Burns Park

For decades, Burns Park has possessed a cachet as the city’s most prestigious elementary school neighborhood. In addition to its namesake park, the district includes part of the U-M student ghetto in the north, an area of modest single-family homes off Packard to the south, and the understated luxury of the streets east of Washtenaw.

Near Hill Street just south of the main U-M campus, older houses occupied by longtime residents mingle with large fraternity, sorority, and cooperative houses and student apartment buildings. More student rentals sprinkle the area west of Packard and north of Granger. On both sides of Packard, the proportion of student housing drops off sharply as you travel south.

Back in 1890 Burns Park was the Washtenaw County Agricultural and Horticultural Society’s fairgrounds. Today expensive single-family homes favored by academics surround its ball fields. Northeast of the park, the shady streets climb the gentle slopes of the area known as Ives Woods, which has one of the highest median household incomes in Ann Arbor. Even higher in income is the area across Washtenaw, where expensive homes on large, wooded lots, including some new construction, dot the streets stretching east toward Huron Parkway.

Students from this area all go to Tappan Middle School, but then they split, with those east of Washtenaw going to Huron High, and the rest to Pioneer. Students from two outlying areas are bused to Burns Park (see Southeast map): the large apartment complexes northeast of the intersection of US-23 and Washtenaw, and a small area on Ainsley near Golfside in Pittsfield Township. These students go on to Scarlett Middle School (except for a few living north of Clark who are in the Clague area) and to Huron High.