For its first 50 years and more, the University ran on horsepower. The employees of the Building and Grounds Department operated two teams of horses — the “brown team” and this one, the “bay team.” (See larger image.)

Many decades before Nike’s Jordan brand scored the contract to provide shoes for the Michigan Wolverines, professional cobblers fashioned the football team’s shoes from scratch. Here, two Ann Arbor shoemakers of the 1890s sew shoes for the varsity players. (See larger image.)

U-M’s first employee outside the faculty was probably a custodian named Pat Kelly, known among the students as “Professor Dust and Ashes,” who woke them with a bell for chapel at 5:30 every morning. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of custodians have succeeded Kelly to keep U-M clean. One of them was Henry Penfield, who posed with his broom on the porch of the Dental School building in 1897. (See larger image.)

There has always been a staff that kept an eye on the place after hours. This 1901 photo shows two night watchmen, the mustachioed Reuben Armbruster and his young colleague, William Hamilton, standing guard at the old Chemical Laboratory — built in 1856. The building was converted to the use of the Economics Department in the 20th century, destroyed by arson on Christmas Eve 1981. (See larger image.)

As the University grew, mounting paperwork required a growing phalanx of clerical workers, including the University’s first female employees. Here, we see male and female staff in the offices of the Alumni Association, about 1910. (See larger image.)

The spreading network of infrastructure connecting the campus’ buildings demanded the hiring of laborers like these men, taking a break from the excavation of a tunnel for a heating pipe under the Diag in 1916. (See larger image.)

When the great American car craze swept the campus in the 1920s, U-M had to hire traffic cops. One of them was Chester Youngs, whose lanky frame and cartoonish visage reminded students of the cartoon character Andy Gump. So Youngs became universally known as “Andy.” A student poet immortalized him as follows: So Andy won his place on the force / by patience and persistence / with the aid of a figure nobly shaped / to cut down wind resistance. / Our hero isn’t a social climber, / in appearance unpretentious. / But when it comes to stopping cars / he’s doggone conscientious. (See larger image.)

By now horse-drawn wagons had given way to a fleet of University trucks. Here a pair of men sit atop a mountain of University laundry. Behind them looms another mountain, this one of University coal. (See larger image.)

Laundry needs were especially heavy at University Hospital, where an entire building was set aside as the University Laundry, staffed chiefly by women laundresses like these, shown in a 1928 photo. The facility had to be expanded again and again. (See larger image.)

This was the laundry’s curtain-and-collar department in 1934. (See larger image.)

The campus and its athletic fields were tended by groundskeepers, including Lorenzo “Tommy” Thomas, who worked for the Athletic Department for decades. Here Thomas issues orders to an underling at Ray Fisher Stadium in 1937. (See larger image.)

As campus logistics became increasingly complex and interconnected, the University expanded its fleet of delivery vehicles. Here, a U-M truck driver named Ed Crittenden has his delivery list approved by Harold Hale, a clerk with the food service. (See larger image.)

Michigan’s long winters required an elaborate and well-tended infrastructure to heat the ever-growing campus. Here Lee Curtis, head boiler operator, mans the dials in the heating plant’s control room in 1969. (See larger image.)