There was a time when Stroh’s was as synonymous with Detroit as cars or Motown. It also laid claim to being the largest family-owned and -operated brewery in the nation. In fact, the Stroh’s family had become brewers before the United States had even become a country.

Here’s how Stroh’s went from being a legendary success to a legendary catastrophe.

It all started in Germany

Innkeeper Johann Peter Stroh was brewing beer in his hometown of Kirn, Germany, by at least 1775, if not earlier. His son Georg Friedrich Stroh learned the trade from him and passed along those learnings to his son Bernhard Stroh.

The mid-1850s saw great political upheaval in Germany, and in 1848, Bernhard Stroh left for a German settlement in Brazil. Finding it not to his liking, with $150 in his pocket, a suitcase in one hand and his family’s treasured beer recipe in the other, he left to check out Chicago instead in the summer of 1850. On the way, his passenger steamer from Buffalo, N.Y., made a stop in Detroit and, liking what he saw, he decided to stay. He was just shy of his 28th birthday, and Detroit was a small but growing city of about 20,000 thirsty souls.

Stroh used that $150 - about $6,000 in 2025 money, when adjusted for inflation - to set up a small brewery at what was then 57 Catherine St. on Detroit’s near-east side. Most of the beers available in the city at that time were ales and porters in English or Scottish styles. Detroit was seeing a large influx of German immigrants at the time, many of whom longed for the Bohemian style brews of their homeland. Stroh was happy to oblige, and began offering up a lighter lager brewed one barrel at a time. Being a small business just getting off the ground, he personally delivered it in small kegs he hauled around in a wheelbarrow.

By 1865, at the end of the Civil War, Stroh had outgrown his small brewery and bought land on Gratiot Avenue near the present-day site of Interstate-375 that would become the eventual home of the country’s third largest brewery. He excavated land to create an underground cellar to age and store his beer. Above it, he built a larger brewery that came to be known as the Lion Brewery, thanks to Stroh adopting the crest from Kyrburg Castle in his native Kirn, Germany. The crest would become one of the better-known Detroit logos for more than 100 years.

The lighter beer was a huge hit with Detroiters, and this enabled Stroh to branch out into brewing other types of European beers, including what became the most popular: Stroh’s Bohemian, a hoppier offering that was fire-brewed.

In 1882, the Lion Brewery became the B. Stroh Brewing Co., and, in 1909, it changed its name to the Stroh Brewery Co.

Family. Legacy. Tradition.

Bernhard Stroh Sr. died June 24, 1882, at just 59 years old, and Bernhard Jr., his eldest son, became the brewery’s president. It was under his stewardship that the company would expand its reach and usher in new technologies, such as switching from horse-drawn delivery wagons to electric trucks. Bernhard Stroh Jr. would see Stroh’s shipped as far west as Winnipeg, Canada; as far east as Boston; and as far south as Florida.

The Stroh Brewery would eventually grown into a million-square-foot factory, with buildings dating from the 1860s to 1914. In late 1890, the firm Spier & Rohns was hired to make extensive additions and improvements to the Stroh campus, including a 25-foot-by-70-foot fireproof stockhouse, a 60-foot-by-100-foot bottling works, and a new ice-machine plant. These additions officially made the brewery the largest in Michigan and formed some of the most visible parts of the plant.

As Detroit entered the 20th century, it was home to nearly two dozen breweries, with Goebel, E&B and Pfieffer being the other three of Detroit’s Sudsy Big Four. At the time, Stroh’s was selling more than 50,000 barrels of beer each year, and the brewmaster at the time was Otto Rosenbusch. In 1908, his son Herman A. Rosenbusch began working at Stroh’s, too, and would stay on for more than 50 years and rising to the title of brewmaster like his father. Herman A.’s son Herman K. Rosenbusch would join Stroh’s and became brewmaster in 1937. It was another example of the importance of family legacy at the company.

Bernhard Jr.’s health led him to hand control of the business over to his brother Julius Stroh in 1908. Bernhard Jr. would pass away on April 4, 1916, dying at age 61 - not much older than his father.

Julius and Otto Rosenbusch often traveled around Europe to observe the brewing methods used in the Old World. A few years after assuming the presidency of the company, Julius Stroh became adamant that fire-brewed beer just tasted better than those brewed with steam, and implemented that traditional practice using copper kettles into the new brewhouse that was built from 1912 to 1914 along Gratiot. The bet paid off, and as Detroit grew to 1 million residents in 1910, Stroh’s grew, too, selling 300,000 barrels a year.

But Stroh’s growth would soon hit the brakes thanks to a little thing called Prohibition.

Roll out the barrel ... of ice cream

The story of Prohibition has been told many times over, so we won’t do so here. However, it’s important to note that though Prohibition didn’t take effect nationally until January 1920, it became effective in Michigan on May 1, 1918. The state’s largest brewery found itself forced out of the brewery business.

