When Raoul Wallenberg arrived in Ann Arbor from Sweden in 1931, the young architecture major probably never would have predicted that the modest boarding house at 308 E. Madison St., where he lived that first year, would one day become a landmark.
But nearly a century later, U-M is going to great lengths to preserve Wallenberg’s former abode. Later this month, the house is scheduled to be lifted from its foundation and moved across town to sit beside the student home of another notable U-M alumnus, playwright Arthur Miller.
On the move
In May, the Board of Regents approved a plan to relocate Wallenberg’s former residence to the corner of Jefferson and Division streets, next door to Miller’s former home at 439 S. Division St. The move is part of site preparation for the new Central Campus Residential Development between Hoover Avenue and Hill Street, which will add more than 2,300 student beds to campus.
Construction crews began digging the new foundation on South Division Street earlier this fall, and the physical move is scheduled for Nov. 22. The hope is that the side-by-side houses will offer visitors a link between two U-M graduates who transformed the world, albeit in dramatically different ways — one through his humanitarianism, the other through his art.
Born in 1912 into one of Sweden’s most prominent families — often referred to as the “Rockefellers of Scandinavia” — Wallenberg was raised in privilege, yet he remained quite grounded. He arrived in Ann Arbor at the age of 19, drawn by the university’s international reputation.
Wallenberg’s letters home suggest he thrived in his new environment, biking and hitchhiking across campus, joining a debate society, watching Charlie Chaplin films at the Michigan Theater, and immersing himself in American life.
“I feel so at home in my little Ann Arbor that I’m beginning to sink down roots here and have a hard time imagining leaving it,” he wrote to his parents.
Classmates later recalled his warmth and humility. A 2012 Michigan Today story reveals that a former classmate once said Wallenberg declined to join a fraternity because it would isolate him from other, less prosperous students.
“There was just no snobbery about him,” the classmate recalled.
Wallenberg graduated from U-M in 1935 with high marks and a degree in architecture — then returned home to Europe.
Courage under fire
Less than a decade later, as the Holocaust reached Hungary, Wallenberg was sent to Budapest by the Allied forces as a special envoy to protect Jews from Nazi persecution.
Using his design skills, Wallenberg created thousands of protective “Schutz-Pass” passports, documents printed with the Swedish coat of arms that shielded Hungarian Jews from deportation. He also established safe houses under Swedish diplomatic protection and personally confronted German officers to secure passenger releases from trains bound for concentration camps.
By the war’s end, Wallenberg was credited with saving an estimated 70,000 people. But in January 1945, after Soviet troops entered Budapest, he was detained by the Russians and disappeared. His fate remains unknown. In 1981, the U.S. Congress made him an honorary American citizen, joining only Winston Churchill in receiving that distinction.
A house that holds stories
Back in Ann Arbor, Wallenberg’s old home was an unassuming student rental for decades, a wood-framed structure not unlike many others in downtown Ann Arbor. U-M students likely never guessed that a humanitarian hero once studied in its rooms.
U-M alumnus John White lived at 320 E. Madison St. in the mid-1960s, several doors down from Wallenberg’s former residence. “Our building was one of a pair of modern structures next to the Wallenberg House, but I was unaware of him and his history at U-M,” he wrote on Michigan Today’s website.
“In later years, I learned about his heroism and sacrifice from the History Channel, visited his monument and attended a lecture at the Hatcher Library. In that lecture, one of the slides included an artifact with his campus address. I was struck by the coincidence and shared it with my former roommates.
“I am the only one of us still in Ann Arbor so I have been keeping them advised with text and photos documenting the ‘repurposing’ of the entire block. While it was sad to see our old apartment be demolished, I am heartened to know that his campus home will be preserved for the coming generations of students.”
The future pairing of Wallenberg’s and Miller’s student homes seems symbolically fitting. Though they probably never met — Miller arrived in 1934 and Wallenberg graduated in 1935 — they did share formative years in Ann Arbor and the lessons they learned here were carried into their remarkable lives.
— This story has been adapted from a Michigan Today piece, “Won’t You Be My Neighbor,” by Deborah Holdship.
