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Brush Park, one of Detroit’s oldest and, at one time, wealthiest neighborhoods now is where abandoned brick homes with crumbling porches and missing windows face the multimillion-dollar Comerica Park.

About 300 homes sprouted from former farmland in Brush Park between 1850 and the turn of the century, the neighborhood’s heyday. Victorian mansions, about 70 in all, were built for the city’s economic elite, people such as lumber baron David Whitney Jr. and department store owner J.L. Hudson. Families with modest incomes built smaller dwellings, says Katherine Clarkson, executive director of Preservation Wayne, a Detroit architectural preservation group.But around 1895, the rich began to leave for newer upscale neighborhoods such as Boston-Edison and Indian Village where more modern homes included indoor plumbing, electricity and central heat. By 1910 many Brush Park mansions were converted into boarding houses, says Clarkson.When city residents began a long exodus after World War II — the population shrinking from 2 million to about half that — Brush Park was one of the neighborhoods that was nearly obliterated.

Efforts in the past couple decades to rejuvenate the three block-by-eight block area usually ended with little success. Kathy Janiszek, who has lived in the area with her husband Paul for 22 years, knows this better than most.

“I used to be the Brush Park Lady,” says Janiszek, who once tacked maps of the neighborhood to her wall so she could track every resident and building.

The couple had high hopes for their tiny community, which has about 225 residents compared to hundreds more when she arrived; about 154 original structures remain in the area.

“We wanted the houses renovated and more people living here,” she recalls.

The Janiszeks and a couple other residents formed the Brush Park Citizen’s District Council in 1979. The CDC, which was made up of residents and is still active today, asked the city to help renovate the neighborhood, says Janiszek.

“We wanted the architectural history preserved,” Janiszek says. Clarkson stresses the importance of saving the rare economic and architectural history embodied in the Victorian-era houses.

But the Coleman Young administration was not very receptive.

“It seemed like there was roadblock after roadblock after roadblock. And after spending hour after hour after hour — and raising a family — and seeing nothing happen, you lose hope,” says Janiszek, who was an active CDC member for 10 years.

Chuck Squires, who has lived in Brush Park 19 years, also poured his heart into the neighborhood. In 1987, Squires was elected president of the Brush Park Development Corporation, an arm of the CDC charged with putting together a renewal plan for the area. When Squires headed the corporation, he says that there was constant squabbling between residents, other Brush Park-based organizations and the city over how the area should be redeveloped.

“The Young administration basically wanted to demolish everything and rebuild,” he says.

After countless meetings and hours of bickering, a Brush Park renewal plan was adopted in 1990.

“It was a good compromise,” says Squires, who gave up his post as president of the Development Corporation around 1996, burned out by the bickering. “It’s basically what’s going on now, new building in the south and conservation in the north.”

Brush Park-The Place I call home!

Tuesday, 22 January 2008

Brush Park, one of Detroit’s first districts of wealth and prominence, was primarily constructed in the 1870’s. The rich architectural detail can still be seen in some of the homes – those still standing that is. The First Presbyterian Church, the original Temple Beth-El (now Wayne State University’s Bonstelle Theater), the First Unitarian Church of Detroit and the Woodward Avenue Baptist Church are all located along the Woodward corridor of Brush Park.

By 1900, the district was losing many of its residents to the historic Boston-Edison District, located further north,
along Woodward. --Jacquie Trost

Originally prime farmland and later the city’s first affluent neighborhood, the small neighborhood off Woodward wedged between Downtown skyscrapers and the Midtown hospitals was for decades greatly abandoned, shuttered and rundown.

After years of arduous planning and conflicting interests by local stakeholders, a diverse array of residential developments, anchored by scattered Victorian-era houses in various stages of restoration, are creating a new urban place.

A community? Maybe not quite yet. Different people with different lifestyles are settling into Brush Park, redefining the area once more. And, in time, residents have come together.

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