History Behind The Tiny Enclave (Just South of the Ford Complex) In Highland Park

While taking a tour of the old Ford complex in Highland Park, I couldn't help but notice the tiny enclave of suburban McMansions, the type you would typically see in St. Clair Shores, Harper Woods, Southfield or Warren. It's located just south of the Ford complex, between Manchester, Woodward, Davison and Oakland [[Grand and Gerald St.). You would easily miss this enclave if you didn't go off the beaten path. The neighborhood is very well maintained too, you would think you were in one of the aforementioned suburbs if someone didn't say it was Highland Park. When you do find it though it sticks out like a sore thumb given all the blight and older-looking architecture surrounding it.

My question is does anyone know the history behind this tiny enclave? What prompted someone to build that type of housing in Highland Park of all places?

interesting, just looked on google maps and you would never think it was highland park

pretty sure those aren't mcmansions unless the defintion has changed to "all suburban homes", those look like 1200-1500 sq. ft. brick ranch type home... hardly a mcmansion.....

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Originally Posted by Goose

interesting, just looked on google maps and you would never think it was highland park

pretty sure those aren't mcmansions unless the defintion has changed to "all suburban homes", those look like 1200-1500 sq. ft. brick ranch type home... hardly a mcmansion.....

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You're right, I don't want to say McMansions, but they're the ppst world war II type of suburban home [[1950s-1970s). You won't see these many of these homes in cities that experienced their population boom before World War II

If I am not wrong, this was one of the first Urban Renewal project in the Us, back in the 60's. It replaced a lot of decayed and older homes.

Yes it did. I have been over to the ghettohood when I was attending the demolition of the old Holiday Inn hotel complex. Gov. Granholm was there for the demolition ceremony and so did the fewer anti-Granholm demostrators from Hamtramck.

Sorry for bumping this, but I'd be deeply indebted to anyone who could share any additional information on this neighborhood.

My grandma used to live in this neighborhood in the '30s and '40s. Eventually, her family was kicked out of the neighborhood to make room for a new construction project. Though she couldn't remember exactly what the project was, it could very well have been some kind of urban renewal effort, although we're fairly certain she was forced to move in the '50s - not the '60s.

When we drove through the neighborhood today, all my grandma could recognize was the Highland Industrial Center and the old Red Hots Coney Island on Victor [[which, the sign notes, has been open "since 1921"). My grandma mentioned that when she lived on Gerald, it was just a tiny backstreet full of extremely cheap-looking homes and was nothing like the mini-suburban subdivision it is now. Even in its slightly dilapidated state, she said Gerald looks much better today than it did in her youth.

Funnily enough, when her parents got the money for their home on Gerald, they relocated to a house on Ilene just south of Schoolcraft, only to see their new home soon demolished to make way for the Jeffries Freeway! You think they would have given up on the area by then, but instead they moved to Outer Drive & Fenkell into a house which mercifully still stands.

Quick clarification: she lived right next to Gerald and Oakland, and not all the civic buildings by Gerald and Woodward. The former site of her home appears to have been where Mark E. Soren Memorial Park is now located.

With streets added like John Glenn and John F Kennedy [[both suburban like cul-de-sacs) I don't believe they are from the 50s or the early 60s. Even the housing style looks more like the 70s.

Agreed, Wheels! Which is why I can't figure out why they would have kicked her family out. Her address, we believe, was 198 Gerald.

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Originally Posted by nain rouge

Agreed, Wheels! Which is why I can't figure out why they would have kicked her family out. Her address, we believe, was 198 Gerald.

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If it was indeed a government program of some sort it may have taken that long to come to fruition. They may have even started with the park.

I was starting to think the same thing. Either that, or my grandma is wrong about the date they were kicked out.

It appears that the section of Jeffries that required demolishing their subsequent home on Ilene was completed between 1970-1973, so her family obviously must have moved there at least a few years before that. That leaves a small window from the mid-'50s to mid-'60s when the demolition of her home in Highland Park would have happened. I unfortunately can't get any more specific than that yet - I just have my grandma's word that it happened in the '50s.

