Ladies Literary Club

A historic building established in 1868 as Ypsilanti's public library, donated by philanthropist Mary Ann Starkweather in 1890. The building served as the town's primary library until 1963.

The Ladies Literary Club of Ypsilanti occupies a Greek Revival house built in the early 1840s at the corner of North Washington and Emmet Streets. With its four twenty-foot-high wooden Doric columns and triangular pediment, the building is considered one of the most important Greek Revival structures in Michigan and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The club was founded in 1878 by Sarah Smith Putnam, wife of a college professor and former Ypsilanti mayor, who brought the concept from a similar literary society in Lansing. At a time when women were largely excluded from higher education, the club offered its members an intellectual outlet, with courses of study ranging from the French Revolution to ancient Greek and Roman societies. The women purchased their historic clubhouse in 1914 for three thousand dollars.

The building's haunting draws from a deeper thread in Ypsilanti's history, one woven around the legacy of Mary Ann Starkweather, the city's most celebrated philanthropist. Born Mary Ann Newberry in Waterville, New York, on September 22, 1819, she married John Starkweather on June 5, 1839, in Detroit and settled in Ypsilanti in 1841. The Starkweathers became among the city's first prominent settlers, operating nationally recognized award-winning orchards on the land where Eastern Michigan University now stands. After her husband's death on February 2, 1883, Mary Ann devoted her considerable fortune to the city she loved. Her gifts included the Starkweather Memorial Chapel at Highland Cemetery, a public drinking fountain on Huron Street, the Soldiers Monument, a grand piano for St. Luke's Church, and Starkweather Hall on the EMU campus for the Student Christian Association. In 1890, she donated her own Italianate-style home on North Huron Street to the Ladies Library Association, which had been lending books to the public since 1868. The words Ladies Library were engraved above the entrance. When Mary Ann died on October 1, 1897, at the age of seventy-eight, schools and businesses closed in her honor, and two ministers conducted her funeral service.

But many in Ypsilanti believe Mary Ann Starkweather never truly left. Her restless apparition has been seen by employees walking the upstairs hallways of the former library building on Huron Street, a figure glimpsed in the dim light between bookshelves long after the building ceased operating as a library in 1963. Those who have worked in the building after hours report hearing unexplained footsteps overhead when no one else is present. One janitor claimed that while working alone in the basement, unseen hands began touching him. The disturbances are widely attributed to Starkweather's displeasure that her beloved home was converted into office space, a change that betrayed her original philanthropic intentions.

The haunting does not confine itself to one building. At Starkweather Hall on the EMU campus, students and faculty report that strange things happen in the hallways and basement. After the Student Christian Association ended in 1928 and the Office of Religious Affairs was discontinued in 1976, the building was remodeled for public relations services. According to locals and EMU students, this repurposing did not sit well with Starkweather's spirit. When students are asked which building on campus is haunted, the answer is almost universally Starkweather Hall. The pattern is consistent: Mary Ann's ghost appears to manifest wherever her wishes have been disregarded.

Authors Crysta Coburn and Kay Gray, who host the Haunted Mitten podcast and published Ypsilanti Ghosts and Legends through The History Press in 2024, describe Starkweather as a city spirit. As Gray put it, she may simply be looking over the city she helped build. Whether protective guardian or restless benefactress, the ghost of Mary Ann Starkweather remains one of Ypsilanti's most enduring legends, a philanthropist whose generosity, it seems, did not end with her death.