floods, tornadoes, fires, the 1967 Detroit riot, strikes, and the like) or as a participant in history-making events (the announcement in Ann Arbor of the success of the Salk polio vaccine or the preparation involved in the 1980 Republican National Convention that convened in Detroit).

Episcopal bishop of Michigan. Scrapbooks and notebooks containing newspaper clippings; photographs relating to his church career, clippings of newspaper columns containing his views on current events, and copies of addresses and sermons.

The materials in this collection chronicle Emrich's career as Episcopal Bishop of Michigan. The collection contains correspondence, sermons and speeches given by Emrich and published material. The Collection has been divided into the following series: Subject Files; Visual Materials; Writings, sermons, and addresses; Scrapbooks; and Sound Recording.

Cooperative leader and liberal activist. Topical files and photographs relating to his work with an Americanization program for immigrants in Akron, Ohio in the 1920s; his involvement in the National Farmers Union, including radio transcripts of programs presented by the North Dakota Farmers Union; and his interest in the Danish folk school movement and the administration of Ashland College in Grant, Michigan; also material concerning the American Friends Service Committee, the Grant Community Church, pacifism, economic cooperatives, and other social and political liberal causes.

The papers of Chester Graham reflect the multifaceted activities of his career. The papers are arranged in a single alphabetical series, without regard to the chronological relationship between the various folders. Thus material from the late 1970s can be found next to material from the 1920s. In general, folder material begins whenever Graham first became involved with the subject and continues more or less to the present, although material becomes far more ephemeral as time passes and Graham's primary concerns shift to other subjects.

The largest bodies of material deal with Americanization in Akron, Ashland College, the National Farmers Union, and Graham's radio transcripts. There is also a body of material dealing with the Society of Friends and the organization's various political and social activities.

Dearborn, Michigan newspaper publisher; candidate for mayor of Dearborn in 1957. Papers relating to the Dearborn Independent newspaper; collected materials detailing the career of Dearborn mayor Orville Hubbard; campaign files documenting Mills' unsuccessful bid to unseat Hubbard in 1957; and photographs.

The Mills collection, approximately 1.3 linear feet of correspondence, clippings, photographs, and related materials, covers the period of 1920 to 1988. The great bulk of the collection dates from the years of the late 1940s to 1957.

Although Mills was a newspaper publisher for a long period, the Mills collection relates only in part to this phase of his life. The great majority of materials concern his unsuccessful campaign against Orville Hubbard in 1957. Of interest are the series of articles that Mills wrote, titled "How Dearborn got a dictator mayor."

A series of photographs that Mills collected are of especial importance. Many of these do relate to the activities and operation of the Dearborn Independent, to the cities of Dearborn and Fordson, and to Mills' extensive ties with the Ford Motor Company and the Ford family.

Grand Rapids, Michigan, architect and planner. Correspondence, writings, working files, and photographs for out-of-state and Michigan projects, primarily in Grand Rapids, Lansing, Flint, and East Lansing; professional materials relating to problems of urban planning, the design of department stores and shopping centers, his general interest in lighting designs, traffic patterns, and parking areas, and to his work with the Lake Michigan Region Planning Committee, the American Institute of Architects and the Michigan Society of Architects; also Welch family materials, including record, 1915-1925, of the Welch Manufacturing Company of Grand Rapids, Michigan.

The Welch papers include a small amount of biographical and personal material, but the bulk of the collection documents his work on architectural, design and planning projects in Michigan and across the country - many having to do with shopping malls, business districts and urban redevelopment. The collection is arranged in eight series: biographical materials; correspondence; personal, financial, and family materials; professional information files; Michigan project files; out-of-state project files; articles and speeches; and photographs.

Pastor of the First Methodist Church of Ann Arbor, Michigan, 1934-1944, later Methodist Episcopal Bishop of the Des Moines, Iowa area and the Chicago, Illinois area. Correspondence, newspaper clippings, and topical files, and miscellanea concerning his; and photographs.

The Brashares collection includes correspondence and topical files relating in part to his pastoral responsibilities, to his work as delegate to the 2nd Assembly of the World Council of Churches, and to his engagement with various social problems. There is some correspondence with G. Bromley Oxnam concerning his appearance before the House Committee on Un-American Activities in 1953.

Journalist, historical researcher from Kalamazoo, Michigan; Correspondence, research articles and notes, and photographs.

The Weissert collection includes correspondence, 1893-1947, including letters from Joseph Bailly, Clarence M. Burton, Gurdon S. Hubbard, Chase S. Osborn, Albert E. Sleeper, and George Van Pelt. There are also speeches, and writings mostly on Michigan history topics, including Indian history and the history of Kalamazoo and Barry County. The series of research notes illustrates the variety of Weissert's interests: historical personalities, forts, Michigan cities, and early state history. The photographs and snapshots pertain to Weissert's interest in Michigan history, especially homes, churches, mills, hotels, businesses, and other sites primarily in western Michigan, but also including Sault Ste. Marie and Mackinac Island. There are also photographs of Michigan pioneers, particularly from the Hastings, Michigan area.