When the Sumner Hicks house was recently listed for sale, more than a piece of property went up on the market. It was a piece of Ann Arbor history.

The Sumner Hicks house, at 163 years old, is one of the city’s oldest residential dwellings.

The historic Greek revival-style house, built on a parcel of land at 936 Wall St., was moved to its location at 1335 Traver St. in 2002 when the original site was cleared to make way for condominiums, said Maris Laporter, listing agent with the Snyder Group at Reinhart.

The house was put up for sale last month and is now listed at $399,000. The house belongs to Yulia Hanansen and Web Stayman, who have owned the house since it was moved to its new location. The couple moved from Ann Arbor this summer.

The one-and-a-half story, 1,700-square-foot house with wrap-around porch and clapboard exterior honors the old but embraces the new, Laporter said. With original pine and maple floors, wavy float glass windows in the two front doors and original hardware on the doors - along with ties to the Underground Railroad - the house is historically significant.

But it’s not dated: It sits on a new basement with a new foundation, has three full baths, a finished and carpeted basement with nine-foot ceilings and new wiring and plumbing. All of the clapboards were replaced when it was moved.

“They’ve taken an old, historic house and made it livable for the modern family,” Laporter said.

The modern touches also include stainless steel appliances, a high-end Wolf oven, new kitchen cupboards and a large mosaic mural above the stove. Hanansen, who owned Mosaic Sphere Studio in downtown Ann Arbor before it moved to Baltimore, created the blue nautilus mural. Even with the modern touches, the history hasn’t been lost, said historic preservationist Susan Wineberg. The wide floorboards can be seen from the basement and the upstairs doors have the old-fashioned thumb latch hardware rather than doorknobs, she said. There’s the original stairway and rooms without closets.

The house has a number of rooms that can be used as flexible space: The first floor has a parlor and family room/library, a dining room, small extra room at the rear, kitchen and full bath. The second floor has three bedrooms, but one doesn’t have a closet.

The house is listed has having three bedrooms - two upstairs and one in the basement. But it has the potential of six bedrooms if the rooms without closets were used, Laporter said.

Photo slideshow by Lon Horwedel

The frame house, painted a bright chartreusse with white trim and surrounded by fruit trees and a garden, is tucked away on a parcel of land off of Traver Street. While it carries a Traver Street address, it can’t be seen from the road. Instead, it’s nestled between other houses, on a plot of land that was once a meadow and community garden, Laporter said.

“It’s a neighborhood of historic homes. This is the original part of Ann Arbor that was settled. When the University of Michigan came here, the city moved further south.”

Sumner Hicks, one of Ann Arbor’s early settlers, built the house in 1846. The city was founded in 1824.

The house comes with its own mystery: When the house was moved and renovated in 2002, workers found a leather-covered friendship book (akin to today’s autograph books) hidden in an exterior wall. How and why is got there is a mystery, Laporter said.

The book, with some worm-eaten pages, belonged to Phyla Baker, wife of Ann Arbor minister and well-known abolitionist Guy Beckley, whose house on Pontiac Trail was a stop on the Underground Railroad. When they both died, at least one of their children moved in with Olive and Sumner Hicks. Olive was Beckley’s sister.

The book will come with the house, Laporter said.