This is a list of the National Register of Historic Places listings in Detroit, Michigan.
This is intended to be a complete list of the properties and districts on the National Register of Historic Places in Detroit, Michigan, United States. Latitude and longitude coordinates are provided for many National Register properties and districts; these locations may be seen together in an online map.
There are 364 properties and districts listed on the National Register in Wayne County, including 14 National Historic Landmarks. The city of Detroit is the location of 283 of these properties and districts, including 10 National Historic Landmarks; those outside downtown and midtown are listed here, while the properties and districts outside Detroit, including 4 National Historic Landmarks, are listed separately. A single property straddles the city limits and thus appears on both lists.
Geographical areas The properties on this list are within the city of Detroit but outside of the Downtown/Midtown area bounded by the Lodge Freeway (M-10) to the west, the Edsel Ford Freeway (I-94) on the north, the Chrysler Freeway (I-75) and Interstate 375 on the east, and the Detroit River to the south. Properties on this list are further divided into geographical areas: New Center Area: North of Midtown and bounded by the Lodge Freeway on the west, I-94 on the south, Woodward Avenue on the east, and Seward Avenue on the north. North End: North of the New Center and bounded by the Woodward Avenue on the west, East Grand Blvd. on the south, I-75 on the east, and Highland Park on the north. Palmer Park Area: Bounded by Highland Park and McNichols Rd. on the south, Livernois on the west, Eight Mile on the north, and Woodward on the east. Corktown – Woodbridge: West of Downtown and bounded by I-96 to the east, I-94 on the south, the Lodge Freeway to the east, and the Detroit River to the south. Southwest Detroit: The section of Detroit west of Corktown – Woodbridge and south of Michigan Avenue. Eastern Market Area: The section of Detroit east of Downtown/Midtown and immediately adjacent to Eastern Market. Jefferson Corridor: The section of Detroit east of Downtown and Eastern Market and south of Kercheval. West Side: The remainder of Detroit not already delineated west of Woodward Avenue. East Side: The remainder of Detroit not already delineated east of Woodward Avenue.
There are 156 properties and districts listed on the National Register in Detroit outside of Downtown and Midtown, including five National Historic Landmarks and one property straddling the border with River Rouge, Michigan. There are 126 more properties and districts listed on the National Register in Downtown and Midtown Detroit, including four National Historic Landmarks. These other properties are listed at National Register of Historic Places listings in Downtown and Midtown Detroit.
All together there are 282 properties and districts listed on the National Register in Detroit proper. Nine additional properties and districts, including one National Historic Landmark, are located in the Detroit enclave of Highland Park. Three properties are located in the Detroit enclave of Hamtramck. The properties and districts in these two Detroit enclaves, plus 75 others, are listed in this list of non-Detroit NRHP listings in Wayne County.
District # of Sites 1 Downtown and Midtown Detroit 127 2 Remainder of Detroit 156 3 Outer Wayne County, Hamtramck, & Highland Park 92 (Duplicates): (1)West Jefferson Avenue – Rouge River Bridge in both Detroit and Wayne County listings Total: 374
History of Detroit
Beginnings
Detroit, settled in 1701, is one of the oldest cities in the Midwest. It experienced a disastrous fire in 1805 which nearly destroyed the city, leaving little present-day evidence of old Detroit save a few east-side streets named for early French settlers, their ancestors, and some pear trees which were believed to have been planted by early missionaries. After the fire, Judge Augustus B. Woodward designed a plan of evenly spaced public parks with interconnecting semi-circular and diagonal streets. Although Woodward's plan was not fully implemented, the basic outline in still in place today in the heart of the city. Main thoroughfares radiate outward from the center of the city like spokes in a wheel, with Jefferson Avenue running parallel to the river, Woodward Avenue running perpendicular to it, and Gratiot, Michigan, and Grand River Avenues interspersed. A sixth main street, Fort, wanders downriver from the center of the city.
After Detroit rebuilt in the early 19th century, a thriving community soon sprang up, and by the Civil War, over 45,000 people were living in the city,Gibson, Campbell (June 1998). "POPULATION OF THE 100 LARGEST CITIES AND OTHER URBAN PLACES IN THE UNITED STATES: 1790 TO 1990" . Population Division, U.S. Bureau of the Census. Retrieved on 2006-04-02 primarily spread along Jefferson Avenue to the east and Fort Street to the west. As in many major American cities, subsequent redevelopment of the central city through the next 150 years has eliminated all but a handful of the antebellum structures in Detroit. The oldest remaining structures are those built as private residences, including a group in the Corktown neighborhood and another set of houses strung along Jefferson Avenue—notably the Charles Trowbridge House (1826, the oldest known structure in the city), the Joseph Campau House (1835), the Sibley House (1848), the Beaubien House (1851), and the Moross House (1855). Other extant pre-1860 structures include Fort Wayne (1849); Saints Peter and Paul Church (1848) and Mariner's Church (1849); and scattered commercial buildings (one in Randolph Street Commercial Buildings Historic District, for example); Unfortunately, the demolition of historic structures continues into the present day: multiple structures listed on the Register, including the Alexander Chene House (1855), have been demolished in the last decade.
