Horace and Jennie Prettyman’s sprawling manse on North University was Ann Arbor’s best-known boarding house, serving more than a million meals to students from 1875 to 1914 — including Fielding Yost’s varsity football players, who ate there nightly.

Originally conceived as a ‘clubhouse’ to centralize campus life, the Michigan Union opened its doors to students in 1907 – with one key caveat. For decades, women were barred from entering through the front door.

Alumnae from the 1920s through the 1960s share tales of the ‘good old days,’ as current women describe their U-M experience.

“Belle, Scholar, Athlete.” In the 1930s, a portrait in the Michigan League honored student Marian Van Tuyl as the epitome of young womanhood.