New Center, Detroit

History

In 1891, Detroit mayor Hazen S. Pingree broke ground on the construction of Grand Boulevard, a ring road that wrapped around the city of Detroit. The Boulevard ran for 12 miles (19 km), curving from the Detroit River on the west to the river on the east and crossing Woodward Avenue at a point approximately 3 miles (4.8 km) from downtown. The Boulevard was originally thought to represent the absolute limit of the city's expansion, although tremendous growth at the beginning of the 20th century quickly pushed the city limits far beyond Grand Boulevard.

In the 1890s, major railroad infrastructure known as the Milwaukee Junction was built just south of Grand Boulevard to facilitate industrial expansion in the city of Detroit. To take advantage of the rail line, industrial plants were built in this area on both sides of Woodward Avenue, with the automotive industry prominently involved. Part of this area east of Woodward is now the Piquette Avenue Industrial Historic District, while the area west of Woodward and south of the railroad tracks is the New Amsterdam Historic District. Most notably, in 1904, Burroughs Adding Machine Company built a large factory on Third, and the following year Cadillac built an assembly plant just to the east of Burroughs.

In 1915, Henry Ford bought the financially struggling Detroit General Hospital and its lands on Grand Boulevard and Hamilton (just west of Woodward) and reopened it as Henry Ford Hospital with 48 beds. Soon after, Ford broke ground on a 50,000-square-foot (4,600 m²) facility at the same location; the larger hospital opened in 1921.

Architecture

In the late 1910s and early 1920s, the automobile industry in Detroit grew rapidly. The economic surge made land in downtown Detroit difficult to obtain. The lack of suitable parcels frustrated William C. Durant in his search for the optimum location for his planned General Motors headquarters. Durant looked to the north, and settled on a location just west of Woodward Avenue on Grand Boulevard. At the time, the area was a residential district of private homes and small apartment buildings.

Durant hired Albert Kahn to design his building, and ground was broken in 1919. The building was originally to be called the "Durant Building", but Durant left the company before the building was completed, so when it opened in 1922, the building was called the "General Motors Building" (now the Cadillac Place). As General Motors continued to grow, the company required more space. In the later 1920s, they built a second building, the General Motors Research Laboratory (also known as the Argonaut Building), also designed by Kahn, directly south of their headquarters. The building was built in two phases, and was completed in 1930.

Around the same time, the Fisher Brothers of Fisher Body followed General Motors to the area. They broke ground on their eponymous Fisher Building in 1927, located across Grand Boulevard from the General Motors Building. The Fisher Brothers also hired Kahn, and spared no expense to construct their headquarters building. The followed this up with the construction of New Center Building (now the Albert Kahn Building), completed in 1932. The Great Depression, however, forced the Fishers to break off their plans to construct a complex of buildings in New Center, including a grandiose three-towered version of the Fisher building. In 1940 Saks Fifth Avenue opened their fourth full-line department store in this building. The store closed in 1978 and relocated to Fairlane Town Center in Dearborn.

Henry Ford Hospital has continued to expand. The hospital has built numerous additions to their campus since its inception by Henry Ford, from the Clara Ford Nursing Home in 1925 to their high-rise clinic in 1955 to hospital apartments in 1976. In 1992, Henry Ford purchased the old Burroughs headquarters to the south and renamed it One Ford Place. The building is now the Henry Ford Hospital corporate headquarters.

In 1966, the Hotel St. Regis was built on the north side of Grand Boulevard near General Motors' headquarters. In 1988, the hotel was doubled in size. In 1980, General Motors built another addition to the heart of New Center, New Center One, located across Grand Boulevard from their headquarters. The new eight-story building housed retail stores, offices, and some divisions of General Motors.

In 1977, General Motors began refurbishing some of the residential neighborhoods north of Grand Boulevard. The result was the "New Center Commons", a collection of refurbished single-family homes on the north side of New Center. With the revitalization of Virginia Park, New Center has two distinct historic residential neighborhhods within its boundaries. General Motors also facilitated the rehabilitation of some multi-family dwellings. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, new townhomes and condominiums were constructed in what had been empty areas of New Center, including a section along Woodward just north of Grand Boulevard. Additional loft renovation (as well as TechTown, the research and business incubator hub) took place at the same time within the New Amsterdam Historic District.

Economy

New Center served as a kind of corporate campus for GM for 70 years. However, the company left the area in the 1990s, moving their headquarters to the Renaissance Center downtown. The old General Motors Building—now called Cadillac Place—is occupied by the State of Michigan.

The economy of the New Center area is largely dominated by the Henry Ford Health System, the Detroit Public School system with their headquarters in the Fisher Building, and more than 2,000 State of Michigan employees in the high-rise office complex Cadillac Place.

Shinola, has its headquarters, and 30,000-square-feet in the College for Creative Studies, – CCS – (originally the Argonaut building, or General Motors Research Laboratory). In 2012, Shinola renovated the fifth floor and turned it into their corporate office as well as a watch factory and bicycle workshop. In 2014, Shinola gifted the city of Detroit with four new 13-foot tall city clocks, installed at Cobo Center, Eastern Market, in front of the College for Creative Studies at the corner of Cass and Milwaukee, and near Shinola's own first retail location, at the corner of Cass and Canfield.

