Vacant Cass Ave. Building

[EastsideAl]

It was the William Hamilton Funeral Home. My mother worked there as a part-time greeter/receptionist when she was in high school at Cass back in the 1940s. She remained friends with the Hamilton family for years. The funeral home is still operating in Mt. Clemens. They sold the building to the Art Center music school in the early '80s, after a little controversy over the possibility of a drug treatment center there. The music school had its own interesting history of training young African-American musicians begining in the late 1920s

Here is some history on the building itself, featuring some interesting information about the death of Houdini in Detroit:
http://detroit1701.org/Hamilton%20Fu...l#.V0XtmuR8t9Q

It appears that the building is its own little historic district, which means that it can't be legally demolished without City Council action. It looks like the music school declined around 2008ish, and that after a period of use by the Detroit Summer LAMP people, the building was fully abandoned sometime around late 2013. Since the music school was a non-profit with a board, etc. I wouldn't be surprised if the actual ownership of the building is unclear or legally tied up somehow.