Jacob Hoffstetter House

The Jacob Hoffstetter House is one of the most substantial and handsomely detailed of Ann Arbor's numerous 1880s houses whose eclectic design does not follow any of the standard revival styles, but can only be termed Late Victorian. A rare survivor of the nineteenth-century residential neighborhood which once surrounded it but which has now largely given way with the expansion of Ann Arbor's downtown, the house is one of the finest and best preserved homes of any age now remaining in the downtown. The structure was built for Jacob Hoffstetter, who settled in Ann Arbor in 1854 at the age of five with his parents, Christian and Mary Hoffstetter. The Hoffstetter family was among a large number of German immigrants whose settlement in the area beginning in the 1840s had a large impact upon the early development of Ann Arbor.

The customs and religious beliefs of these new settlers were significant in shaping the culture of the new community and are still evident in present-day Ann Arbor. Jacob Hoffstetter remained in Ann Arbor throughout his life. In 1872, he established a grocery and saloon on Main Street. Through them, he acquired a solid measure of prosperity.

Until the mid-1880s Mr. Hoffstetter, his wife, and two sons lived above the store. About 1887, however, they sold the family business and had the large brick residence built. The Ann Arbor City directories note that, like many Ann Arbor residents, the Hoffstetters made a portion of their large home available to boarders, particularly students at the University.

In this connection, the most interesting residents of the Hoffstetter House were the men of Alpha Tau Omega fraternity who made their home there for six years, from the founding of the fraternity in 1888 until 1894. The fraternity is now located on Cambridge Street and remains an active chapter at the University of Michigan.

Located in downtown Ann Arbor in a mixed commercial/residential area, the Hoffstetter House faces north on East Washington Street next door to the west of the former Methodist Episcopal Church Parsonage (owned by the same owner and also being nominated separately to the National Register). The house is a large and rambling, two-story, red-brick, Late Victorian structure set on a coursed ashlar foundation. It has narrow, single-light-sash, double-hung windows with stone sills and segmental-arch heads capped by carved stone keystones. Oculus windows and Stick Style, kingpost gable ornaments with pierced trefoil designs decorate the front and the two side gables.

A two-brick high belt course at window-lintel level in each story is constructed of yellow brick. Bracketed cornices crown the square-plan bay window units and the two side porches near the front of the house (the porches’ Tuscan-column supports, however, may be an early twentieth-century alteration). In 1937 the house was divided into apartments. In the exterior, an entrance was constructed at the southeast corner to provide access to an apartment unit and a window in the west side was bricked in when a staircase was built in the space behind it.

The interior remodeling, while extensive, appears to have been carefully done; much of the original wood trim was kept and new trim was selected to be consistent with the old. The structure was rehabilitated in 1980 for commercial and residential use.