By the 1840’s Detroit had become accessible from the East via the Erie Canal and was soon to become the largest settlement in the new state called Michigan.

Roads began to take the city to the west and north, railroads brought copper mined in the North to be processed in the foundries of the city. As trade began to expand the economic possibilities for people willing and able to work, word spread among the immigrants who had settled in upstate New York; Detroit was growing and jobs were plentiful.

They began to come west; first along the Erie Canal to Buffalo, and then by steamship on to Detroit. Once here, they came off the ship at the docks where Third Street now lies, some asking where they could find a job even before they found a place to live.

A short distance from the docks, one of the French Strip farms had recently been subdivided and developed. Here were boarding houses, rooming houses, worker’s cottages and tenements built to house the workers within walking distance to the shipyards, rail yards, lumber yards, lumber mills, tobacco shops, shoe factories, clothing manufacturers, copper foundries, and wagon factories where they worked long hours.

This simple row house, believed to be among the oldest residences remaining in the city, appears on the Hart Map of Detroit published in 1853, and may have preexisted the relocation in 1849 of the neighboring Most Holy Trinity Church’s first frame structure.

Its dimensions are quite small by modern standards; 36 feet wide by 26 feet deep. Two stories high, it was originally divided into three separate units, each just 560 square feet of living space; yet nearly as large as the one story, two room cottages with lean-to kitchens attached being built during the same period. Two of the original six over six pane double hung windows remain on the rear wall. A middle door has been covered over. Three chimneys remain. Those in the end units perhaps for warmth, sit entirely within the walls, rather than outside. It is Barn Frame 4X4 post construction, none of which extend beyond one story, in a style know as platform upon platform.

The Worker’s Row House Museum captures the imagination as a Restoration and Preservation Project important for the fact that it honors and appreciates the trials and triumphs of those usually unheralded, poor immigrant families who, in their coming to Corktown, started, in 1834, the oldest community still in existence in Detroit today. Their toil made the city a strong center for the dignity of labor, just as it allowed them the living wage that afforded them homeownership.

As restoration progresses, the history hat this building represents will be experienced in may ways. From street and sidewalk, descriptive placards in front of the house will tell the story of the row house and those who lived there, as the landscape and outbuildings further reflect the era. Interiors will be opened to the public on designated days, and by arrangements for special events. Current plans include both self-guided and audio tours of the building and its displays, as well as the oral history and photography archives. Back to top.

It will be an Interactive museum where people will see and feel what daily life was like. We will see first hand how we lived a century and a half ago; the outdoor water pump, the out house…no electricity, no telephone. Young actors will interact with visiting schoolchildren and give them a first hand experience of what life expected from them. Working from history, these young actors will show and explain what their family life was like, demonstrating what, if any, education was available, as they talk about the jobs they had to get to help support the family or to survive on their own.

With a clear view into the past, we can begin to connect with the nature and character of the people who shaped America. Together, we will continue to discover and admire both the noble past of the building and the humble yet determined lives lived within.

The Workers Row House Museum project has been awarded The Evans Memorial Grant for Historic Preservation, given by Jeanne and Ralph Graham of the Clannad Foundation, a Michigan Architectural Foundation. Enthusiasm and support has also been shown by the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, Local 58 and the Labor History Society.

Project Contact:

Executive Director
Tim McKay
x29 or timm_gcdc@sbcglobal.net Back to top.

The Beech Street House-Moving Project aims to move three brick buildings, consisting of two three-unit town houses constructed in 1900 and one cottage constructed in 1879, from their current location into the Corktown Historic District.