Julius Stroh was determined to keep the family business going, however, and rather than shut down like many of the city’s other breweries, he started making near-beers, birch beer, sodas, ice, malt extract and, most famously, ice cream. You can still buy Stroh’s ice cream today, though that business was sold by the Stroh family in 2007 to Dean Foods.

The ice cream was such a hit - thanks in part to the rise in popularity of ice cream parlors at the time - that even after Prohibition was repealed in 1933, Stroh’s continued to sell it even after resuming its beer-making operations. The company dropped its other Prohibition-era products.

Because it hadn’t shuttered its doors and kept a workforce during Prohibition, it had an advantage over many other breweries. By the end of 1933, Stroh’s had shipped 102,000 barrels of beer in the six months since repeal. A year later, that number jumped to 439,000, necessitating new storage cellars to be built in 1936.

Julius Stroh died June 2, 1939, and leadership of the company was taken over by his son Gari Melchers Stroh, who would lead the company for the next 11 years. As president, Gari Stroh would significantly modernize the brewery while refusing to compromise on quality, even during the rationing years of World War II.

Mid-century modernization

Gari Stroh had a second set of six giant copper kettles installed in the brewhouse, and had its storage and aging facilities expanded yet again and a new packaging facility built, which opened in 1950. This helped the brewery roll out 2.7 million barrels of beer — 83.7 million gallons - by 1956.

Gari Stroh died June 26, 1950, at age 58, dying young like his father and grandfather before him. His younger brother, John W. Stroh, stepped up, but he was no stranger to the brewing business, having started working there in 1908, pasting labels on cases when he was a schoolboy.

It was under John Stroh’s leadership that the brewery would see further expansion, with new cellars, a major addition to the brewhouse and larger packing and shipping facilities. All of this helped the company reach a significant milestone - 1 million barrels shipped in 1953. Just two years later, it would smash that by reaching 2 million barrels in sales in 1955. Stroh’s was officially a beer behemoth.

After decades of growth, Stroh’s needed more room, so it bought out the Goebel Brewing Co. next door in 1964, continuing to produce Goebel Beer. The Goebel company had operated in Detroit almost as long as Stroh’s had, from 1873 until the sale 89 years later (other than during Prohibition).

In 1967, John W. Stroh became chairman of the board and chief executive officer, and for the first time in the company’s history, its president would not be a Stroh. The new president was John W. Shenefield, though it would be brief; just a year later, the title would pass back into the Stroh family’s hands, as Gari Stroh’s son Peter W. Stroh took over. He was the sixth Stroh to lead the company, and like his predecessors, continued to grow the brewery’s reach.

In 1970, Stroh’s crossed the 3 million barrel mark, good for 10th place in the country in terms of annual beer shipments. Just two years later, it moved into eighth place as it shipped more than 4 million barrels, and four years after that, in 1976, it sold 5.75 million barrels and moved into seventh. By 1977, Stroh’s was sold in 17 states.

On Oct. 21, 1975, the State of Michigan named the Stroh Brewery as a historical site.

Growing too big for its beer britches

As Stroh’s moved into the 1980s, it was producing more than 6 million barrels a year and, determined its break-neck pace of growth, had acquired several struggling competitors. In addition to Goebel, Stroh’s had bought out Schaefer, Schlitz, Erlanger, Old Style, Lone Star, Old Milwaukee, among others.

This acquisition spree made Stroh’s the nation’s third largest brewing company, with seven brewing plants. By 1988, Forbes reported that the company had a market value of $700 million.

However, grown too big, too fast and was struggling itself. On Feb. 8, 1985, Stroh’s announced it was closing its Detroit facility, calling it too costly to run and too inefficient compared with newer facilities it had acquired. The plant was shuttered that May, bringing an end to 135 years of tradition and costing 1,159 Detroiters their jobs.

The factory was imploded in two phases -- on April 13, 1986, and July 13, 1986 -- with the land eventually be redeveloped as Brewery Park.

“Stroh’s gamble is the final step in a transition for the Stroh Cos. from Stroh’s longtime role in Detroit as a manufacturer of beer into a group of real estate and baking companies,” Crain’s Detroit Business reported Nov. 4, 1985. “Stroh’s hopes for the site coincide with the companies’ own reshaping and with the change in the near-downtown area from a manufacturing area to an office and service center.”

In 1999, the struggling company was imploded, too, split up and sold to Miller Brewing and Pabst.

Hello!