You know, it would be a shame if it turned out that Highland Park essentially kicked residents out of the city just for a small park! The Model Cities Program and HUD both wouldn't be created until about 1966, so the city would've likely had no way of knowing that those kinds of funds would eventually be available. In fact, it wasn't until the late '60s/early '70s that Mayor Blackwell would get the appropriations to build the mini-subdivision you now see south of Manchester [[according to my research).

Also, I want to mention that it appears that this subdivision should count as one of the rare true successes of '60s/'70s urban renewal in the Detroit area. It may not be urban, but aside from a few isolated, weatherworn houses, it looks EXACTLY like a typical neighborhood along 10 or 11 Mile. I think Highland Park would gladly accept more neighborhoods like this at this stage in the game.

With it's proximity to Oakland I wonder if Chrysler had anything to do with it?

OK, I've done even more research, and things are beginning to clear up. I found a relatively recent Highland Park Master Plan that gives some clues as to what probably happened to my grandma's house and clears up some small errors in my earlier posts. Some choice quotes:

In the late 1950’s the City began to approach the idea of urban renewal.
Some of the housing stock was 50-60 years old and had been economically
constructed to accommodate the massive population influx from the Model
T era. The prevailing social policy of the day for elimination of blight was
total clearance and replacement with new housing without regard for the
current residents or fabric of the existing community. Although Detroit
and America have learned from this mistaken urban solution, it still
occurred in Highland Park with both good and bad results. In 1962, the
area at Hamilton and Glendale was cleared under urban renewal but never
redevelopment as residential community. In 1965, however, the Gerald
Avenue community was redeveloped as a new suburban subdivision that
continues to be one of the most stable neighborhoods in the City.

[...]

As Highland Park was experiencing a population and ethnic shift in 1968,
Robert Blackwell was elected the first African-American mayor. Mayor
Blackwell attracted support from Department of Housing and Urban
Development and the Model Cities Program to begin redevelopment of the
Town Center and Woodward and Manchester into a mixed use
development. This plan relied in part on the development of a mass transit
system on Woodward linking the CBD with the neighborhoods and
suburbs. The plan has evolved over time to its present state under the
leadership of current Mayor Linsey Porter. This site now includes
Manchester Place – a highly successful Michigan State Housing
Development Authority financed townhouse development and Highland
Park Place Retail Center. The Woodward frontage at the Ford Plant has
been redeveloped as large neighborhood shopping center known as Model
T plaza featuring an anchor supermarket and numerous specialty retail
tenants. The balance of the Model T property was sold in 1974 to a private
developer that continues to lease space to Ford and other small
manufacturers.


It seems, then, that my grandma's family may have accepted a buyout from Highland Park in the late 1950s or very early 1960s, when the city was first exploring urban renewal options. Also, we can now date the inception of the "Manchester subdivision" to 1965.

I don't know why I care so much about this stuff...

Robert Blackwell was a black Republican and during the administrations of Nixon and Ford Highland Park employed a cadre of skilled grant writers and the city applied for and was granted lots of federal money for assorted projects.

I have driven through there and wondered about that subdivision too. Love the story.

Since somebody liked my story, I'll give you all a few more random anecdotes. Hopefully it can give people interested in Highland Park a little more color on what it used to be like. Or, it might just make for an incredibly boring post. Ah well, here it goes:

- My favorite story is when my grandma bought what turned out to be bad meat from a deli. When her parents made her take the meat back, rather than take the meat back or defend the product, the owner started instructing my grandma on ways she could disguise the all bad flavors! Her parents gave up on getting an exchange or there money back after that, figuring that the owner was probably having a hard time making ends meet [[my grandma always makes it a point to tell me how poor her neighborhood in Highland Park was).

- At one point, the corner of Gerald and Oakland was home to a community victory garden. My grandma also remembers waiting in long lines with other kids at a local drug store during the war in the hopes that she could score a stick of gum.

- The Highland Park schools were some of the first in the area to have amenities like swimming pools and had fully equipped gyms [[my research backs this up), all of which were open to children even in the summer! My grandma recalls spending a lot of time at the schools exercising and playing sports. Apparently, it was good way for her to stay out of trouble, since the kids on the streets were pretty rough. Scuffles were commonplace.