Detroit's oldest neighborhood, located just west of Downtown, Corktown was first settled in 1834 by Irish immigrants from County Cork. Stretching from First Street west to Sixteenth Street, Grand River Avenue south to the Detroit River, Corktown was a neighborhood of working class immigrants. In the mid 1900's, freeway construction bisected the neighborhood, and the quadrant in which the three structures relevant to this project reside was separated off from the area that eventually became the Corktown Historic District. For a time in the late 1960’s, this quadrant gained notoriety as the infamous “Plum Street” neighborhood, which was similar in spirit to
San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury District. After that period, all buildings save these three were demolished to make way for parking for the Detroit Edison (now DTE Energy) Corporation. These buildings survived as an island in a sea of parking: the six townhouse units were rental residential units and the small cottage lived on as a lovely tea house. This short respite from the wrecking ball ended however, when MGM Grand announced the location for its permanent casino. The land they selected was vacant…except for three buildings.

It seemed natural for Corktown to attempt to move these buildings into its historic district for several reasons, the first being the structures’ origins in the Greater Corktown neighborhood. Furthermore, in the mid-1990's, Corktown’s preservation ethic previously resulted in three homes, due for demolition, being moved to within the safe borders of the historic district. Lastly, as Corktown recovers from the damages inflicted by Tiger Stadium's enormous parking needs, infill
construction is underway; what better way to fill up blighting holes in the historic district but with homes of the same age and provenance as those around them.

It is GCDC’s ambition to move these structures into the Corktown Historic District, rehabilitate them into livable residences according to the Secretary of the Interior’s Standards for the Treatment of Historic Properties, and immediately sell them.

A feasibility study for the Beech Street House-Moving Project has been completed, thanks to the support of the National Trust for Historic Preservation Services Fund. Currently funds to fill the anticipated gap between the sale price and the cost to move the structures are being sought.

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The British acquired Detroit by treaty in 1763 and belatedly yielded it to the new United States in 1796. Even then, Detroit remained largely settled by families of French descent. Settlers from the East Coast states generally preferred the Ohio River Valley and lands southward, as they were more accessible via the Ohio River and gave farmers a longer growing season.

As late as 1825, the only product worth exporting from Detroit was fur-next in revenue was fish which wasn't worth carting east. Half of Detroit residents still bore French surnames in 1825. That year the Erie Canal opened across New York state to Lake Erie, and New Englanders began following it west. By 1840, with a population of over 9,000, Detroit was the third largest town in the Midwest after Cincinnati and St. Louis-Michigan was still rural.

Detroit grew into a manufacturing town. Now it drew immigrants from all over the Atlantic. By 1890, Detroit ranked fourth among American cities of over 100,000 population in percentage of foreign-born residents.

The failure of political uprisings and reforms in Europe after 1848 stimulated German immigrants to cross the Atlantic in large numbers. Generally the Germans settled on Detroit's Near East Side, near today's Lafayette Park neighborhood.

At mid-century, the Irish were the largest ethnic group among Detroit's newcomers, prompted by the Potato Famine in Ireland in the mid-1840's. The Irish moved into the near West Side. Since many of these came from County Cork, their neighborhood came to be known as "Corktown." In 1853, half the population of the Eighth Ward (which took in Corktown) was of Irish descent.

The Corktown neighborhood was originally much larger than the fragment surviving today. It extended westward from Third Street by a dozen or more blocks away from the Detroit River past Michigan Avenue towards Grand River Avenue. The area south of Michigan Avenue was much reduced by clearance for the Lodge Freeway and for urban renewal for offices and light industry by the 1960's.

The surviving residential fragment is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and is designated as a City of Detroit Historic District. The district includes about 300 structures housing about 2,000 people.

In spite of its relatively early time of platting, Corktown still offers a full spectrum of house fashions of the whole second half of the nineteenth century. Houses in Corktown are typically built close to each other on narrow 25-foot lots extending perhaps 130 feet from front sidewalk to back alley. This is a land pattern dating back to the London of King Charles II over 300 years ago.

Towns like Detroit were built to limits of convenient walking distances until the arrival of public transportation extended the radius. Our first horse-drawn trolley cars appeared on Michigan Avenue in November 1863. More important to Corktown was the Baker Street Trolley line, opened in 1873. It passed along Bagley Avenue (originally "Baker Street" in Corktown).

June 1996 by Gordon Pritchard Bugbee (1934-2000) Back to top