We set an HD record in July by adding 13 new locations to the website. These include comprehensive histories of Second Baptist Church - one of Detroit’s most important Black historical sites - the Jerome H. Remick Band Shell and its predecessor on Belle Isle, and Detroit’s first dedicated City Hall. Our interns were busy, as well, with Lia Pistole bringing you the story of Holy Cross Hungarian Catholic Church in Delray, and Alexander Grauman chronicling the beautiful but tragically long-gone Hilsendegen Block and the Empire Bar on Monroe Avenue. Our friend Amy Elliott Bragg, author of “Hidden History of Detroit” (one of THE best-written books on Motor City history ever, in my opinion), shared the tale of the Labadie House, a home that was built in the 18th century and survived the War of 1812 but couldn’t survive plans for a giant gas reservoir.

We also added a few more of Detroit’s historic schools, including Atkinson (now Legacy Charter Academy) and the recently demolished Lynch School on the east side. Many don’t know that the first Henry Ford Hospital building is still in use on its campus, making it one of - if not the - oldest surviving hospital building in the city. We’ve got some info for you on that one. We also added the houses of Mayor and U.S. Sen. James Couzens and Walter C. Hartmann. Joining them were three Parke-Davis buildings, including the revolutionary research lab, where the gel capsule was perfected, and the Ladder 4 Wine Bar, a former firehouse that has been turned into a must-visit night spot. Finally, we added pages and photos on the Alwyne Lane Apartments in Palmer Park, the Detroit Savings Bank Southwest Branch and the West Side Dom Polski Hall.

We added 658 photos in July, including dozens of sneak-peek photos of the renovations of Fisher Body 21 and the Higginbotham School, one of the few historic Detroit schools that’s being saved. We also went behind the scenes at Henry Ford Hospital to bring you a glimpse inside the historic Clara Ford Nurses Pavilion and Education Building.

We redid the photo galleries of Old City Hall, totaling nearly four dozen images of this lost landmark, as well as 50 photos of the old Federal Building, which served as Detroit’s palatial post office, customs house and federal courthouse.

Thank you to our donors for making all this possible!

You never know what stories you’re going to unearth when you start digging into the past of Detroit’s historic places.

What started off as what I assumed would be a fairly tame tale of the Jerome H. Remick Band Shell on Belle Isle ended up with a wild tale from 1967 that proves sometimes, love does indeed hurt.

The setting for our love-in-turned-riot is the aforementioned Remick Band Shell on Belle Isle. The venue was named in honor of Detroiter Jerome Hosmer Remick Sr., who built the world’s largest music-publishing empire and was a key figure in establishing the Detroit Symphony Orchestra as one of the nation’s best. The band shell was dedicated on July 13, 1950, and was the site of performances by the Belle Isle Concert Band and DSO each summer from the 1950s into the mid-1970s.

However, changing tastes by that era led to the orchestral performances on Belle Isle to come to an end. Instead, the Remick began to host rock shows, including our love-in in question, which was held April 30, 1967, just as the Summer of Love was kicking off.

Thousands have their mellowed harshed

On April 30, 1967, the Remick would host an event called the Love-In Detroit, featuring the legendary Motor City rockers The MC5, as well as Billy C & the Sunshine, and the Seventh Seal. The event was organized by counter-culture icon John Sinclair’s Detroit Artist Workshop and Trans Love Energies - which the Free Press called a “far-out organization. Reports varied, but the event attracted somewhere between 5,000 and 8,000 so-called “flower children” and “squares” - as well as a biker gang.

The Free Press covered the love-in on its front page the following day, writing, “Detroit’s hippy (sic) community - in beards, beads, flowers and most everything else that fits the loose definition of the word attire - gathered to demonstrate affection for mankind in general and themselves in particular. They sang, danced, climbed on the roofs of buildings, ate, drank, skipped rope and gave away things like balloons and flowers and candy.”

Some attendees slid down the back of the Remick or tossed bottles around, but the police let them be. Someone drove one of the Parks & Recreation Department’s small bulldozers into one of Belle Isle’s canals. A couple of youths ripped apart a tree (one hippie was overheard saying, “I don’t dig that.”) As things started to get a bit sketchy, police asked one of the bands to stop playing, but the band continued - “and so did the drinking,” the Free Press reported May 2, 1967. The “Trans-Love Psychedelic Ranger Patrol” attempted to keep things groovy, but they would be no match for the Outlaw Club motorcycle gang that showed up.

Armed with chains and clubs, the bikers antagonized the hippies, and met their peace and love with “a beer-squirting fight and a round of ‘Sieg heils’ designed to blow the citizens’ minds,” the Free Press wrote May 1, 1967. And then, “after a day of everybody being lovable, the mood changed at 7 p.m., when a policeman arrested a motorcyclist for reckless driving near the (Remick). In minutes, the area was transformed into a battlefield.”

Bikers and some of the love-in attendees turned on the police, pelting them with rocks, bottles and bricks, and the love-in devolved into an all-out drunken brawl. Police called in the mounted unit, the riot squad and the Tactical Mobile Unit - what one would call a SWAT team today - to break things up, with 150 to 200 cops responding to the scene. As police shut the island and sought to restore calm on the island, unrest broke out on the other side of the Douglas MacArthur Bridge at East Jefferson and East Grand Boulevard. Rioters broke windows and plate-glass doors at neighborhood shops and damaged a squad car and other vehicles. In the end, only 18 people and a police horse were injured, and there were only 10 arrests.

