Mike Dawes

Listening room

The Ark

Downtown · 316 S Main St, Ann Arbor, MI

The Ark is Ann Arbor’s nonprofit folk and roots room. In 1965 four churches — First Presbyterian, Calvary Presbyterian, Northside Presbyterian, and Campus Chapel — set it up in Hill House at 1421 Hill Street; it had the name The Ark by December 1965. David and Linda Siglin managed it for 39 years. It later moved to a Main Street warehouse and, in 1996, to 316 S. Main Street, where it seats about 400. The Ark bought that building at the end of 2012. The Ann Arbor Folk Festival began in 1976, and the club became a 501(c)(3) in the late 1970s.