The Stork Club, 47 Rowena st. Speak easy.

[Detroitgayhistoryguy]

Ok, since people on here amaze me on how they find stuff. I was looking for photos of the Stork Club at 47 Rowena St. I know Rowena no longer exists, it is all Mack Ave now. I have seen one picture in a book about the purple gang of the Stork club. From that photo I have something to compare, I used Google street view and do not see the same building on Mack now, so it was probably torn down. The Stork Club was a swanky speak easy frequented by the Purple gang. Does anyone have some other photos of this place?

[EastsideAl]

47 Rowena would have been the first house west of Woodward on the north side of what is now Mack. So, roughly where the parking lot entrance behind Starbucks is today [[well, Mack has been widened a lot, so roughly in the westbound lanes of Mack in front of the parking lot entrance behind Starbucks).

What's kind of funny about its identification as an infamous and violent speakeasy is that in the 1928 Detroit city directory 47 Rowena is listed as the "Detroit Hebrew Orphans Home."

[Detroitgayhistoryguy]

do you have some online source for these later directories?

[EastsideAl]

http://quod.lib.umich.edu/g/genpub/a...w=pdf;q1=Pekin

[Brock7]

Is this the picture you've seen? Southofbloor has a clearer copy on flickr.

Someone else has a photo labled as the Stork Club, but it's a different house.

There's no number 47 listed for Rowena in the 1895 directory, so I suppose the house was built after then. I notice Albert Kahn is listed in the 1928 directory one block up at 208.

I remember coming across an old book on GoogleBooks with photos of large Detroit houses such as Max Fisher's on Woodward between Rowena and Eliot, but I haven't been able to find it again.

The orphanage vacated the house in 1930 or 1932.

http://www.soloff.com/hnoh/USJORPH6A.html
A group of Jewish citizens formed the DETROIT HEBREW ORPHAN HOME in 1918.
...
In 1920, the group secured the first home, located near the corner of Rowena and Woodward. It was an area once lined with grand homes built at the turn of the century that has since become a run-down stretch of Mack Avenue.
The group also organized the DETROIT HEBREW INFANT'S ORPHAN HOME for children under age 5. The home was first located at Canfield and Woodward, but later moved to 262 Rowena, two blocks from the home for the older children.
DETROIT'S JEWISH CHILDREN'S HOME was born when the two local homes were combined in 1930 at the recommendation of the Jewish Child Care Council, a Jewish Welfare Federation committee comprising members of the boards of both homes. Under the council's direction, a new facility was built at Petoskey and Burlingame and the two other buildings were vacated.

This source says they moved into the United Jewish Charities Building at Petoskey and Burlingame in December of 1932.

edit: corrected location of Fisher residence

[Detroitgayhistoryguy]

Yeah, that was the picture I saw, Southofbloor. but it was in a book. I'm wondering when it was torn down and if there are any other pictures of it? But, that is a pretty good picture. Also funny, I wonder exactly when it was a speakeasy, it seems like it was a orphan home in the 20's? Although, a Jewish home, maybe the Purple gang connection? strange.

[Brock7]

I found an old photo of the house at the Burton Historical collection labeled as the James S. Holden residence, but it gives the address as 25 Rowena St. - maybe it was renumbered to 47.
http://quod.lib.umich.edu/d/dpa1ic/x...66/dpa2766.tif

Here's a photo labeled "Rowena St. East from Woodward Ave". The house at the right of the photo is numbered 51 which would be the northwest corner of Rowena and John R. It looks like a similar styled house is going up on the corner of Woodward and Rowena with the rest of that block empty, which seems odd given how built up the rest of the street is. The James S. Holden residence doesn't appear to have been built yet.
http://quod.lib.umich.edu/d/dpa1ic/x...7/eb02e737.tif

Here's a 1913 photo of the houses on Woodward between Brady and Rowena which shows the roof silhouette of the house on the northeast corner of Woodward and Rowena to be the same as in the photo above.
http://quod.lib.umich.edu/d/dpa1ic/x...41/dpa4541.tif

Here's one of the house in the other "Stork Club" photo on flicker - J.A. Moross residence 226 Rowena, which would be between St. Antoine and Hastings if before renumbering, John R and Brush if after.
http://quod.lib.umich.edu/d/dpa1ic/x...2/eb02g212.tif

[EastsideAl]

I found an old photo of the house at the Burton Historical collection labeled as the James S. Holden residence, but it gives the address as 25 Rowena St. - maybe it was renumbered to 47.

25 Rowena and 47 Rowena are the same house. All Detroit addresses were changed in 1921.

The house shows on 1897 maps, but not on 1889 maps. So it was built sometime between those years.

I remember when all of those houses were cleared back in the early '60s for the widening of Mack Ave. and the building of the Medical Center. Albert Kahn's old house is on the last remaining block with some of the very nice homes that once lined Rowena. That street was once where many of the well-off members of Detroit's Jewish community lived.

[EastsideAl]

Oh, and James S. Holden was a pretty prominent person as well. Son of an old Detroit family [[Holden St. on the west side is on land his family once owned). James S. Holden was a businessman, member of the Common Council [[City Council today), instrumental in the founding of the Detroit Zoo and its first Commissioner, and a board member and benefactor of the University of Detroit [[he donated the Holden Hall dorm to the campus). I believe that house was his first - perhaps a wedding gift as was the custom for families of means in those days - as he would have been in his early 20s when it was built.

[Brock7]

Well then if 25 and 47 are the same, it's the first house listed on Rowena in the 1895 directory with the resident named Oscar Le Seure. There are only odd numbers listed between Woodward and John R, which I take it means there were no buildings on the south side of that block of Rowena at that date. There are also no numbers listed between John R and Brush.

[Detroitgayhistoryguy]

Ok, why the Stork Club was interesting. On June 15, 1932 St Louis mobster Ezra Milford Jones was shot at the bar in the Stork Club. Seen on the left in the photo.



It makes sense that the Stork Club was after 1930 when the orphanage left the building.

[Brock7]

There's a little more detailed description of the murder here in case you haven't seen it.

And an AP report of it from the time.

[southofbloor]

Is this the picture you've seen? Southofbloor has a clearer copy on flickr.

I found that photo on Ebay labeled as "The Stork club, 1923, Detroit" - I can't verify that the info is correct.

[Brock7]

Here's a Detroit connection with the New York Stork Club.

http://www.e-reading.org.ua/bookread...Last_Call.html

* The most prominent of the early Detroit smugglers were the Billingsley brothers of Oklahoma, a family of criminal operators who had set up operations in Michigan shortly after statewide Prohibition was established. The youngest of the Billingsleys, Sherman, opened one of the plushest New York speakeasies, the Stork Club, a few years after his release from a fifteen-month sentence in the federal prison in Leavenworth, Kansas.

[Gannon]

I thought the Purples WERE a bunch of Hebrew Orphans.

Surely any living parent would've disowned them...