“We gave the straight people - the regular public - the chance to get together and love each other,” the then-25-year-old Sinclair told the Free Press for a May 2, 1967, article. “I hoped it would work, but it doesn’t. I’m not prepared to do anything like this again. We originally intended it for ourselves. Then the gawkers and drinkers came in and spoiled it. Hell, you can go to a bar and do what they did.”

Restoring the Remick

For two decades, the Remick shell continued to serve as one of Belle Isle’s premier summer attractions, but that would come to an end in 1980. The stage and shell were left to rot, and the grass where tens of thousands used to plop down for a concert was paved over for parking. It’s been nearly 50 years since the Remick served any regular, practical use.

In 2007, siblings Johnny Washington III and Karinda Washington set out to restore the shell and reopen it for concerts. Though enlisting the support of the Detroit Department of Recreation and volunteers from Wayne State University and the University of Minnesota, they weren’t able to get it back in performance shape. They did clean out two locker rooms and a pair of bathrooms, plus a rehearsal room.

But that appears about to change.

A nonprofit called the Music On Belle Isle Group (or MObig) was formed in 2017 to pick up that torch and restore the Remick and bring summer concerts back to Belle Isle. MObig announced Jan. 5, 2026, that it had secured funding for architectural planning, and is working with the Michigan Department of Natural Resources (DNR) and the Belle Isle Conservancy to make that a reality. The DNR engaged the architectural firm G.H. Forbes of suburban Royal Oak, Mich., to do an assessment of the shell and plot out a course to reopening it. MObig has raised more than $250,000 as of July 2026 for the effort. Learn more by visiting the MObig website.

In a city full of champions fighting for their little corner of the Motor City, I’m not sure we’ll ever see one more inspiring or more dedicated to their community than Evelyn Richardson. She is living proof of how just one person can make a difference. As she prepares to mark her 98th birthday on July 7, let’s celebrate her dedication to the city and the Chadsey-Condon neighborhood.

In 1966, Evelyn moved into the neighborhood and she’s been there every since. But no one calls her that. To everyone, she is simply Miss Pee Wee. Despite standing less than 5 feet, she would almost immediately embark on a mission of standing tall for her community for the next six decades. The 38-year-old, single mother soon became a mother to the whole neighborhood. In the wake of the unrest of 1967 that rocked the city, she founded the Children’s Crusade to help kids in her struggling neighborhood.

“If they showed up hungry at her door, she’d feed them,” the Detroit Free Press wrote in an April 17, 2016, profile. “If they needed a place to play, she let them into the backyard, where there was a swing set. If they needed to get away from their drug-addled parents, they could spend the day in tutoring sessions or Bible study.”

The Free Press added that there were so many kids coming to her pink-and-white duplex that the City’s Health Department began delivering meals for her to feed them. Mayor Coleman Young’s administration even assigned 16 workers to help serve food. By the mid-1970s, she was reportedly serving lunch to 250 kids every day. When she wasn’t doing that, she was organizing street fairs and block parties and hosting Bible studies and offered skills training - anything she could do for her impoverished neighborhood to make things just a little bit brighter.

And by anything, that included taking on gang violence.

In 1975, a turf battle erupted between two rival gangs, the Buchanan Killers and the Dirty 30s. “For four years, they held broad-daylight shoot-outs on the side streets as children played and the elderly sat on their porches,” the Free Press wrote in the 2016 article.

Miss Pee Wee wouldn’t stand for it, so she had her son Mike Richardson invite the two gangs to her pink house for a summit. There, she and Big Mike brokered a truce - even having them sign a literal peace treaty - that finally brought an end to the bloodshed.

For almost 70 years, the southeast corner of 30th and Herbert streets was the site of the John M.B. Sill School. I don’t want to take the spotlight off Miss Pee Wee, so if you’re interested in learning more about its history, our website has you covered here. As the neighborhood fell into decline, the Detroit Public Schools (DPS) closed Sill in 1973, and before long, it became the target of vandals and mischief. Residents living near the school said that shortly after Sill’s closure, many of its windows were broken out and young people were loitering inside the building at night. Then, around 11 p.m. on Aug. 28, 1974, someone lit the vacant school on fire. It started in the attic, which would cause the roof to collapse and quickly grow it into a five-alarm fire. The newspapers reported the following day that there were an estimated 140 firefighters and 35 pieces of equipment battling the blaze at its peak.

The school stood for a bit until a child playing in the ruins was hurt by falling bricks. DPS finally tore it down.