- My grandma also has some [[fond?) memories of being whistled at by workers Highland Park Ford Plant, which she had to walk by frequently. Apparently, yelling "hubba hubba!" was still fashionable back then.

- There used to be a school located near Gerald, and occasionally errant baseballs would fly into her house's windows.

- Finally, though we pine for streetcars in Detroit, my grandma evidently doesn't miss the old streetcars one iota. Her only strong memory was falling out of one as a kid, and it taking her quite inebriated dad about 10 minutes to realize she was gone! She will wax nostalgic about Red Hots, though.

I lived in Highland Park from 1940 to 1961. It seems to me that the new sub-division came about in the mid to late 60's. It was definitely after I moved out as I had many friends on Gerald and Cottage Grove.

198 Gerald would have been on the corner of Brush. Each block in H.P. was from 1 to 100, 101 to 200 etc. starting at Woodward and working east and west. Is she sure of the address?

The school your Grandma lived near was Angel. Angel was between Brush and Oakland. It ran from kindergarten to the 6th grade. Angel students would then transfer to Robert E. Barber on E. Buena Vista for the 7th and 8th grades before going to H.P.H.S. Angel was the only elementary school in H.P. without a swimming pool. The 5th and 6th graders would come to Barber one day a week to swim.

The gyms, pools and playgrounds were opened during the summer and all had adult supervision.

Remember that from 1946 to 1964, SE Michigan was the nation's economic powerhouse and Detroit, Highland Park, and Hamtramack, and the inner suburbs were swimming in property tax money. They could embark on large city projects without going to Washington with a tin cup in hand begging for table scraps.

The area that became Lafayette Park was cleared out in the early '50s [[then known as the "Gratiot project") and sat empty for many years until new building was finally undertaken in the early '60s. Some parts of adjacent Elmwood Park that were cleared out in the mid-60s are still sitting vacant.

This was the idea of "urban renewal" in that era - a sort of "clear it and they will come" notion. It worked reasonably well for a short time, but eventually it all stalled [[like the area north of the Eastern Market, that has been largely empty and awaiting promised redevelopment for over 30 years now). Unfortunately though, many of our so-called "urban planners" in government around here still seem to be following this model.

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Originally Posted by Jman

198 Gerald would have been on the corner of Brush. Each block in H.P. was from 1 to 100, 101 to 200 etc. starting at Woodward and working east and west. Is she sure of the address?

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There's no way I can say for sure what her address was - I just have her memories, which can always be faulty. According to Google Maps [[which still starts 1 Gerald at Woodward), 180 is at the corner of Brush, which is why I thought she must've lived where the Mark E. Storen Memorial Park is now located. That said, the exact placement of the homes and streets may have been altered slightly during the redevelopment, and she very well could've been at the corner of Brush, or very close to it [[or even had a completely different address). In fact, she used to take Brush down to Gerald to get home, although the route is now blocked by a brick wall just south of Victor to protect a parking lot for the small apartment complexes on Gerald.

She did say that Angel was basically in her backyard. Perhaps her address was 188? Or 178?

Thanks for the help, of course. This is probably the closest as I'll get to reconstructing what the neighborhood was like.

I thought about the 1 to 100 statement and realized that I was generalizing as I had a friend who lived east of John R and his address was 97. I guess it's entirely possible that your Grandma's memory served her well.

I haven't toured that area east of Woodward in years. I will next time I'm at Red Hots.

Great thread! Thanks to all for some good reading.

Too bad the McGregor Library isn't open! I bet I could find more answers there...

I have a antidote of history to add to this. When you brought up Angel school it sparked memories for me of childhood. I grew up about a mile north of there on Brush on the Detroit side. I lived rite across the street from Greenfield Park school.

Sometime about 1960 or 61 when I was in about the 6th grade something happened to Angel school. I don't remember exactly what a fire or storm or something and they had to bus kids from Angel to Greenfield Park. It was a big deal back then as there were no buses for public schools. I never knew where that school was at the the time so it was funny to here you mention it.

We use to ice skate in Ford field just north of that neighborhood but I have no memory of ever being through there.