Beyond the Big House: What Makes the University of Michigan Unique?

Most people know the University of Michigan for football. Spend a day on its campus in Ann Arbor, about an hour west of Detroit, though, and a very different picture comes into focus. You’ll find traditions and landmarks that few other colleges can match: two giant sets of bells played by hand, superstitions people still take seriously, the steps where the idea for the Peace Corps gained momentum, a law school that resembles a Gothic castle, and 123 acres of free green space.

Michigan is also big enough to back that up. Founded in 1817 under the odd name Catholepistemiad, it enrolled 53,488 students in fall 2025 across 3,299 acres.

Giant Bell Towers Played by Hand

A carillon is a large set of bronze bells that a musician plays from a keyboard, much like a piano. Most colleges have none. Michigan has two, and both are the largest class of the instrument, called grand carillons.

The first hangs inside Burton Memorial Tower on Central Campus. Architect Albert Kahn designed the tower, which opened in 1936. Its 53 bells range from a 12-ton giant that strikes every hour down to small ones you could lift with your hands. Charles Baird, Michigan’s first athletic director, paid for them, so a sports leader helped give Ann Arbor its signature sound. At night, colored lights inside the tower make it glow.

The second sits in Lurie Tower on North Campus, about two miles away across the Huron River. Hearing both in one visit means crossing the river, and North Campus sits far enough from the Diag that most people underestimate the trip. Completed in the mid-1990s, it stands roughly 165 feet tall and holds 60 of its own, cast in the Netherlands.

Because a real person plays each song, the music you hear on the way to class is live, not a recording.

Watch Your Step: Michigan’s Campus Superstitions

In the middle of the Diag, the big open square where the main walkways cross, a bronze Block M sits in the ground. The Class of 1953 donated it, and students have walked around it ever since. Three traditions surround it:

• Legend says that stepping on the M before your first blue book exam, a handwritten college test, means you will fail it.
• In the older version of the tale, you can undo the curse by running from the Museum of Natural History to the bell tower and back before the midnight bells stop ringing. The museum has since moved, but the story lives on.
• Before each Michigan State game, members of one fraternity guard the M day and night to keep rival fans from painting it green.

Not far away, at the corner of Hill Street and Washtenaw Avenue, stands a large boulder everyone knows as the Rock. It arrived in 1932 to honor George Washington’s 200th birthday. Since the 1950s, student groups have painted it again and again with birthday wishes, messages for causes they support, and game-week slogans, so the layers of paint keep piling up.

JFK, the Michigan Union, and the Peace Corps

The Peace Corps, the U.S. program that sends volunteers to work in other countries, traces part of its start to a late-night speech at Michigan.

Around 2 a.m. on October 14, 1960, John F. Kennedy, then a senator running for president, arrived at the Michigan Union, the main student center. Thousands of students were waiting outside. Kennedy stood on the front steps and, without a prepared speech, asked how many of them would give years of their lives to serve abroad. The crowd answered by organizing and signing pledges to volunteer, and that response helped push the idea forward. The Peace Corps launched a few months later.

Today, a medallion marks the spot where Kennedy stood, and a plaque near the entrance tells the story. The Union still works as the heart of student life, with places to eat and study inside.

A Law Library Built Like a Cathedral

Across South University Avenue from the Diag, the Law Quadrangle looks nothing like a typical college building. Its Gothic stone halls surround a quiet courtyard and could pass for a corner of Oxford. The complex is named after William W. Cook, an alumnus who paid for much of it.

The highlight is the library’s reading room, with high, arched ceilings and stained-glass windows. Many visitors say it reminds them of Hogwarts from the Harry Potter films. The quad also includes the Lawyers Club, where more than 200 future lawyers live, and an underground library with three floors of books.

Guests can sit in an open section of the reading room to read or study quietly. Access is sometimes limited to Law School ID holders.

The Arb, and the Gardens Beyond It

On the east side of campus lies Nichols Arboretum, which locals shorten to the Arb. It began as a planned landscape in 1907, and today anyone can walk in for free every day from sunrise to sunset. Visitors who expect flat Midwestern land instead find steep hills, meadows, and woods.

• In late May and June, the W.E. Upjohn Peony Garden bursts into bloom. It holds one of North America’s largest collections of historic peonies, and the flowers last only a few weeks.
• A trail winds down to the Huron River, a favorite route for runners and walkers.
• For a winter outing, Matthaei Botanical Gardens, a sister site northeast of town, offers an indoor conservatory open all year and the state’s largest public bonsai collection.

Together with two smaller natural areas, the Arb and Matthaei cover more than 840 acres, about 25 percent of all the land the university uses in Ann Arbor.

A School Defined by More Than Football

Michigan’s Latin motto, Artes, Scientia, Veritas, means arts, knowledge, and truth, and the school has pursued all three for a long time. In 1870, it admitted its first woman student, Madelon Stockwell, and a residence hall still bears her name.

So come for a football game if you like. Just know the stadium may be the least surprising thing you see.