But now there was the issue of this giant vacant lot on the corner of 30th and Herbert, and the fact that the neighborhood’s kids needed a place to be, well, kids. Some of them were already playing in the empty field where the Sill School once stood, but Miss Pee Wee knew they deserved more.

The lord “said he wanted me to take this burned-out school and make a playground for the children,” she told the City of Detroit in a 2022 interview.

So that’s what she did.

She lobbied the City hard, and it finally became the 30th-Herbert Park, complete with playground equipment and a basketball court. But budget cuts amid hard times would lead to it becoming neglected. There just wasn’t enough money to go around, and the sparsely populated and often overlooked 30th and Herbert neighborhood was at risk of losing the park that she had fought so hard to provide for the children.

When the City stopped cutting the grass, her grandson bought a riding mower to do it himself. When scrappers stole the metal fencing, Miss Pee Wee and the neighborhood put in a wooden one. The City removed broken playground equipment, but did not replace it. By 2013, there was nothing to the park but a weed-strewn basketball court with cracked pavement and a wide-open green expanse.

As her grandson Michael Richardson told the Free Press for the article in 2016: “This is a really high-poverty area. But the children are still people. They have to have something to do.”

So Miss Pee Wee started lobbying City Hall, just like she had for decades. Finally, in 2017, Mayor Mike Duggan’s administration gave 30th-Herbert Park a total overhaul, bringing beauty and well-deserved dignity to the neighborhood. It got new playground equipment, a new basketball court, a walking path and picnic tables.

The City also gave the park a new name, one that was even more appropriate than being named for the intersection where it was located. On Sept. 23, 2017, it officially became the Evelyn “Miss Pee Wee” Richardson Park, a fitting honor for the neighborhood’s biggest champion and hardest-fighting advocate.

“The eyes of the whole world are on the city of Detroit, and they’re watching us,” she told the Free Press in 2016. “But we can make life better for our children. We have to start with the children.”

For 50 years, the neighborhood has celebrated “Love Thy Neighbor Day” on Miss Pee Wee’s birthday. This year’s celebration is July 3. To watch an interview with this incredible Detroiter, click below.

If I’ve learned anything over my decades of documenting Detroit history, one frustratingly contradictory fact has become clear: We are an inherently nostalgic and proud people yet a people hellbent on erasing our past.

From Old City Hall to Tiger Stadium to Boblo Island and the Boblo boats, Black Bottom and Paradise Valley, the list is shockingly and infuriatingly long.

Cooley High School will soon join them in that giant architectural graveyard in the sky.

The many moments to save it have come and gone. But it didn’t have to be this way. I figured I’d take a few minutes to wade into the situation as it is and the arguments made on both sides, and take a look at how this city once again has failed to preserve an architecturally stunning and historically rich piece of Detroit’s past for the future.

Cooley High School, opened in 1928, was built as a temple of education, a symbol of the value Detroit put into its youth and a place that would inspire them to greatness. Between its intricate terra cotta flourishes and ornate plasterwork inside, it looked like a palace out of Western Europe.

The school was named after former Michigan Supreme Court Chief Justice Thomas McIntyre Cooley (1824-1898). A mural of him in the school library says he was “one who enunciated the principle of law under which it has been possible to have free high schools in this state.”

It was constructed at a cost of $758,270 (the equivalent in purchasing power of about $14.7 million in 2026) to meet the educational needs of a rapidly growing area of the city. At its peak, Cooley had almost 4,000 students in 1949. By 1983, it still had about 3,500 and was one of the largest high schools in Michigan. But by 2010, it had dropped to around 1,000.

The coulda …

Despite its historical significance, despite its proud alumni and pedigree, despite its relative good condition for its age, the Detroit Public Schools closed Cooley in June 2010. The school has remained vacant since.

Now, there is no arguing that the district had too many schools amid dwindling enrollment and shrinking state funding. Many of these schools needed significant investment and improvements because the buildings were old. There was no doubt that many of them needed to be consolidated and shuttered. But surely, Cooley was one of the standout buildings that was worth saving. A more recent addition could have been closed (or demolished) to reduce its footprint and costs. Either way, the boards went up. For years, it remained in good condition, like the district could walk in and reopen it with some elbow grease and a bunch of folks armed with brooms and dustpans.

But few buildings make it more than a few years before the scrappers and vandals turn millions in renovation costs into tens of millions. On Oct. 1, 2017, a blaze destroyed much of the auditorium of the abandoned school. This event was the beginning of the inevitable end, but not all hope was lost - yet.

