The site chosen was the twenty-five acre LaPointe estate, on Washtenaw Avenue between Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti. "Ann Arbor was a prime area because of the high population of students," explains Figaro. "Our seminary was between the University of Michigan and the Ypsilanti Normal College [now EMU]." Built in the 1920s by Francis LaPointe, the founder of American Broach, the estate had been owned since the early 1940s by Vladimir Bibicoff, a Russian émigré.