More Rooftop Roulette (Myrtle's Law)

June, 2007.

The Ferguson Building at 1448 Woodward was erected in 1896 by the estate of Mr. Eralsey Ferguson and designed by Mortimer L. Smith & Son, Architect. It was a speculative commercial building that would house a variety of tenants, including architects, dentists, insurance agents, a dressmaker, doctors, and a photographer. In 1898, the Ferguson became the Detroit City Gas Co.'s headquarters. In 1912, the building was updated with an entirely new "terra-cotta and brick front," which remains today.

It's the reddish one seen here in the middle:

Image from Google Streetview

For awhile we had a Canadian buddy who lived on the third floor of the Ferguson, and sometimes when we would visit at night it was fun to sneak up on the roof to watch the mayhem ensue as Club Bleu a few doors up the street would let out at night, often erupting into street brawls with the Detroit Police Gang Squad. Club Bleu was notorious for this—at least back then. I'm not up on the downtown scene these days but I suspect that these sorts of shenanigans aren't tolerated in today's much more *conservative* downtown milieu, heh.

Hanging out on the roof of the Ferguson offered plenty of other benefits, such as nice views of surrounding buildings.

The Ferguson Building was heavily modified again in 1914 by the Henry Blackwell Co., adding a magnificent arcade entrance and a 40-foot-long show window. Said to be the largest window in the state, it was located between the two doors.

I guess being the owner of Michigan's longest shop windows was too much of a burden, because Henry Blackwell Co. went bankrupt in 1916...possibly with help from rock-throwing miscreants who couldn't resist the temptation of so much glass. Many other upscale tenants leased the building before it was occupied in 1956 by Winkelman's, a women's clothier who remained until 1987.

Disaster struck on June 24, 1958, when an 18-foot section of the masonry cornice of the Ferguson Building fell to the sidewalk killing 79-year-old Mrs. Myrtle Taggart, and injuring two bystanders. Rusted support rods were blamed for the collapse. Incidentally, our visit was exactly one year and one day short of the 50th anniversary of this tragedy.

Cuffed & Stuffed!

Anyway, Mrs. Myrtle's death prompted Mayor Miriani to order the immediate "removal of any dangerous gingerbread" from buildings. This crusade started with the issuance of 1,663 cornice violation notices, resulting in perhaps the single greatest butchery of original vintage architecture in Detroit's history, as over two-thirds of the buildings on Woodward simply removed their cornice that year rather than try bringing them up to code. There were notable exceptions however, such as Hudson's store, the Detroit Life Building, Michigan Central Station, and the Woodward Building directly across the street from us, whose cornice remains intact today:

It would appear that the fact that Myrtle Taggart's name rhymes with a famous country singer's was not the only unnerving thing about her; now she haunts the sidewalk in front of 1448 Woodward, accusatively shaking her finger skyward as if to warn, or scold. There is also 440 Lafayette, which seems to have suffered some battle damage that never healed.

The D.J. Healy Building next-door actually went as far as to streamline the bald stub where its cornice had been with sleek, fluted, brushed-aluminum trim:

The D.J. Healy Co. Building at 1426 Woodward was built in 1910. Daniel J. Healy was a merchant who specialized as a dealer in ostrich feathers and other dry goods, starting in 1887.

 

The Chicago architects Postle & Mahler designed the Healy Building, influenced by Louis Sullivan's Gage Building. The authors of the Lower Woodward Avenue Historic District Report feel that the Healy Building has "suffered renovations and misguided improvements, perhaps to the greatest extent of any building on Woodward." The first three stories were bricked over for signage. Fortunately, the original terra cotta and window frames remain behind the unsightly surface covering. The building's intricate foliated metal marquee was removed in 1941. The cornice was of course removed in 1958 and replaced with the fluted aluminum trim you see here.

The D. J. Healy Company closed its Woodward store in 1962, although it kept its branch stores in suburban Grosse Pointe and Birmingham operating. The building had been vacant since Marianne's closed in 1995 but was being converted into residential lofts in 2007.