Midtown Detroit, Inc., has become a driving force behind the planning, investment, and future development north of Detroit’s downtown area, and has expanded those area boundaries, and of the New Center area by going north to Philadelphia Street, east to the Chrysler Freeway (I-75), south to the Edsel Ford Freeway (I-94), and west to Rosa Parks Boulevard.

Structures

Culture and contemporary life

New Center has a retail section, primarily along the Woodward and Grand Boulevard corridors. The Cadillac Place state office complex and the Fisher Building are National Historic Landmarks in the area. An area south of Grand Boulevard along Woodward contains some retail stores in the district which have existed at their present location since the 1920s. The boutique Hotel St. Regis, Detroit is adjacent to the Fisher Theatre.

The Consulate-General of Lebanon in Detroit is located in Suite 560 in the New Center One Building.

New Center hosts the annual summer-long series of events in New Center Park and includes a 1,000 person outdoor concert venue with a center stage capable of hosting national acts.

Grand Boulevard, along its entire extent, became an attractive residential address at the beginning of the 20th century. This was also true in the area that was to become New Center. At the turn of the century, a number of private homes were built along Grand Boulevard and in the neighborhoods to the north, notably including what is now the Virginia Park Historic District on the northern edge of New Center. Interspersed in the area were small apartment buildings. Larger apartment buildings were constructed in the area in the 1920s to serve the population of workers and visitors to the area after larger office buildings had been built on Grand Boulevard.

Revitalization

The 2010s have seen a growth of new development in the New Center area. One of the first major projects, begun in 2010, was by the Henry Ford Health System of a $500 million revitalization effort of 300 mostly blighted acres just south of the main hospital campus on the western edge of New Center. The first development on the new South Campus site was the construction of a $30 million, 275,000-square-foot, Medical Distribution Center on 18-acres, built for Cardinal Health, Inc. In 2012, Wayne State University began work on a $92 million, 207,000-square-foot Integrative Biosciences Center (IBio). As many as 500 researchers, and staff will work out of the IBio Center located at 6135 Woodward Avenue. This was followed in 2013 by U-Haul's restoration of the 250,000-square-foot, seven-story historic NBC-Nabisco Building at 899 W. Baltimore St. The building with its distinctive castle like turrets at the four corners of the building's roof was constructed in 1920, and left abandoned for many years. In 2014, the six-story, 64,000-square-foot annex to the Hotel St. Regis was sold, and conversion into a 58-apartment residential building with more than 4,000-square-feet of street level retail space was begun.

In 2015, M-1 Rail reported that its $10.6 million headquarters, operations center, and streetcar maintenance facility, known as the Penske Tech Center, was under construction between E. Bethune and Custer streets along Woodward Avenue in New Center. The exterior of the Center will be made of reddish brick to mimic the historical look and feel of the surrounding neighborhood. In addition, the Fisher Building and adjacent Albert Kahn Building were sold, and the new owners announced only the broad outlines of their redevelopment plans, including the spending of well north of $80 million on the buildings. Finally, Central Detroit Christian Community Development Corporation announced a $10.2 million plan to modernize the four-story, 42,200-square-foot Casamira Apartments at 680 Delaware St., built in 1925.

In 2016, the pace of redevelopment increased. The Henry Ford Health System announced the start of a second development beginning in the spring of 2017 on its evolving 300-acre South Campus site, with the construction of a new $120-$150 million, 187,000-square-foot, six-story, Brigitte Harris Cancer Pavilion, that's scheduled to open in 2019, along with a skywalk across West Grand Boulevard to connect it to the Henry Ford Hospital.

In 2017, the Detroit Pistons and the Henry Ford Health System announced plans to build a new $50-$65 million 100,000-square-foot practice facility, team headquarters, and a dedicated sports medicine building called the Henry Ford-Detroit Pistons Performance Center. Bounded by Second and Third avenues, Amsterdam Street to the south, and railroad tracks to the north, and located near TechTown. It was also announced that the facility will be available to the public, and the plan is to have it open in time for the 2018-19 NBA season.

Education

New Center is within the Detroit Public Schools district. DPS has its headquarters in the Fisher Building. The district paid the owner of the Fisher Building $24.1 million in 2002 so the district could occupy five floors in the building. Officials claimed leasing the Fisher Building as its headquarters was more economical than a remodel of the Maccabees Building in Midtown where the district previously had its headquarters.

Three schools, Golightly K-8, Loving Elementary, and Thirkell Elementary, serve sections of New Center for elementary school. Golightly K-8 and Durfee K-8 serve sections of New Center for middle school. All residents are zoned to Northwestern High School.

In addition, the New Center area houses the administrative offices of the University Prep Schools system, along with the following schools:

The College for Creative Studies --(CCS)-- is a private, fully accredited college with campuses in Midtown and New Center, that offers Bachelor and Master of Fine Arts degrees . The New Center campus contains the Henry Ford Academy: School for Creative Studies, an art and design charter school for middle and high school students.

History of schools

Previously Sherhard K-8 served sections of New Center for elementary and middle school. Previously Hutchins Middle School served sections of New Center for middle school. Previously Murray-Wright High School and Northern High School served sections of New Center, while at the time Northwestern High School did not serve New Center.

Media

During the 1950s and 1960s, the studios of WJBK (then a Storer Broadcasting-owned CBS affiliate) were on Second Avenue in New Center. After WJBK moved to Southfield in 1970, WTVS (Detroit Public Television), the city's PBS station, took over the New Center site and operated there until 2008.