East English Village

[Bluenote132003]

Anyone have any memories of growing up in this nieghborhood? We grew up at Harvard and Frankfort late '60s and 70's. Pills and Puffs [[then Mr. C's), Alinosis, Food Giant [[burned), stately elm trees, Cannon Rec Center, East Warren Lanes, Sabre Lancer, Club "500", Pointe BBQ, just a start...

[WKL]

I remember them all - grew up at East Outer Drive and Warren. After the Food Giant burned down we used to use the parking lot to fly our model air planes.

There was also the Alger [[used to work there) and Jefferson branch of the library. Sander, Kressge and A&K.

[Servite76]

I lived on Kensington between South Hampton & Frankfort. I went to all those places. My sister also worked at the Alger. Might have been from '73 to '75.

[pgn421]

I lived on Bishop off of Mack , went to all the places mentioned

[JVLIVS]

Seeing that I am relatively young on this particular subject, my memories of the EEV are very partial compared to that of the older generation. The EEV still remains a favourite spot of mine to this day. Bishop remains my favourite strip in the Village-esp. that real big house on Chandler Park Drive and Bishop on the SE corner [[can't miss it-it's that big). I remember there used to be a Used GM dealer on Harper and Bishop. My mother and uncle bought cars there-Chevettes-and there was Detroit Edison-now DTE across the street from it.

My mother attended Jared W. Finney HS, she was one of the first African-American kids to attend that school. J.W. Finney, according to her and her contemporaries, was one of the first fully integrated high schools in Detroit. I worked there in '96 for one week, didn't like it at first. But found myself working there years later from '04-'05, and actually liked it until summer clean-up came, and.... well, I'll just leave that one blank for now, don't wanna get off topic.

But I will mention one other thing about JWF HS, The Canon Rec Center was [[I assume) Finney's Gym area until they expanded in the early 70s [[was Canon City property back then like it is today?).

But I remember the fruit market on Warren and Harvard [[or was it Grayton), that became a used car dealership, and I think it was recently reverted back to a market. Pizza Hut is still there but you can no longer dine in [[WTH were they thinking even though they did add the wings joint in?!?), The Alger Theater I vaguley remember [[my family told me stories about it-it may reopen, it's in the works-has been for years), I've never been, but I heard that Wimpy's was the bomb! And from what I heard, a rodent infestation caused it to shut down and it hasn't been opened since. The Midas on Cadieux is still there as well as the Precision Tune.

The Maxey family still remains in business there. I never met Mr. Maxey, but I would always stop by and check out the used vehicles in the lot on Bishop and Mack before they moved several blocks east to where Joe Ricci's Eagle dealership was-that mound of rocks where you'd see a Jeep vehicle is still there today. But when I went for my walks in the Village, I'd step into Maxey Lincoln-Mercury for a minute and fantasize about rollin' in Lincoln, or a Cougar. I was somewhat saddened by his demise in late '97. They were closed for a few days on that sad occasion. And who can forget Cusmano Tuxedo as well as the Yorkshire Market? Both of which are still in existence today. Although Cornerstone [[Mack and Morross area-south of St. John Hospital-from what someone else called it) has gotten my attention in recent years, the EEV still remains an all the more vivid memory for me.

I have pictures on flickr that I'll have to post later-flickr's blocked here at work again [[man, that sucks). So I gotta do it @ home...

Didn't mean to post such a long tread here. It there exists any inaccuracies in this thread I posted, do not hesitate to correct me, I insist on being as accurate as possible!

[Optima]

I grew up in St. Raymond's parish [[approx. 8 Mile and Schoenherr) and my folks frequented Alinosi's, Brickley [[?) Dairy, many Polish bakeries, etc although I was too young to remember the specific areas. Although we moved out of there "Back in '72" like the Seger song, I have very fond memories of the area which we covered far and wide - especially for our then tender ages. Does anyone recall a bakery or pizzeria east of Schoenherr and south of 8 Mile [[pronounced Chi, Chi O's) spelled Ciccios. I very vaguely recall it being a very stark white colored building...

[texorama]

I met a real estate agent once who had grown up in this area. But she claimed that she never heard the term East English Village when she was young, and she hypothesized that it was a later invention, probably by real estate concerns. True or untrue?

[Bearinabox]

I met a real estate agent once who had grown up in this area. But she claimed that she never heard the term East English Village when she was young, and she hypothesized that it was a later invention, probably by real estate concerns. True or untrue?

