Mechem, Floyd R., House

Built in 1898, the Mechem House served as the home from 1898 to 1903 of Floyd R. Mechem, Tappan Professor of Law at the University of Michigan from 1892 to 1903. Mechem became a nationally recognized legal scholar through his books and articles, which began to appear in 1889. He was best known for his texts in the fields of agency and partnership law, and revised editions of some of his works were still being published in the 1920s-40s and as late as 1952. Professor Mechem was born in New York in May 1858 but moved to Ann Arbor at a young age and attended high school there in 1874-75. He could not afford to attend law school, but in the evening read the law and was admitted to the bar in 1879. He initially practiced law in Battle Creek, Michigan, and served four terms as city attorney there before moving to Detroit in 1887. In Detroit he soon established the firm of Mechem & Beaumont. Mechem was appointed Tappan Professor of Law in the Law Department at the University of Michigan in 1892. He arrived at the university at a time when, according to Legal Education at Michigan, 1859-1959 (page 329), 'An intensified interest in scholarly investigation and writing was evident among the Law Faculty .... ' Even before coming to the university, in 1889 Mechem produced the first of several works on the subject of agency law, A Treatise on the Law of Agency, which made his a well-known name to students of agency law over the next several decades. His Cases on the Law of Agency, first published in 1893, was republished in a revised edition by his son Phillip as late as 1942. His Outline of the Law of Agency, first published in 1901, was reissued in an enlarged and revised version as late as 1952. In another specialty, the field of partnership law, Mechem published his Lectures on the Law of Partnerships in 1893, Cases on the Law of Partnership in 1896, and Elements of the Law of Partnership in 1899. A revised editions of Cases was published as late as 1935 and Elements was reprinted as late as 1920. Mechem also produced other widely used law textbooks on the subjects of law of public offices and officers (1890), law of carriers (1891), law of damages (1893; second edition 1898), and the law of succession (1895). When in 1893 the University of Michigan established its Practice Court to provide law students with trial experience more like what they would experience in the real world than the moot courts they used previously, Professor Mechem was placed in charge. Mechem also, in 1902-03, served as the first editor of the Michigan Law Review. Professor Mechem left the University of Michigan in 1903 to serve as a professor of law at the University of Chicago Law School, which opened October 1, 1902. He died in 1928. The Mechem House continued to serve the university community in later years. From 1917 to 1923 Professor Joseph A. Bursley, together with his wife Marguerite and three daughters, lived in the house. Appointed to the mechanical engineering faculty in 1904, he became a full professor by 1917 and the university's first dean of students in 1921. Bursley retired from the faculty in 1947 after more than forty years' service and died in 1950. The house served during the mid-1930s as a Women's League residence providing housing for the growing number of women entering the university. Since then it has served a large number of University of Michigan students as housing. A recent rehabilitation will permit the house to continue to serve in that capacity.

The Mechem House is a two-and-one-half-story hip- and cross-gable-roof wood-frame building with Colonial Revival trim. The exterior walls are clapboarded. The house is located on the southeast corner of Hill and Olivia streets, only two blocks from the University of Michigan's Central Campus. The lot's street sides are protected by a wrought iron fence that may be as old as the house. The house stands on a cut fieldstone foundation. Its exterior is sheathed in cedar clapboarding, almost all of which is original material. The first story is treated with simple cornerboards, and a wooden beltcourse with molded cap separates the first from the second story. In the second story, the clapboards meet directly at all corners. The roof is steeply pitched, with five gables permitting occupancy of the third story. A small, front-facing hip-roof dormer affords additional third-floor space. A small front-facing window admits light to the attic. The roof is clad in asphalt shingling. A large L-shaped wraparound porch supported by five wood Tuscan columns extends across half of the front and Olivia Street side of the house's main section. The porch railings display smooth round wood spindles and flat board railings. The front entrance contains paneled double doors of solid birdseye maple with large beveled glass lights. They have been stripped of paint and refinished with clear varnish to display the wood grain. Large cottage windows -- six in all, each with a leaded glass transom sash -- pierce the first- and second-story facades of the gabled portions of the front and side facades. An Art Glass window next to the front entrance illuminates the main staircase. Most other windows are double-hung containing single-light sash. The windows are housed in simple board frames. The house's front entrance hall is extensively paneled in birdseye maple, which is also used for the large parlor pocket door and the staircase and its handrail. The three rooms adjacent to the entrance hall, the parlor, sitting room, and dining room, are also extensively decorated in birdseye maple, which is used for the doors, door and window trim, and for the carved fireplace mantels located in the first-floor sitting room and second-floor master bedroom. The house's flooring is of oak and maple in various areas. The interior walls are of plaster on lath. Much of the original plastering remains in the hallways and the bathrooms. The house's three bathrooms and two kitchens are modern, having been added in connection with the recent rehabilitation. A full bathroom is located in each of the three stories, and a full kitchen is located in the first and second stories. A two-story addition was made at the house's rear, probably in the 1920s. Its foundation is of concrete block and the addition itself is a wood-frame structure with compatible clapboard sheathing. The first floor contains an entryway, which has also been used as a pantry. The addition's second story is a sun room, its three sides finished with side-by-side double-hung windows. A small covered porch protects the two doors which provide entry to the house from the rear, and a third door, which provides access to the basement. A metal fire escape services the third floor. The house was originally lighted with gas lamps, and a number of the pipes and related connections remain visible. The mechanical and other systems have been modernized. Steam heat is provided by a gas fueled system which retains the original radiators.