Elks Christmas Party for Needy Children

"The Elks Lodge was the former home of William S. Maynard, department store owner, land developer, and three-time Mayor of Ann Arbor, who died (a suicide) in 1866. (Maynard's first wife, Julia Guiteau, was an aunt of Charles Julius Guiteau, who became the assassin in 1881 of President James A. Garfield. Guiteau reportedly visited the Maynards in this house -- maybe even lived with them -- while he was briefly a student at the Ann Arbor High School.) Maynard Street was named for Wm. in 1836, when he was an organizer of the Ann Arbor Land Company, which gave 40 acres to the State of Michigan to lure the University here (the Company originally wanted the State Capitol).

Note the "eyebrow" windows under the overhanging eaves of this Italianate jewel. They are present in the Library's interior photo, which tells us that it was taken in the upstairs ballroom, the largest room in the building, which may have been original with the Maynards, or may have been configured when the hotel owned the property. After the Ann Arbor Elks moved out (they left for spiffy new quarters near Briarwood -- which they later lost), Ann Arbor Civic Theater owned the house for several years, enacting plays in the former ballroom space, which they converted to a mini-theater." - Wystan Stevens