The shoulda …

Despite sitting abandoned for a decade, despite vandals and Mother Nature alike taking a toll on the building, the nonprofit Life Remodeled stepped up and offered to buy the 321,024-square-foot Cooley from the cash-strapped district and turn it into a $40 million community resource hub. The organization had already done something similar with the former Durfee School. After more than three years of negotiations, the group offered $1 million for Cooley. Life Remodeled had a track record of success, but Superintendent Nikolai Vitti and the school board rejected the offer in March 2023 because they said they had doubts about the organization’s ability to raise enough money. Vitti said he believed that if Life Remodeled’s plans didn’t move forward, the district would be held responsible by the community for blight or problems that occurred on the vacant campus. The Detroit Public Schools Community District (DPSCD) has dozens upon dozens of vacant schools in every corner of the city, most of which look far worse on the outside than Cooley.

If Life Remodeled failed and the blame on its shoulders was unfairly directed at the district … what was one the blame for one more school?

So, Cooley would continue to rot, making preservation not only more expensive as time went on, but also more difficult.

DPSCD had already flattened all but a few of Detroit’s palatial historic high schools: Cass Tech, Mackenzie and Mumford were all torn down and replaced with smaller, newer, blander generic boxes. If the belief was that students would learn better in a school just because it was newer, I’d love to see the data. Certainly, fixing up an existing structure is cheaper than the cost of building a new one ground up and spending millions to demolish the old.

It should be noted that finding a new use for a school is not the easiest thing in the world. Sure, classrooms can be the size of studio or one-bedroom apartments, but most of them need to have plumbing and electrical run to them. Far from impossible, but it’s been done in Detroit and many other cities in Michigan and across the country. Many of them are huge, so maybe you take down a wing or two. Large spaces like cafeterias and auditoriums might need to be mothballed or turned into unconventional spaces for a while. Gyms can be used by residents as on-site fitness centers. But again, you can’t do this with ALL of Detroit’s old schools - but you certainly can with the best of the best, schools like Cooley. Life Remodeled’s repurposing of Durfee as a community and innovation center has been wildly praised and - though I don’t have access to the financials - seems to be a success.

The most logical use for an old school is, of course, a school. The district understandably, doesn’t want to hand a competing charter school with a cheap building that will siphon off even more students. We’ve seen the same thing with closed Catholic churches being torn down rather than be sold to other denominations.

The woulda …

Finally, in early May 2025, 15 years after the school’s closure, DPSCD announced a $25 million plan to redevelop the Cooley site into a sports facility for not only the school district, but the community. DPSCD said the new complex would help close the opportunity gap when competing for athletic college scholarships.

The $25 million project had already been allocated $15 million from the State of Michigan, and the school district’s fund-raising arm was working on securing the other $10 million. DPSCD said at the time of the announcement that it would be completed in 2026.

“Ever since Cooley High School closed in 2010, the community has wanted us to do something special with this legendary site,” Superintendent Vitti said in a news release. “We are laser-focused on honoring this commitment with an exciting new complex that builds on Cooley’s legacy and creates equitable sports opportunities for Detroit student athletes and the community.”

Unfortunately, the plan also called for the partial demolition of historic Cooley, BUT the school district promised to save a portion of it. Some Cooley is better than no Cooley. The community and preservation folks all seemed to be ecstatic about the compromise.

“The plan is to preserve a part of the building for the locker room, a museum for the alumni and meeting location,” Chrystal Wilson, a DPSCD spokeswoman, told Crain’s Detroit Business for a May 3, 2025, story on the plan.

But a year later, DPSCD went back on that, confirming news broken by HistoricDetroit.org on May 28, 2026, that the district was abandoning its previously announced plans to save a portion of it.

The decision was tied to a state appropriation of $15 million that had to be spent by the end of that September, and DPSCD planned to use $5 million of that money to demolish the school and salvage architectural elements from it. If the district didn’t tear the school down now, it would lose that state money.

On June 11, 2026, Vitti and Machion Jackson, deputy superintendent of operations, held an online community meeting to explain their decision to go back on their promise of preservation.

“As the architects and the designers better understood the building when they got into it, it was clear to them that if we were going to keep the facade, it would not only increase the cost but also would increase the time line to execute the demo and the construction process, which would have then not have allowed us to use a state grant for $15 million to complete,” Vitti said.

So that leads to the question, if you don’t have time to figure out how to properly save the historic portion of the school like you promised, and the deadline to spend that money hasn’t changed … what on Earth took you so long to get started on implementing the plan. A full year was lost. A year that could have had a plan, if not fully in place, well in place. Yet another wasted opportunity amid a sea of them.

Even before Vitti and Jackson met with the community, architectural salvage began on the school, with crews removing some of the terra cotta starting June 9, 2026. It drove home the point that discussion on saving Cooley is over. It will be demolished, and there is nothing anyone can do to change the district’s mind.

“What we attempted to do was save all of the facade, but based on the time line constraints (to use the state funds for demolition), that was impossible,” Jackson said during the online community meeting.

Added Vitti: “My conscience is clean as a way to preserve the facade and not being able to based on the time line and funding constraints that the district has, but I do commit to all alumni that the legacy of the school will be honored through the athletic complex.”