From the EEV association webpage:

In 1990, the residents chose to give the area a new name that would reflect the homes of the community and give it an identity of its own. Because of the predominance of English country-style homes and the majority of English street names, it was agreed to name the area East English Village. In 1991, East English Village saw the installation of its first boundary sign with the new name at Chandler Park Drive and Cadieux Road. The sign was designed and built by EEV resident Terry Alphonse. The boundary signs were replaced in 2002.

[oladub]

I met a real estate agent once who had grown up in this area. But she claimed that she never heard the term East English Village when she was young, and she hypothesized that it was a later invention, probably by real estate concerns. True or untrue?

True. I'll take you on tour of a part of E. Warren Avenue as far back as I can remember to about age 5. As a child we lived on Three Mile Drive about three blocks south of Warren. No one had two cars then. When my Mother had to go grocery shopping it was with a two wheel shopping cart. The grocery store at Three Mile Drive and Warren was an A&P. Across Warren from A&P was Adolph DeLue's butcher shop. Adolph used to go to market to choose his his own cattle. It was later taken over by his son-in-law Jimmy Van Hull. Years later, when we moved out to near Base Line and Mack, Jimmy used to drop our meat off on his way home to St. Clair shores every Friday evening. They offered very good meat to their long time customers. A few doors to the west was a storefront branch of the Detroit Public Library until the new library was built behind the Alger Theater. Headed east from DeLue's, perhaps at Courville was a bank. I think I remember the tellers to be men and they wore suits. There was a lot of brass on the tellers cages. Banks were very formal then.

Crossing Outer Drive, was the Zone 24 post office before it became 48224. Upstairs, above the post office was the ofice of the evil dentist Dr. Seth who always found cavities and never used pain killers even when his drill motor slowed while drilling. There were no air conditioners in any of these stores then. Dr. Seth kept his windows open and it was kind of relaxing watching the curtains blow when he wasn't drilling overlooking Warren.

On one of those blocks along Warren was a wooden real estate office with a wooded area behind it. In it was some sort of dilapidated concrete garden arrangement which remains a strange memory.

Across Warren was Alinosi's. We went there as a family and sat in a booth on Friday nights. Cunningham's Drug Store was at the corner of Outer Drive across from the Alger. Whenever the TV stopped working, my Father would remove all the tubes and bring them to the testing machine at Cunningham's. Without fail, at least two tubes would need replacing. The tubes werre stored under the testing machine.

A Sander's restaurant was a few stores down. I would always have a tuna sandwich that came wrapped in wax paper. Years later I took my California raised wife to Sanders and ate at the same counter. It was full of patrons in coats and nothing had changed. One of the customers came in with a goiter. I hadn't seen a goiter since iodine was put into salt and remembered how common it was to see people with goiters on the DSR. I knew I was back home sort of in a Twighlight Zone sense of the word. There were men and women's clothing stores along that block.

Heading east, there were some stores just in from Warren, maybe on Audobon including a barber shop, and a Buster Brown shoe store with an X-ray machine that allowed one to see their foot through a shoe. Grinnell Music Store along there somewhere where Mr. Mobely would take me into a storage room to try to teach me to play the clarinet. He eventually gave up and told my parents to bring me back in a few years when my fingers were longer.

I don't remember exact locations any more but perhaps between Audobon and Courville, there was a dime store and a Piggly Wiggly grocery store. They had wooden floors. Piggly Wiggly had a high ceiling with skylights and a number of fans to cool the customers.

Sorry, if this is was little fuzzy but these are old memories from when I was 4-7 years old. I wanted to provide a feel of the place for anyone who has more recently moved to the area.

[tarkus]

For the life of me I can't remember where the Foodland was. Any help.

[Lloyd]

I grew up in this area, of couse <as pointed out earlier in the thread> it was not called that then. Growing up on Beaconsfield with neighboring streets like Barham, Nottingham, Sommerset, Balfour, Chatsworth and Berkshire <just to name the ones next to Beacsonsfield and on my way to school at Clark Elementary>, I can see how it could become known as East English Village.

My last visit home I found the old estate on Beaconsfield to be abandoned with the doors off the hinges and most of the windows gone. Even at that it had fared better than some of its neighbors as all but two of the homes on Barham were gone <and one of those was being demolished while I was there and the other had a burn through on it's roof> and many other homes were gone as if they had never existed. Clark Elementary seemed to be an anchor though, as the closer you got to it the more homes seemed to survived.

