Public Profile

Ypsilanti is a small city in Washtenaw County, Michigan, located approximately seven miles east of Ann Arbor along the Huron River. It is the home of Eastern Michigan University and of a 1940s-era water tower — the Ypsilanti Water Tower, locally known by a descriptive nickname it has carried, with increasing formality, since the 1980s — that has been designated an official landmark of both the city and the Michigan Historical Commission.

The city was founded in 1823, incorporated in 1858, and named for the Greek War of Independence general Demetrios Ypsilantis, a connection the city has sustained, in the face of geographic and historical improbability, through an annual civic celebration, a bronze bust in a downtown park, and a sister-city relationship with Ypsilantis’s birthplace in Greece that has been maintained, with varying degrees of enthusiasm, since 1993.

Ypsilanti’s economy, historically tied to automotive manufacturing, has in recent decades reoriented toward the service and educational sectors. The city is known for a concentration of independent restaurants, a small but active arts community, and an unusually dense population of residents who will correct, on first meeting, any mispronunciation of the city’s name, which is pronounced — and this will be emphasized — “ip-si-LAN-tee,” with no accommodation for the silent p.

Local Character

Civic identity: Ypsilanti sustains a quiet and durable grievance against Ann Arbor, its larger and more prosperous neighbor, which it regards as having, over the years, claimed disproportionate credit for cultural and institutional developments in the region. This grievance is not often expressed directly but surfaces in the form of a preference, among residents, for describing their town without reference to Ann Arbor whenever possible, and for noting, when Ann Arbor is unavoidable in conversation, the difference in rent.

Local obsessions: The water tower. The proper pronunciation of the city’s name. The proper pronunciation of the city’s shorter nickname, “Ypsi.” The Washtenaw County Board of Zoning Appeals, whose meetings are attended, on any given month, by a roster of regulars who have views. The relative merits of the city’s two principal thoroughfares, Michigan Avenue and Washtenaw Avenue, which residents tend to prefer unequally and without any particular basis.

Useful for: Stories involving Midwestern civic life, small-city grievance, post-industrial reorientation, the University of Michigan’s long shadow, or any narrative in which a resident can be plausibly said to hold, for many years and without correction, a private conviction that the surrounding community has elected not to contest.