Medical School recognized for preserving history

The University of Michigan Medical School's effort to celebrate its history, including the preservation of a century-old building on U-M's main medical campus, has won recognition from Ann Arbor's Historic District Commission.

The school is celebrating its 175th anniversary in 2025. The Simpson Memorial Institute building, constructed beginning in 1925, stands on Observatory Street at the top of Ann Street, near the Frankel Cardiovascular Center. When built, it stood next to the University Hospital that opened in 1925 and became known as "Old Main." 

The Medical School received the Centennial Award from Mayor Christopher Taylor at a City Council meeting, as part of the recognition of winners in the city's 38th annual Historic Preservation Awards program. 

George Mashour, M.D., Ph.D., the interim Executive Vice Dean for Academic Affairs, accepted the award on behalf of the school.

Local historian and historic preservationist Susan Wineberg shared facts about each of the awardees, which also include the U-M School of Dentistry, celebrating its 150th anniversary this year. 

In its citation, the commission wrote: 

"In 1850, a newly opened Greek Revival Building with massive columns greeted the first medical class of 95 students and five faculty. No one could imagine what they were embarking on in Ann Arbor, a small backwater in the higher education universe (Ann Arbor was founded in 1824 and the university opened in 1841). From this single building on the eastern side of the Diag was born a statewide academic health system now known as Michigan Medicine, which recently embarked on a yearlong celebration for this milestone. What followed were U of M laboratories, classrooms, hospitals and clinics that transformed U of M into one of the world's most respected centers of biomedical education, research and advanced clinical training and one of the largest and highest-ranked health care systems in the country. This celebration also marks a second milestone — the centennial of the opening of the Albert Kahn designed University Hospital on East Ann Street that came to be known as "Old Main." It served the community and the school from 1925-1986. 

The medical school maintains the Simpson Memorial Institute on Observatory Street, which had its groundbreaking in 1925 and served as a clinical research facility for blood disordersuntil the 1950s, when it was converted for educational and office use including a medical history center."

 The citation also notes that later this year, an exhibit about the history of the Medical School and Michigan Medicine will open at the Museum on Main Street, run by the Washtenaw County Historical Society.