The Broadway Avenue Historic District is a historic district located on a single city block along Broadway Avenue between Gratiot and East Grand River in downtown

Detroit Detroit ( , ; , ) is the largest city in the U.S. state of Michigan. It is also the largest U.S. city on the United States–Canada border, and the seat of government of Wayne County. The City of Detroit had a population of 639,111 at t ...

Michigan Michigan () is a U.S. state, state in the Great Lakes region, Great Lakes region of the Upper Midwest, upper Midwestern United States. With a population of nearly 10.12 million and an area of nearly , Michigan is the List of U.S. states and ...

. It was listed on the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic ...

in 2004. The Broadway Avenue Historic District joins the Randolph Street Commercial Buildings Historic District, a rare surviving commercial area which dates from the 1840s.

Description and significance

The Broadway Avenue Historic District contains eleven commercial buildings built between 1896 and 1926.Rustin Quaide, Caridad Dela Vega, and National Conference of State Historic Preservation Officers
"National Register Nominations," ''Heritage Matters'', National Park Service, December 2004, pp. 9–10. Three of those buildings — the Cary Building and the Breitmeyer–Tobin Building at the southern end, and the

Merchants Building The Merchants Building is a commercial building located at 206 East Grand River Avenue (at Broadway Street) in Downtown Detroit. It is also known as the Broadway Merchants Building. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1 ...

at the north end — are listed on the

in their own right. The architectural

terra cotta Terracotta, terra cotta, or terra-cotta (; ; ), in its material sense as an earthenware substrate, is a clay-based unglazed or glazed ceramic where the fired body is porous. In applied art, craft, construction, and architecture, terracotta ...

used on these structures unifies the appearance of the district. The district is significant for its architecture, its commercial history, its ethnic heritage, and for its association with

Philip Breitmeyer Philip Breitmeyer (May 13, 1864 – November 8, 1941) was a florist, one of the founders of Florists' Telegraph Delivery (now Florists' Transworld Delivery, or FTD), and the mayor of Detroit, Michigan. Biography Philip Breitmeyer was born in ...

, mayor of Detroit from 1909 to 1911.

History

The area where the district is located was developed in the late 1800s as a commercial area catering to the women's trade, and included businesses such as hairdressers, florists, corset makers, and fashionable clothiers. A number of these women's trade shops were owned by ethnic immigrants. During the 1910s, the area began transforming into a banking and financial center. In the adjoining Randolph Street Commercial Buildings Historic District, the building at 1244 Randolph St. is a rare survivor from the 1840s.Randolph Street Commercial Buildings Historic District
from the state of Michigan, retrieved 01/27/11 The Breitmeyer-Tobin Building on Broadway Avenue, now called

Harmonie Centre The Harmonie Centre, also known as the Breitmeyer–Tobin Building, is an eight-story commercial building located at 1308 Broadway Street (at the corner of Broadway and Gratiot) in Downtown Detroit. It is part of the Broadway Avenue Historic Dis ...

, opened to African-American tenants in 1936. In the 1950s, ethnic and immigrant-owned shops moved into the area, with some of them still in the districts to the present day. The ''east necklace'' of downtown links Grand Circus and the stadium area to

Greektown Greektown is a general name for an ethnic enclave populated primarily by Greeks or people of Greek ancestry, usually in an urban neighborhood. History The oldest Greek dominated neighborhood outside of Greece were probably the Fener in Ista ...

along Broadway. The east necklace contains a sub-district sometimes called the ''Harmonie Park District'' in the Broadway Avenue Historic District which has taken on the legacy of Detroit's music from the 1930s through the 1950s and into the present.Harmonie Park District
. Retrieved January 15, 2013.

References

External links

Broadway Avenue Historic District
{{National Register of Historic Places listings in Wayne County, Michigan Downtown Detroit Historic districts in Detroit Neighborhoods in Detroit Historic districts on the National Register of Historic Places in Michigan National Register of Historic Places in Detroit

Description and significance

History

See also

References

External links