Next, we were able to hop over to the roof of the "Oslo" Building on the corner of John R, with a modicum of climbing and scrambling on wobbly old chairs or ladders, or whatever we had lying around up there:

Actually, the true name of this building at 1456 Woodward is the Kaiser-Blair Building, though most people call it "Oslo" because of the snobbish sushi place that used to be there. You'll recognize it by its tall white columns:

The Kaiser-Blair was originally built as a four-story building in 1916, and received a four-story addition in 1923. It was designed by Richard Raseman (the same guy who designed the Harmonie Club). The design of the fifth and sixth floors was coordinated with the first four, with matching Chicago-style windows. After Mrs. Taggart's death, the cornice was removed from this building as well.

The original tenant was Kaiser-Blair Clothing. In 1933 the storefront was renovated for Cunningham Drugs. Other tenants included a dentist, a tap dancing and piano school, and a beauty salon. Through the 1940s and '50s, a Marianne's store was located in the building with signage for HOUSEHOLD FINANCE, LOANS on the second floor.

In the 1970s Rose Jewelers, then Zales Jewelers were the building's main tenants, and the second floor was the Tall Girls Shop. The Detroit furniture chain House of Denmark was located on the second through eighth floors, from 1969 to 1974.

Across the street can be seen Schwankovsky's Temple of Music (aka, Wright-Kay Building), designed by Gordon W. Lloyd, 1891:

The building contained "salesrooms, offices, a musical instrument department, piano show-rooms, musical studios, and rooms for tuning and repairing instruments." On the second floor was a 425-seat concert hall, set up with theater chairs. Outdoor brass band concerts were given from the sixth floor balcony...behind which is seen the vacant Grinnell Bros. Music Building:

By 1910 the F.J. Schwankovsky Co. had ceased, and the building was then filled by the Wright-Kay Jewelry Company store from 1920 to 1978.

Lovely downtown traffic:

Bleu chaos continues; cops driving on the sidewalks, etc...

The Metropolitan Building looms nearby:

RIP Myrtle Taggart.


References:
Lower Woodward Avenue Historic District Final Report
June 25, 1958 Toledo Blade

Kresge's & the Traver

Summer, 2007.

The Traver Building was another of those juicy little morsels sandwiched into the bookshelf-like appearance of lower Merchants' Row, and was made even more enticing by the fact that it was adorned with the faces of "green men" and little demons—but more importantly, it was one of the rapidly diminishing number of vacant buildings downtown that I had not yet been in.

  

The mysterious faces seemed to withhold the secrets of the building's interior wealth behind their tightly pursed stone lips, that only the cunningest of trespassers could hope to pry out. It was a short building hewn of rustic brown sandstone, wedged between the Kresge Building to the south, and the Fowler Building to the north:

When I took the above photo in 2004, that entire block of buildings was vacant.

The Traver also had the misfortune of sharing a mid-century "streamlining" with the Kresge Building, but enough of its good looks remained visible to arouse my interest:

The Traver was built in 1889, and the Kresge Building occupying the corner of State & Woodward dated to 1917. The R.H. Traver Co. Building had the good fortune of being designed by one of my favorite architects, Gordon W. Lloyd. Traver was a mens' clothing store originally, though I do not know who last occupied the building.

But it was the Kresge Building we would have to access first, if we hoped to get to the Traver's gilded insides, and (for once) we entered via the ground floor:

This building is actually called "S.S. Kresge Store #1," signifying the fact that it was the first building that was purpose-built for his company, if I understand correctly. As you have seen by now from my older posts, the Kresge presence downtown is quite the tangled web of locations and moves and expansions. The Kresge name remained emblazoned above this building's entrance almost all the way up until the building was vacated in 1994.

The fourth of July fireworks were coming up, and since we were both tired of our usual viewing spots (as well as fully aware they would be crowded by the growing new wave of kids who were now trooping into every abandoned building in town), we were on the lookout for a new spot to watch from that would be both low-key and offer a better than usual view of the show. This one seemed to fit the bill.