Anyway, I remember as a kid in the 60's that the streets were like the aisles of a gothic cathedral with huge Elm trees lining both sides of the roads. Then Dutch Elm disease hit with a vengeance, the trees came down one by one and soon there was no shelter left from the sun. Those elms also provided a handy spot for the signs announcing upcoming street cleaning in the summer so's everyone could be sure to have their cars out of the way.

Cannon Recreation was where my youth football career played out as well as my budding libido at the teen dances every Friday night. The DJ at those dances was very accomodating with the requests of Hey Jude at it got played several times each night... being as it was some 7 minutes of slow dancing heaven with your honey.

Another memory involves riding my bike down to a Grosse Point park to slip between the iron bars of their fence to take advantage of their pool. Only went of the high dive platform once... discovered that hitting the water from that height was not an experience I enjoyed at all. There was also little black colored squirrels in Grosse Pointe while the one's in Detroit were all grey... I don't know the logistics of this, but I never saw a grey squirrel on the Grosse Pointe side of Mack and also never saw a black one on the Detroit side. Strange.

[texorama]

Fascinating . . . this is the first time I've heard of a Piggly Wiggly grocery outside the South. Were there others in the area?

[Lloyd]

Fascinating . . . this is the first time I've heard of a Piggly Wiggly grocery outside the South. Were there others in the area?

I don't remember this one... doesn't mean it didn't exist.

[WKL]

Somewhere between Audubon and Three Mile there was a small grocery store that got converted to a furnature store some time in the very early 60s. It was on the south side of the street - same side at the A&P. Could that have been the Piggly Wiggly?
I also remember those strange concrete structures next to the real estate office, used to wander through there going to and from Cannon.

[Bluenote132003]

Oladub,
There's a name from the past, Mr. Mobely taught me trumpet, as well as being active in band instruction for Peace Lutheran grade school on E. Warren.

[Fury13]

...the streets were like the aisles of a gothic cathedral with huge Elm trees lining both sides of the roads.

What a great visual.

[pffft]

Piggy Wiggly was one of the earliest grocery chains here and in other northern cities, sure...Kroger of course outlasted it.

[oladub]

Oladub,
There's a name from the past, Mr. Mobely taught me trumpet, as well as being active in band instruction for Peace Lutheran grade school on E. Warren.

Bluenote, I too went to Peace K-8, '62 spending 9 years with a clump of about 30 other students. I wonder what happened them all. I don't remember if Mr. Moeller or Barney Bierwagon was the principal in '62. I have lost track of all but one of my classmates who is the head of the North Dakota janitors union and used to be a Lutheran minister. Once in a while I would hear a snippet. Barney's niece became a LHE valedictorian as were both of her siblings, and married a Harvard guy. Another fellow was last heard from as a member of some California Hell's angel group. Yet another reenlisted for a second tour in Vietnam. So many questions as to what happened to that group. I would be more interested in a reunion with that bunch than my high school graduation class although a few might have cause to still have it out for me.

My part of English Village was very German at the time. Many of the fine brick houses in the neighborhood were built by German families. I played and/or walked to school with the Geltz, Belk, Kierdorf, and Eichenlob kids and just a few blocks from Peace school was Bethany Lutheran school.

[turkeycall]

Oladub,
I graduated Bethany in '64 and went on to one year at Finney and then three years at Lutheran East. Did you know Tom Kynaston [[I think his dad was the custodian at Peace), or David and Donald [Rick] Schultz? Tom was a couple of years ahead of me in age and attended Finney. Dave Schultz was a year or two ahead of me but Rick was in my gracduating class at LHE. The four of us were good friends for a long time. Tom Kynaston died almost ten years ago - a viral infection in his heart, I think. I haven't heard from or seen the Schultz brothers in many years. Of course, I haven't lived in the Detroit area for almost 25 years.

[Gistok]

The "24 Post Office" was located in a yellow brick building at E. Warren and Kensington. Later when the new post office was built for the 48224 Zip Code at Harper and Morang, it retained the name Kensington Station.

Predating the Pizza Hut on E. Warren was Paul's Service Station. I had all of my auto repairs done back in the 70's at that dumpy looking station.

