In the early 1900s, when Irving K. Pond and his brother and business partner, Allen B. Pond, were hired by the University of Michigan to design the new Michigan Union, and, later, the Michigan League and Student Publications Building, they were well-regarded principals of the Chicago architecture firm Pond & Pond.
As architects, the brothers were known for favoring a fairly simple, functional design style and creating welcoming spaces. The Ponds completed more than 30 projects together, including the three on U-M’s campus.
The U-M projects hit close to home for the Ponds, literally. The brothers grew up in Ann Arbor, went to local schools, and both graduated from U-M — Irving in 1879 and Allen in 1880. The Michigan Union, on South State Street, was, by coincidence, built on the same lot where the Pond family home had once stood.
During Irving’s undergraduate years, he earned a degree in civil engineering and played on the football team. When he first arrived on campus, students had been playing “football” at the university for more than a decade, but the game bore more resemblance to soccer than to football as it’s known today. The team had, however, begun experimenting with rugby-style rules, and Wisconsin’s Racine College challenged U-M to a game under these new rules.
The matchup was played in May 1879, Irving’s last year as an undergrad and the first year football was recognized as a varsity sport at U-M. During that game, Irving scored U-M’s first official touchdown, crossing the goal line on a long run and helping U-M earn its first football victory in a new age of the game.
Irving’s recounting of the historic play in his autobiography suggests rules were a bit looser back then when it came to running out of bounds.
“To avoid being tackled, I was forced to mount the bleachers and run eastward along them until I was opposite the goal when I stopped suddenly and — fearing that a touchdown in the bleachers would not count — jumped over the heads of my pursuers to the ground,” he wrote.
Irving and Allen worked and lived together for most of their adult lives, until 1929, when Allen died. Shortly thereafter, Irving, 72, married Katherine N. de Nancrede, 47, in a ceremony that took place in Ann Arbor.
Irving remained extraordinarily fit until the end of his life, famously performing a backflip in 1937 on his 80th birthday in a photograph that ran in Life magazine. Pond died in 1939 at the age of 82, while visiting Washington, D.C.
