Next time you’re visiting the city of Ann Arbor in Michigan, you might want to be on the lookout for a series of small doors. But these aren’t just any type of ordinary doors. In fact, there’s no way you can fit into them, and neither could your pets, unless it’s a very tiny bird. No, these doors are reserved for one creature in mind, fairies. What? Yeah, you read right, fairies! The first one appeared in the baseboards of the home of Jonathan and Kathleen Wright in 1993. Since then, several other fairy doors have been discovered through the city, and people are falling head over heels in love with them.It seems that these types of installation art pieces have popped up in the city, and of the original ten plus doors, seven still exist today.
But you can see how easy it is to miss one of these, unless you’re really looking for one, or you’re a child with wandering eyes. When Wright first opened the fairy door he discovered in his home, he noticed that it had a staircase that lead to yet another door that remains locked. So who’s to say that a real fairy doesn’t live in there?
These adorable doors were built right into restaurants, shops, and buildings and are so tiny, people might even mistake them for decorative frames rather than fairy doors.
A decade later, he decided to share the joy of fairy doors with the entire town by selecting key locations to install some more fairy doors.
So ten days later, a second fairy door appeared outside of the Peaceable Kingdom. It wasn’t long before fairy doors appeared in the Michigan theater, the Ann Arbor District library, the Ark, the Red Shoes, Nicola’s Books, UofM Mott’s Children’s Hospital, the Found Gallery, and the Selo-Shevel Gallery.
Both children and grown-ups have left coins, drawings, trinkets, and other gifts for the fairies in hopes that the tiny gesture would be reciprocated by the magical creatures.
The fairy door at the Selo-Shevel Gallery vanished on April 14th, 2014. So did the fairy door located in the Jefferson Market, which closed on October 2007. But there’s hope. With the reopening of The Jefferson Market & Cakery, the townspeople can look forward to the potential reappearance of yet another door within the building.
