Why does Detroit have no row houses or brownstones?!

[stasu1213]

Detroit had more land to build on. New York, Philadelphia and some parts of Maryland were designed during the 1700s where most of the settlers from Europe made their homes. Those cities were very populated at the time for the rest of the country were still underdevelope such as Detroit. Detroit, in it's heyday, were a much better place to live in than New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, and Washington DC. Detroiters didn't have to live on top of one another. We had our bustling downtown area. Each neighborhood had their own business retail district. Greenfield/Grand River, Gratiot/Van Dyke, 7 mile Livernois, Warren/Conners. Curtis/Wyoming, etc. Other cities at that time didn't have business/neighborhood districts the way that Detroit had. Detroit had rail cars that could take you from Detroit to Kalamazoo. We had massive land mass to work with.

[Danny]

Detroit don'e have a lot of Row houses and brownstones for these reasons:

As the industrial boomtowns sprouted up in the midwest, developers don't want their sites look like New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Balitmore, Washington D.C. and Jersey Shore cities and classic to Medieval European-like cities. The developers want a to build REAL homes with lots of space and big backyards. First they started out with grid style walkabout neighborhoods. Next add in the pre-victorian style colonials, bungalows and ranches to give a country atmosphere. Later brick houses and familt flats for the middle class are being built this time away from the Detroit's lower east and west side. Middle class families who own those rows of family flats want to double or tripple their income by letting their tenants [[within their own race) live in.

When the suburbs developed its started in the inner rings following the industry boom of the 1900 to 1930. Dearborn, areas of Royal Oak Twp. [[ later became the suburbs of Ferndale, Hazel Park, Royal Oak, Huntington Woods, Berkley, and Pleasant Ridge) The industry boom also sprouted Warren along Van Dyke Rd. Center Line, East Detroit [[ Eastpointe) St. Clair Shores, The 5 Grosse Pointe and Lochmoor areas. Also other inner ring suburbs in Wayne County like Redford TWP, Dearborn TWP, Nakin Mills TWP. Clarenceville, Livonia TWP. with its Rosedale Gardens, Then you have Downriver suburbs like River Rouge, Ecorse, Lincoln Park, Southgate, Wyandotte and Taylor. These inner ring suburbs don't have a type of Brownstone and row houses because the people wanted a country like lifestyle with wide open spaces and plenty of trees and critters roaming about.

Detroit and its suburbs remains today cities of neighborhoods. We don't need no Browntowns [[Chicago-like Greystones, or other St. Louis like victorian baby mansions to impress the people.)

WORD FROM THE STREET PROPHET

Keep Detroit classic and utilized.

Neda, I miss you so.

[iheartthed]

Flats were more common in Detroit, much like Chicago. But I have seen rowhouses in Brush Park, so I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of them were lost to neglect or "urban renewal".

[ghettopalmetto]

Detroit, in it's heyday, were a much better place to live in than New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, and Washington DC. Detroiters didn't have to live on top of one another.

I've seen 3000 sf rowhouses sell for upwards of $1 million. Seems to me that people don't necessarily mind "living on top of one another".

The rowhouse would be expected to have been the housing style of choice in 18th and 19th century residential construction in Detroit, as this was the predominant technology at the time [[kind of how plastic Pulte homes are predominant now). Given that Detroit has very very few buildings remaining from the pre-20th century, I would not be the least bit shocked if they were all bulldozed in the name of "progress".

[iheartthed]

Given that Detroit has very very few buildings remaining from the pre-20th century, I would not be the least bit shocked if they were all bulldozed in the name of "progress".

Yeah, that's my theory since there are examples of rowhouses in Detroit, but they are fragmented examples.

[Mikeg]

I think single family houses also get blighted faster because all it takes is one homeowner to go belly up and he takes an entire house down,

I think that the type of residential development has little to do with the mechanisms of blight. I see two primary factors that are both exacerbated by a third.
1) in addition to the neighborhood retail districts that were located at major intersections, most of Detroit's major thoroughfares were lined with local commercial and office uses and the residential neighborhoods were tucked behind them. Once the income levels and/or population started to drop in the adjacent neighborhoods, there would no longer be enough nearby spendable dollars to support that level of commercial uses.
2) the type of ownership has a lot more to do with resistance to blight than the physical form of the buildings. Owner-occupied buildings are usually maintained the best.
3) property tax millage rates that are higher than anywhere else in the region tend to drive down the value of a property and undermine the ability of a landlord to command comparable rents and perform comparable levels of maintenance.