Unfortunately when we reached the roof of Kresge's, we found that our view of the fireworks would be—while extremely close to the river—almost entirely screened by a forest of taller skyscrapers. Oh well, we didn't have many other options, so we chose to risk it anyway.

We did not find much of note in the Kresge Building's middle floors besides this huge safe with Kresge's name on it, which also sported a fancy oil painting.  There was a gorgeous view up Woodward Avenue.

I bet that safe is where Sebastian Kresge meticulously kept all of the nickels and dimes that came through his store. Looks like somebody busted the door off though. So much for that heirloom.

On the roof there were some photo-worthy architectural accents to drool on:

In order to access the Traver Building, we had to go back down a few floors and jump out a window of the Kresge Building and onto its roof. The Stott Building loomed mightily over us:

Once in through the Traver's roof access, we decided to go straight down to the bottom floor and work our way back up, floor by floor.

The bottom two floors were completely modernized, but all the floors above that were gorgeously preserved in their original state, having at some point been closed to the public and relegated to storage space duty. The gnarly plaster ornamentation was a sight to behold.

Not only that, but the festive wedding cake frosting was also mind-bogglingly detailed in gold and silver leaf.

It was definitely one of the more impressive interiors we had ever come across—considering this was decor not isolated to just a main lobby, but was found on every floor.

The top floor was the old board room and had a huge fancy skylight, though its glass was sadly painted over to keep light from coming in. Conveniently, there was a scaffold in place underneath it, which we utilized to climb up in it and snap a few mediocre flash pictures of the original detail:

We were both just floored at how essentially unmolested this place still was—a rare escapee from the "1970s Bomb" that went off on the interior of every office building in the city, and the resulting aesthetic butchery that followed.

As my partner Detroitblog John put it, if you have spent any time exploring downtown you can tell something happened to Detroit around that time, because the interior of every single vacant skyscraper has been frozen in time with the same f@#$%ing ugly decor from that exact time period, as if a neutron bomb had gone off downtown, and every office worker suddenly vanished from their desk without a trace in about 1977.

 

Somehow, they managed to slather enough goldleaf paint on the upper floors of the Traver Building to shield it from the effects of that Disco-era radiation. This was as close as we would probably ever get to experiencing the 1890s without a real time machine.

The columns on each floor were slightly different, as were the style of windows.

In that shot above, John looks out over the vast empty hole where the massive Hudson's Department Store used to be.

When the day of the fireworks came, we returned to the Kresge Building's roof and took up our viewing spots as the sun went down.

By the way, yes, there was still power on in parts of the building:

We took up a spot on the Kresge Building's watertower, the highest point of the building:

There was a very nice view across to the Bricktown area from this roof:

Next to the mostly-darkened Stott Building sat another of the very few vacant buildings left downtown that I had never been in, Colonial's Department Store:

When the fireworks started, we realized that our view was indeed quite screened, narrowed down to a tiny sliver down Woodward; I guess I overestimated the height at which they would be exploding. We also noticed that two security guards for the parking garage across the street had opted to go to their roof as well, and were becoming aware of our presence on an obviously abandoned building:

I was not too concerned about this however, since for all they knew, we were the owners. I think they were a little bummed that their view was even more obstructed than ours.

Even though we were denied a full view of the show, we had a feeling that it was for the best that we remain in a low-key spot, which ended up paying off since we later found out that all the fools who had gone up in high profile buildings that night such as the Lafayette, or Metropolitan had been busted, or had to hide from cops.

A couple years ago you could go up in any building you wanted for the fireworks and be free from scrutiny by Johnny Law. In 2007, that was absolutely no longer the case since the number of kids swarming every abandoned building in this city doubled after 2005 (then quadrupled after 2008, and every year since).

While waiting for the crowds to clear out after the show, we wandered back into the Traver Building to get some night shots. The interiors of both buildings were pleasingly bathed in that sickly, yet uncannily warm sodium-arc light from the streetlamps. Screw LEDs:

After our last beers had been quaffed, we slipped stealthily back out onto the street without incident.

References:
Lower Woodward Avenue Historic District Final Report