4 — Wednesday, August 3, 2022
4 — Wednesday, August 3, 2022
It’s always a beautiful day in the
neighborhood; that is, if you’re willing to
crouch down in a variety of public places
across Ann Arbor.
In the late winter of 2020, the city felt
relatively bleak. With almost the entire
freshman class (including myself) being
kicked out of the dorms, any potential for
normalcy on campus and in Ann Arbor
diminished to a faint, distant loss. With
most students my year either completing
the semester entirely online or from
inconveniently
located
off-campus
housing, the true community we had
signed up for was, for the time being, a
figment of the imagination.
That desolation hit the city of Ann
Arbor hard, elevating the already present
economic struggle of local, well-loved
businesses. Places that were once city
staples were boarded up, replaced
by national chains at best and left
indefinitely empty at worst.
College looked different than we had
anticipated. Ann Arbor looked different
than it ever had before. It was, or at least,
it felt, hopeless.
Until, on one unsurprising yet
depressingly dark afternoon, a red door,
and then a smaller replica of that same
red door, entered my line of vision. That
door was located on 332 S. Ashley Street,
the now-empty home of Red Shoes, a
beloved gift shop that closed upon the
owner’s unfortunate passing in 2021, was
my first discovery. Besides the fact that it
faces a parking lot on
a street few people
think to walk on, it’s
a hard structure to
miss. A bright blue
house with a bright
red
door,
inviting
curious
eyes
to
wonder what’s going
on inside.
Standing at about
seven inches, built
into the store’s blue
shutters as if it had
been there all along,
was what I would
come to know as
a “fairy door.” A puzzling, delightful
suggestion that there was more to the
world than what it looked like in this
desolate moment.
My fascination with the miniature
door at Red Shoes led me to Googling
“tiny doors Ann Arbor,” which eventually
got me to the wonderful, early-2000s
rabbit hole that is urban-fairies.com.
The website, run by Ann Arbor’s very
own “certified fairyologist,” Jonathan
It’s a beautiful day in Jonathan Wright’s neighborhood
It’s a beautiful day in Jonathan Wright’s neighborhood
Read more at michigandaily.com
Design by Jennie Vang
Design by Jennie Vang
Wright, details every fairy door that has
“appeared” around the city since 1993.
It also houses information about Urban
Fairies Operation, LLC, Wright’s way of
extending Ann Arbor’s magic into the
larger fabric of folklore and fairytales.
What the website won’t tell you is
that these fairy doors are the result of
decades of research and architectural
work from Wright. Though the doors
are undeniably magical, the man behind
their creation and
lore may be even
more so.
Since graduating
from the University
of
Michigan
in
1983,
Jonathan
Wright’s
personal
and professional life
have been woven by
magic. The first fairy
door “appeared” in
his home a decade
later, to the delight
of his two then-
young children. In
the
almost
three
decades since, doors have been spotted
in the storefronts of local businesses, a
classroom at a local elementary school
(where his wife, Kathleen, teaches
kindergarten) and even in the lobby of
Mott’s Children’s Hospital. They seem to
be everywhere, and yet, they can be hard
to find. As Ann Arbor changes, the fairy
doors often follow suit, disappearing
and reappearing as the city adapts to a
stagnant cycle of social and economic
change.
One of the first locations to house
Wright’s fairies was The Peaceable
Kingdom, a gift shop that operated at
210 S. Main Street until 2017. Other
locations, like Red Shoes, Voilà and Selo/
Shevel Gallery have also closed since the
entrance of the fairies, though some of
their doors are still intact.
In my now-daily pursuit to find every
fairy door within walking distance
of my apartment, it was easy to feel
disappointed at the number of boarded-
up windows and closed doors (both
miniature and regular) on every street.
Photo courtesy of Jonathan Wright
By Emily Blumberg,
Statement Correspondent