Cobblestone Farm and Museum , Ann Arbor
Near Ann Arbor, Michigan
On the southern edge of Ann Arbor, a Greek Revival farmhouse built partly of cobblestones has stood since the eighteen thirties, one of the finest examples of its construction type in Michigan. Naval surgeon Dr. Benajah Ticknor bought land here in eighteen thirty-five. Ticknor built a frame house that year and added the distinctive cobblestone front in eighteen forty-four, setting fieldstones in careful horizontal courses into lime mortar.
Ticknor was originally from Connecticut, and cobblestone construction was common in upstate New York and the Great Lakes frontier in the eighteen thirties and forties, a technique that used the abundant glacial stones of the region. The farm was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in nineteen seventy-two. Today it operates as a museum managed by the City of Ann Arbor, offering a window into mid-nineteenth-century pioneer farm life on the Michigan frontier.
