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Below is a link to a Shorpy link for a pic of Detroit's YWCA circa 1906. Nothing in the pic is ringing a bell and the YWCA website says their first real building was on East Grand River. To me that means Harmonie Park but that doesn't seem possible.http://www.shorpy.com/node/15714
Looks like the trolley says 14th on it; don't know if that's 14th St?
Sorry for the earlier post. Th 1906 Polk City Directory lists the YWCA at the sw corner of Washington Ave. & Clifford.
Here's the closest reproduction of the shot in modern day that I could find:
https://www.google.com/maps/preview#...5!4f13.1&fid=5
I'm trying to find anything that 1906 has common with 2013, other than the general street layout, I see nothing.
All of the buildings in the 1906 Shorpy photo are long gone. As noted, the site of that YWCA is now the location of Detroit City Apartments [[aka Washington Square, aka Trolley Plaza) at Washington Blvd. & Clifford.
The YWCA wasn't there for long - just over 20 years. The building was brand new when this picture was taken in 1906, but by 1928 they relocated to their new, larger, Albert Kahn designed building at Witherell and Montcalm [[demolished for Comerica Park in 1998). Soon after the YWCA left this Washington Blvd building it was torn down and replaced by [[what else?) a surface parking lot, which I believe remained there until Trolley Plaza was built in 1981.
As a Detroit trivia side note, before the YWCA building was built, that Washington Blvd. & Clifford site was occupied by Temple Beth El for 36 years. They left in 1903 to move into their own new Albert Kahn designed building, which is now WSU's Bonstelle Theatre.
I had forgotten that I had this information on the Y.W.C.A.