Rise of industry and commerce As Detroit grew into a thriving hub of commerce and industry, the city spread along Jefferson, with multiple manufacturing firms taking advantage of the transportation resources afforded by the river and a parallel rail line. The shipyard that eventually became the Dry Dock Engine Works-Detroit Dry Dock Company Complex opened on the Detroit River at the foot of Orleans in 1852; Parke-Davis established a center between East Jefferson Avenue and the river in the 1870s; another pharmaceutical firm, the Frederick Stearns Company, built a plant in the same area in the 1890s. Globe Tobacco built a manufacturing facility closer to downtown in 1888.
The rise of manufacturing led to a new class of wealthy industrialists, entrepreneurs, and professionals. Some of these nouveau riche built along East Jefferson, resulting in structures such as the Thomas A. Parker House (1868), the Croul-Palms House (1881), the William H. Wells House (1889), the John N. Bagley House (1889), and the Frederick K. Stearns House (1902). However, Detroit began increasingly to turn away from the river, and other citizens pushed north of downtown, building houses along Woodward in what was at the time a quiet residential area. Many of these neighborhoods have disappeared under 20th-century commercialization of the Woodward corridor, but some Victorian structures remain, notably the Elisha Taylor House (1870) and the Hudson-Evans House (1872), both near the Woodward East Historic District; and the Col. Frank J. Hecker House (1888) and the Charles Lang Freer House (1887) in the East Ferry Avenue Historic District. Near the end of the 19th century, apartment living became more acceptable for affluent middle-class families, and upscale apartments, such as the Coronado Apartments (1894), the Verona Apartments (1894), the Palms Apartments (1903), the Davenport Apartments (1905) in the Cass-Davenport Historic District, and the Garden Court Apartments (1915) were constructed to meet the new demand.
These well-to-do late-19th-century residents also funded the construction of a spate of churches, such as the Cass Avenue Methodist Episcopal Church (1883), the First Presbyterian Church (1889), the Trinity Episcopal Church (1890) (built by James E. Scripps), and the First Unitarian Church (1890).
Immigration Detroit has long been a city of immigrants, from the early French and English settlers in the 18th century, through the Irish who settled in the Corktown neighborhood in the 1840s, to the Greeks, who settled in the Greektown neighborhood in the early 20th century and the southern whites and African-Americans who came to Detroit in the years before the Great Depression. Detroit's industrial boom in the later 19th century created yet another stream of immigrants into Detroit. Perhaps the most significant contingents during this period were the German and Polish immigrants who settled in Detroit in the 1860–1890s. Germans came first, establishing German-speaking churches, primarily on the east side of the city, including Saint John's-St. Luke's Evangelical Church (1872), St. Joseph Catholic Church (1873), and Sacred Heart Church (1875), as well as social clubs such as the Harmonie Club (1894) and west-side churches such as St. Boniface (1882) and Gethsemane Evangelical Lutheran Church (1891). Close behind, a wave of Polish immigrants established east-side Roman Catholic parishes such as St. Albertus (1885), Sweetest Heart Of Mary (1893), St. Josaphat's (1901), St. Stanislaus (1911), and St. Thomas the Apostle Catholic Church (1923). The Poles also settled on the west side, founding West Side Dom Polski (1916).
Birth of the automobile Around the start of the 20th century, entrepreneurs in the Detroit area—notably Henry Ford—forged into production of the automobile, capitalizing on the already-existing machine tool and coach-building industry in the city. Early automotive production is recognizable by structures such as the Ford Piquette Avenue Plant (1904) (a National Historic Landmark), and multiple structures in the surrounding Piquette Avenue Industrial Historic District (including the now-destroyed E-M-F/Studebaker Plant, 1906) and the New Amsterdam Historic District (including the original Cadillac factory, 1905) and small factories such as the Crescent Brass and Pin Company Building (1905).
Automobile assembly and associated manufacturing soon dominated Detroit, and the newly minted automotive magnates built commercial and office buildings such as General Motors Building (1919), the General Motors Research Laboratory (1928), and the Fisher Building (1928).
Changes wrought by the automobile The development of the automobile industry led to rising demands for labor, which were filled by huge numbers of newcomers from Europe and the American South. Between 1900 and 1930, the city's population soared from 265,000 to over 1.5 million, pushing the boundaries of the city outward. The population boom led to the construction of apartment buildings across the city, aimed at the middle-class auto worker. These include the Somerset Apartments (1922), the Garden Court Apartments (1915), and the Manchester Apartments (1915).
At the same time, new upscale neighborhoods farther from the center of the city sprang up, including Boston-Edison, Indian Village, and Palmer Woods. The wealthy moved into these more exclusive neighborhoods as the once-exclusive Woodward Avenue neighborhoods (such as the Warren-Prentis Historic District and the Willis-Selden Historic District) became mixed with apartments and commercial buildings. As the population spread outwards, new churches were constructed to serve the newly populated areas, notably the Roman Catholic Cathedral of the Most Blessed Sacrament (1913), the Woodward Avenue Presbyterian Church (1908), the Metropolitan United Methodist Church (1922), and the St. Theresa of Avila Roman Catholic Church (1919).