Detroit-based Hamilton Anderson Architects, an accomplished and much-celebrated Black-owned firm, was selected as lead architect on the Cooley complex project.

And that’s great. But this project could have been so much greater had initiative been taken earlier. No one, not even this building-hugger, was expecting the school to ever be restored and used as a school again. But did the promise of preserving a portion of this irreplaceable piece of Detroit architecture get my hopes up? Yeah, it did. It made me think that folks had seen the wisdom and value of preservation and thinking beyond wrecking balls and bulldozers and generic plasticine-looking structures.

Instead, it’s a reminder to not get your hopes up beyond downtown, that complacency and lack of urgency remains abundant, and that in Detroit - with all of its commercial real estate and population, financial and geographical challenges - believe it only when you see it.

It was 122 years ago today that the Hazen S. Pingree Monument was unveiled in Grand Circus Park, on May 30, 1904. Common Detroiters sent in their pennies, nickels and dimes to make it happen. But why? What endeared this politician into the hearts of an entire city and earned him the nickname “the Idol of the People”?

Well, the TL;DR is that he was a soldier who fought to save the union, a mayor who saved his city, and a governor who tried his best to save his state. But how he did so is worth a deep-dive - especially when compared to elected officials in this day and age of politics.

Ol’ Ping, as he was known, was named one of the 10 best mayors in U.S. history in a poll of scholars for Melvin Holli’s 1999 book, “The American Mayor.” In it, Holli writes that Pingree’s “role as an advanced social reformer was unmatched by any big-city mayor in the last half …

Read more

In many ways, Eastern Market feels like it’s never changed, but things weren’t always that way. In fact, it was thanks to the owners of one building in particular that the historic district looks the way it does - even if that building is no longer there to contribute to its beauty and vitality.

The Frontera & Son building managed to survive a pair of explosions tied to ripening bananas, but it couldn’t survive an arsonist. It stood on the corner of Market and Winder streets, opposite Eastern Market’s Shed 1. For most of its life, it was a wholesale grocer, but at the end of it, the building was also home to a bar and restaurant.

It is unknown the exact year that the building was built, however, based on information from Sanborn fire insurance maps and architectural details on the R. Hirt building next door, it is lik…

Read more

Approved by Michigan voters in 1916, the state amendment barred the manufacture, sale, and transportation of alcohol. But it also turned Detroit into one of the top rumrunning hotbeds in the country. This, in turn, gave rise to one of the most powerful, most feared organized crime syndicates in the country.

They may have been called the Purple Gang, but they would make the Motor City’s streets run red. Despite its cutesy, colorful name, the Purple Gang was so feared, famed mobster Al Capone opted to partner with the Purples rather than go to war with them for control of Detroit and the Canadian liquor that laid just across the Detroit River.

So let’s take a look at some of the ways this deadly crime syndicate with the cutesy name terrorized Detroit.

Read more

In fact, the Union Depot predated Michigan Central’s Corktown temple of transportation by two decades. And if Michigan Central was a temple, then the red sandstone and Richardsonian Romanesque stylings of the Fort Street Depot made it a church. Sometimes known as the “Fort Street Union Depot,” this building also served as a home of famed passenger trains like the Ambassador, Wabash Cannonball and the Red Arrow.

Today is the 55th anniversary of the closing of this stately station, so let’s take a look back at this lost landmark of the Motor City.

The first train steamed into the venerable Union Depot, located downtown at Third Avenue and Fort Street, on Jan. 21, 1893.

P…

Read more

It was 114 years ago today that Tiger Stadium opened in Detroit, on April 20, 1912.

For me, almost every single childhood memory I have with my father was spent at the ballpark known to locals as simply “The Corner.” From learning how to keep score to chowing down on stale nachos to watching Cecil Fielder pulverize a ball over the left field roof in 1990, this was my happy place as a kid.

And I was far from alone. From that first day in 1912 until its final game in 1999, more than 100 million fans took in a game at The Corner of Michigan and Trumbull.

I won’t do a deep dive, but I couldn’t let the birthday of one of my most cherished childhood haunts pass without a trip down memory lane with some photos and some history.

What was then called Navin Field opened the same day as Fenway Park in Boston. Appropriately, the Detroit Tig…

Read more

This building was erected in 1907 as part of what was then a thriving German enclave in Detroit. It would lose its distinctive Bavarian look in 1925, though it would gain one of the city’s oldest and most beloved institutions as a tenant a few decades later, Henry the Hatter.

A bit of the Vaterland

By the end of the 19th Century, the area around Broadway had become a center of the city’s German community. Institutions like the Harmonie Club (built in 1895 but an organization dating to 1849), the German-language Abend Post newspaper (1890) and others had become well-established. The Breitmeyer family’s florist shop had been operating there since 1883.

