HauntBound archive · catalog record
Reported phenomena — as catalogued
An 1853 Greek Revival home where Reuben and Pauline Kempf taught music for over six decades, now a city-run museum offering docent-led tours where visitors report creaking floors and the sense of a lingering presence.
312 S Division St, Ann Arbor, MI 48104
Research updated June 2026
Age
All Ages
Cost
Free
Free or donation-based; check the museum website for current tour policy.
Access
Limited Access
Historic 1.5-story home with stairs; first floor only is partially navigable for mobility-impaired visitors.
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1853 · Listed on the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP 73000959, March 1, 1973) · One of the best-preserved Greek Revival temple-front residences in Ann Arbor · Home of Reuben and Pauline Kempf, central figures in Ann Arbor's musical culture · Held Ann Arbor's first grand piano, played by Paderewski, Victor Herbert, and Schumann-Heink
The house at 312 South Division was built in 1853 by Henry DeWitt Bennett and his wife Mary, who had relocated from New York. Bennett served as Ann Arbor's postmaster in the 1850s and later as steward and secretary of the University of Michigan before retiring to California. The structure is a frame, 1.5-story Greek Revival temple-form home distinguished by four massive squared Doric columns across the front.
In 1890 the home passed to Reuben and Pauline Kempf, both raised in Ann Arbor's German community. Pauline, daughter of the German consul, had studied at the Cincinnati Conservatory; Reuben had trained at Stuttgart's Royal Conservatory, where he was a classmate of Victor Herbert. The couple established a music studio in the front parlor and made the house a center of Ann Arbor's musical life for six decades, keeping the front door unlocked so students could let themselves in and wait their turn on the red sofa. Their Steinway grand piano, an 1877 concert grand with 85 keys that is said to have been the first grand piano in Ann Arbor, was loaned to the University of Michigan and played by visitors including Paderewski, Victor Herbert, and Ernestine Schumann-Heink; it remains in the restored studio today, alongside the twin mirrors Pauline's voice students used to check their posture. Reuben organized the Lyra Male Choir; Pauline served as the first choir director at the Congregational Church.
Reuben died in 1945 and Pauline in 1953. The home passed briefly to an intermediate owner before the City of Ann Arbor acquired it in 1969. The Kempf House was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on March 1, 1973 (NRHP reference 73000959). Since 1983 it has operated as the Kempf House Center for Local History, a city-owned museum, with the music studio largely restored to the condition the Kempfs left it in.
Sources
Visitors and docents at the Kempf House describe creaking floors, stray voices, and the occasional glimpsed figure in rooms that spent six decades filled with piano scales and voice lessons. In a house whose front door was famously left unlocked so music students could let themselves in, the reported activity has a matching domestic gentleness: the sounds of someone quietly about the place, and nothing more dramatic than that.
The documentation is thin, and honesty requires saying so. The claims trace to a single local haunted-places roundup; one version attributes the activity to a named former resident, but no person of that name appears in the archival record, which identifies the home's occupants from 1890 to 1953 as the music teachers Reuben and Pauline Kempf. The museum's own materials and the Ann Arbor District Library's coverage do not mention paranormal activity at all.
The lore is best understood as a soft old-house tradition: a well-preserved 1853 temple-form home settles, drafts move through original wood floors, and a parlor built around a Steinway concert grand carries sound in odd ways. Visitors should treat the haunting claims as folklore rather than documented phenomena; the house rewards a visit either way.
Notable Entities
Docent-led tour of the 1853 Greek Revival home, including the restored music studio where the Kempfs taught and the front parlor that held Ann Arbor's first grand piano. Check the museum website for current open-house dates and tour times.
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