Commercial decline and blight along the adjacent major roads typically initiated the blight that would eventually infect the adjacent residential neighborhoods. Blight would then accelerate in the absence of effective ordinance enforcement, particularly as the percentage of owner-occupied properties declined.

[Hermod]

1. Detroit's "building boom" came after the development of the electric streetcar so that housing could be more spread out.

2. Much of the inner city housing stock was eliminated by two phenomena.

a. Demolition to accommodate industrial expansion during the boom years.

b. Demolitions to build the Lodge and the Chrysler in the inner city area. [[look at some old pictures of Hastings St).

3. While inner city Detroit had few row houses, there were a lot of single houses on very narrow lots in the city. These houses had the floor plans of row houses, but were free standing with narrow lanes on each side.

[Johnnny5]

Anyone consider how difficult it was to move 100's of tons of cut stone in the 19th and early 20th Century ?

The vast majority of Michigan's mitten is covered in 100's of feet of sand, boulders and rubble left over from the glaciers. With the exception of areas along the Ohio border we simply do not have the material resources to build homes out of cut stone.

After the major fires of the mid 1800's few would have considered building a row house out of wood.

[lilpup]

Anyone consider how difficult it was to move 100's of tons of cut stone in the 19th and early 20th Century ?

The vast majority of Michigan's mitten is covered in 100's of feet of sand, boulders and rubble left over from the glaciers. With the exception of areas along the Ohio border we simply do not have the material resources to build homes out of cut stone.

row houses and brownstones are brick, not cut stone

[Johnnny5]

row houses and brownstones are brick, not cut stone

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brownstone

[Lloyd]

brownstones are brick, not cut stone

News to the people of Connecticut where the brown stone is quarried.

[ghettopalmetto]

Anyone consider how difficult it was to move 100's of tons of cut stone in the 19th and early 20th Century ?

So no one in Detroit had the technology to make bricks and other masonry products? You're singularly focused on one material [[of many) that may be used for external cladding. The focus of the thread is the form of the structure.

[Johnnny5]

So no one in Detroit had the technology to make bricks and other masonry products? You're singularly focused on one material [[of many) that may be used for external cladding. The focus of the thread is the form of the structure.

I did not realize any thread on DYES has a "focus"...


The lack of easily sourced material is one of the reasons we don't see that style of building much in Michigan. I didn't say it was the only reason.

[ghettopalmetto]

I did not realize any thread on DYES has a "focus"...


The lack of easily sourced material is one of the reasons we don't see that style of building much in Michigan. I didn't say it was the only reason.

Building materials have nothing to do with lot sizes or the shape of the building. You could build rowhouses out of reinforced concrete, if you wanted to do so.

You can't tell me that Detroit didn't have masonry construction in the 19th and early 20th centuries.

[lilpup]

I did not realize any thread on DYES has a "focus"...


The lack of easily sourced material is one of the reasons we don't see that style of building much in Michigan. I didn't say it was the only reason.

Brownstone was available in Michigan. The reason use of brownstone stopped [[and is no longer used - today's materials are mimics) is that it's a very soft sandstone prone to failure.

You just need to open your eyes to see that there was no lack of stone used for building here - just typically NOT in smaller housing projects.

[Mikeg]

For a peek at the differing types of residential structures that existed side-by-side on the edge of downtown Detroit just one hundred years ago, Shorpy.com just happens to give us today this circa 1910 photo of three residential structures on Center St., just west of the Harmonie Club building [[which is not shown).

Here is the comment I've submitted to Shorpy regarding this photo:

The Milner Hotel now occupies the spot where this building once stood [Google Street View].

According to the 1910 Detroit Polk City Directory, the building at the right in the 1910 photo was 31 Center St. and was occupied by Henry M. Catton. The building at the left was the "Central Apartments" at 35-41 Center St. 33 Center St. was the "Central Annex" and you can see that there is a connection between the Annex and the larger Central Apartments building. Residing at 33 Center St. were Caroline M. McNeil, James E. Clark, Mrs. Julia Clark [[milliner), Harry Goldstein, Leon E. Bastendorf, Mrs. Nellie Frazier and John M. Caswell. Perhaps one of the residents of the Annex gained notoriety, prompting the photograph of their residence?

[lilpup]

The memory of the 1805 fire also probably played a role in the preference for detached housing. Unfortunately the gaps between the houses were often small enough that fire still spreads quickly - check out Highland Park where the eaves seem like they could touch each other.