Gustave Mueller was hired by J…

Read more

It was where Detroiters of all walks of life came to shop. The Detroit Free Press noted Sept. 30, 1966, that the market had always been where “Boston Boulevard elbows rubbed the worn, honest elbows of Corktown.”

Plans were announced in March 1911 to build the market on the southwest corner of East Grand River Avenue and Broadway. After securing department store magnate J.L. Hudson as an early investor, the well-heeled came out of the woodwork to make pledges of their own. Developers raised twice what they needed to turn their gourmet dream into a reality. Detroit was ready - and hungry - for a foodie mecca.

“The city has outgrown the Central Market on Cadillac Square,” H.S. Warren of…

Read more

You can read Neal’s piece right here.

Every little bit helps preserve Detroit's past while supporting its future.

Thank you!

Dan Austin

P.S.: If you haven't already scheduled yourself a col…

Read more

After an all-white, all-male jury could not reach a verdict after 46 hours of deliberations, a mistrial was declared Nov. 27, 1925, and Dr. Sweet and his 10 co-defendants were freed on bail. The following spring, the doctor’s brother Henry was retried separately, as he had admitted to firing the fatal shot. This time, a second all-white, all-male jury found him not guilty.

On July 21, 1927 - nearly two years after the mob descended on the Sweet House - the prosecutor asked for the charges against all 11 to be dismissed.

Sadly, the worst was not over for Dr. Sweet or his wife, Gladys Sweet.

Read more

In the first installment, we looked at similar cases of white mobs attacking Black families and the rise of the Ku Klux Klan in Detroit. In the second, we explored the fateful night on Sept. 9, 1925, when thousands of segregationists set their sights on the Sweets and attacked their house in an attempt to drive them out.

Now, we look at the attack in the words of Dr. Sweet as he takes the stand as he and 10 others are charged with murder for defending themselves against the mob.

To recap, Dr. Ossian and Gladys Sweet bought a house at 2905 Garland St., at Charlevoix Street, in May 1925. At the time, Detroit was still largely racially segregated, and on Sept. 8, 1925, the Sweets became the first people of color to move into the east side neighborhood. They did so under police escort.

However, the following night, as the Sweets were hosting nin…

Read more

In today’s entry, under attack, the Sweets defend themselves and wind up charged with murder, setting the stage for a nationally important civil rights case.

The attack on 2905 Garland St.

Thinking racial tensions that plagued Detroit over the summer had died down, Dr. Ossian and Gladys Sweet moved into 2905 Garland St. under the protection of a police escort on Sept. 8, 1925.

The next night, the Sweets were hosting nine friends and family members as they celebrated their new home when a mob of hundreds of angry white people gathered outside. Knowing the trouble that could face, their daughter, Iva, was staying with Gladys’ parents. They began throwing bottles and r…

Read more

I often hear from my fellow white people that folks need to get over past racial transgressions and to not wallow in white guilt over the sins of others. But if anything, the social and political climate in our country shows why we should never forget. To those who don’t see the importance of understanding and facing the events that brought us to where we are today, I urge you to consider the words of James Baldwin:

“To accept one’s past –…

Read more

The 15-room, wood-framed, lapped board house is set back off Inselruhe, just south of Loiter Way.

But it’s that uncertainty of exactly when the house was built - and who did so - that makes it one of the island’s more frustrating historical mysteries.

Some histories say that the house was built about 1873 by Walter Schweikart, a stone cutter who immigrated from Germany and leased the island from the Campau family, which owned the island at the time. Schweikart ran a tavern and fishery on the island at the time. He was also the one who dubbed the house “Inselruhe”, meaning “island quietness” in German. It …

Read more

As we say goodbye to 2025, we wanted to share with you a recap of what we accomplished, thank our Patreon patrons who made it possible, and give you a preview for some of the changes coming this year.

First, Helmut and I would like to wish you all a happy new year and pass along our hopes that 2026 treats you and yours well. I won’t lie: 2025 was challenging, and fighting stage 4 cancer while having had to return to work in order to keep my insurance meant that I have had less time and energy to devote to the site, but that said, we still accomplished a lot in 2025.

We added 3,898 photos to the website in 2025, and there are now 16,427 on the site. Many of these are images taken by our very own Helmut Ziewers, but we also added hundreds of historic shots, including many of Belle Isle from the collection of Vance Patrick. There will be thousands more undoubtedly added in 2026.

We also added 66 buildings to Hist…

Read more

Here it is.

In 1920, what is now Detroit’s far northwest side was still fairly undeveloped, yet not without its residents. What the area of Grand River Avenue and Ohio Street was without, however, was a church. That October, a group of began holding Sunday school services in the basement of a home on Northlawn Street. Finding plenty of like-minded faithful in the area, the group organized in 1921 as the Westlawn congregation. Though it would be designated a Meth…

Read more