At E. Warren & Harvard there used to be "Robert Lipton Stamps & Coins". At E. Warren & Kensington there used to be the Standard Federal, and at E. Warren & Bishop there used to be a Manufacturers Bank. I had an account in the first, and safety depost box at the latter.

In the 1980's there used to be a small used toy store called Mom's Toy Attic at E. Warren & Bishop, run by 2 Grosse Pointe ladies.

I grew up and used to live on Marseilles... in the far east side neighborhood that is now known as "Cornerstone Village"... a 2007 name change from ONE [[Organized Neighbors East).

[turkeycall]

Does anyone have a map, or can anyone describe the boundries of the various neighborhoods? I grew up on Farmbrook between Warren and Chandler Park Drive. We left the city in 1980 - Houston, TX and Huntington, IN - before returning to Michigan in '92 - the Muskegon area.

I never heard my neighborhood called anything but "on the east side, near Saint John's Hospital, a couple of blocks from Balduck Park." We could narrow it down from there if necessary.

[KENSINGTONY]

I grew up on Kensington[[hence the name)between Cornwall and Waveney.I lived there from January 1955,when my parents bought our house,until I got married and moved in 1987.I do remember there being 3 grocery stores in the neighborhood-the A&P at Three Mile Drive,the Food Fair[[which became DeRonne's hardware)and Wrigley's[[which became Food Giant).There was Tiffany's gift and toy store and a bank at Three Mile Drive.The Standard Federal S&L building was originally in what is now the Charter One bank's parking lot and was torn down when Standard Federal bought what was a furniture store to move into that.The Mobil station was next to that and a Sinclair station was across the street.There was what was advertised as a dress shop on the north side of Warren between Audubon and Courville.Never saw anyone go in there so I always thought it was probably a gambling joint or a blind pig.Further east we had the Sherwin Williams paint store,the Serbian Singing Federation of America Library[[ever seen a singing Serbian?)and Valente's jewelery store.I took tap dance lessons at Orchid Diane's studio next to Bill Woo's Chinese restaurant.There was a S&H Green Stamps [[remember those?)redemption center on the corner of Yorkshire and Warren[[now Tiger Chung's).Across from that was a pizza resaturant which became a GMAC office which became the Visiting Nurse Association office.There was an NBD on Bishop and where the Pizza Hut is now was an insurance office[[which was where that mysterious concrete garden was located)and a gas station.Across from the old Wrigley's was a Leonard Refineries gas station which became the used car lot for Richard Buick,then it was a food market, then a daycare center,and now it's back to being a used car lot.Ah,so many memories.I could easily write double what I have.

[oladub]

Turkeycall, We've talked about Farmbrook before. Did you know Dennis Hartness? He lived a few houses toward Warren from Chandler. He went to Peace, got kicked out of LHE, and would up in Hell's Angels. Both Dennis and I were in the same class as David Schultz. David knew more about dinasaurs in grade school than most college students after graduation. What was the last you heard of David.?

I never knew anyone from Bethany. I half remember one name though. At the annual city wide Lutheran grade school meet at LHE, I managed to break the previous highjump record by one inch. My moment of glory did not last though. A Dave Cortez, or Lopez, from Bethany tied me and then went on to jump four inches higher.

KENSINGTONY, Thanks for putting the bank back on Three Mile where it belonged. I had moved it to Courville. There was also a Shell station near the Methodist Church west of Bedford. The attendent, who would check oil and wash the windows, had a small shriveled hand so he had to do most everything with his good hand. Thanks for reminding me of the S&H store. I have since remembered that there was a Detroit Edison store just north of Warren on perhaps Audobon. That's where everyone would bring their burnt out light bulbs and have them exchanged for free for new ones that said 'Detrot Edison' on them. I'm surprised that three of us remember the strange concrete garden but maybe I am the only one here to have survived Dr. Seth's smoking drill.

[turkeycall]

Oladub,
I called my sister in Pewaukee, WI and asked if she remembered Dennis Hartness. She says she remembers him but not much of him. He kind of lived on the "dark side" of things.

The Cortez name from Bethany sounds familiar, too.

The last time I saw or heard of Dave Schultz was about 36 years ago when I returned home from the Navy. He'd married a Baptist preacher's daughter and moved to either Kentucky or Tennesee. That was the last time I heard from his brother, Rick. I have no idea where he might be but if you know, clue me in.

So, anyway, are there set boundries for the various neighborhoods on the east side?