No, this CPA has nothing to do with certified public accountants.

This building was originally the home of the Conductors Protective Assurance Co., an insurance company of sorts for train employees. American railroad workers had been represented by unions since the 1860s, and while these unions would fight for their rights and help them protect their jobs, those who did find themselves out of a job would still find themselves in financial trouble.

The CPA was organized in October 1906 by a pair of Michigan Central Railroad (MCRR) conductors, William J. Ross and Charles J. Whalen. The men came up with the idea of insuring their fellow workers “against the loss of their job from being forced out due to old age, illness, or injury.” If railroad workers lost their jobs or were unable to work, they could receive a payment of $500 - about $18,200 in 2026 valuation, when adjusted for inflation - from the CPA.

At first, the CPA served only MCRR employees. By the end of 1908, however, the Detroit Free Press reported that the CPA had expanded its offerings to other railroads and states - and even Canadian provinces - and had grown to some 2,600 members. These members paid a $5 membership fee to join the association and then $1 per month after that - about $182 and $36, respectively, in 2025. That gave the CPA about $32,000 in the bank, now worth about $1.2 million. Not bad considering the partners started the company with just $5 in capital, about $182 in 2025.

"The association is one of the most unique in the history of insurance organizations," the Detroit Free Press wrote Dec. 29, 1908. "Its one purpose of existence is to pay $500 to every railway conductor who loses his job through any cause whatsoever."

But with success came turmoil. In 1908, when - suspecting that Ross and other officers were pocketing membership fees - Whalen asked for an audit of the books. Whalen claimed that Ross told him that "he would throw them in the river first," the Free Press reported Dec. 29, 1908. On top of that, "Whalen kept insisting upon conditions his partner refused to consider.” This led to CPA officers voting on July 11, 1908, to fire Whalen, with the official reason given being that he was "too strong on legal technicalities and not active enough in the practical side of the business," the Detroit Free Press reported Oct. 9, 1909.

After his firing, Whalen started a new job insurance company, the Engineers & Conductors' Railway Protective Association (ECRPA). The CPA sued to block the ECRPA from doing business, citing a similarity of names.

In retaliation, Whalen sued in Wayne County Circuit Court in an attempt to put the CPA out of business. He alleged that the company he had co-founded had no legal standing in Michigan because there was no law on the books under which the CPA could legally do business. He also cited the aforementioned alleged shady business practices.

The state insurance commissioner blocked the ECRPA from doing business but allowed the CPA to continue until the Legislature could address its legality. Whalen's suit was dismissed Oct. 8, 1909, and the CPA was allowed to continue its business.

To the victor goes the spoils

The CPA was reorganized Sept. 16, 1915, as a family-owned stock corporation. With railroads being the main form of transportation, business continued to boom, and by 1922, the CPA had more than 15,000 members in the U.S. and Canada. That year, the CPA set out to build a new headquarters in Detroit, and it would pick a spot directly across from Michigan Central Station, on the northwest corner of Michigan Avenue and 14th Street. This provided a bit of convenience for railroad workers.

Ground for the 11,000-square-foot building was broken on Dec. 15, 1922. The parcel had an angular shape because of Michigan Avenue, so architect Alvin E. Harley turned to the iconic Flatiron Building in New York City for inspiration. The building’s cost was pegged at $300,000 - or about $5.8 million in 2026 dollars. The Lennane Co., then based at 2631 Woodward Ave., was the builder.

Ross, then president of the CPA, told the Free Press for a Dec. 14, 1924, article on the new building that his company “is the only concern of its kind in America." By the end of 1924, 18 years after its founding, Ross said the CPA had paid out about $1.75 million in claims - which would be about 3,500 cases.

The structure was done in the Neoclassical style and built of steel and concrete construction and faced with white Bedford, Ind., limestone - from the same quarry as the limestone used for Michigan Central Station across the street. At the bottom was a granite base 6 feet high. The main lobby faced off 14th Street and was finished in Botticino marble with a molded Italianate ceiling. The lobbies and halls were finished in rubber tiling, "making them practically noiseless," the Detroit Free Press marveled in the Dec. 14, 1924, story. The J.L. Hudson Co. provided the office furnishings for the offices and bank inside the building.

The CPA Building would open Nov. 1, 1924, and a branch of the First National & Central Savings Bank formally opened on its ground floor Dec. 8, 1924. The CPA occupied the entire sixth floor. There were 14 offices leased to various companies on the second through fifth floors, including a dentist, real estate and insurance agents, and construction companies. There also were two storefronts in addition to the bank, with one fronting on Michigan Avenue and the other on 14th Street.

The CPA would continue to insure railroad workers for decades, and the building led a fairly quiet and unremarkable history.

The CPA Building’s next-door neighbor was torn down in 1959 to allow for a drive-up window for the bank and additional customer parking. A drive-through banking canopy was added to the west side of the building in 1977 for what was then the Bank of the Commonwealth. The building continued to be home to a bank into the 1980s.

Michigan Central Station would close in 1988. The CPA would leave its longtime home shortly thereafter, relocating to suburban West Bloomfield, Mich., around 1990.

The CPA Building would hang on, however, until falling vacant about 2001. The building was acquired in 1999 by Ray Kouza for $380,000, according to CoStar. After shuttering the building, he did little to protect it, despite the popular Slows BBQ opening next door in 2005. He would put it up for sale in 2003, and it would sit on the market for 11 years.

Meanwhile, the CPA was bought out by a California firm in 2010 and dissolved two years later.

In May 2014, Kouza finally found a buyer in New York-based investment group Sequoia Partners, who paid $900,000 for it. Benji Rosenzweig, real estate broker for Howard Schwartz Commercial Real Estate, which represented Kouza in the sale, told Crain’s Detroit Business for a June 13, 2014, article that the investment group planned to “redevelop the property and get things cooking there again.” Sequoia said it intended to renovate the building as residential units with ground-floor commercial use. The new owners secured the building and removed graffiti.

That didn’t happen. Meanwhile, the City had it out for the CPA.

Dodging a TKO for the CPA

The City of Detroit said that the CPA Building first fell on its demolition hit list in April 2007, but being cash-strapped and without the CPA posing a danger to health and safety or residents, let it stand. But it wouldn’t stow its daggers.

Thanks to an influx of demolition cash - thanks to federal Hardest Hit Fund and COVID-19 stimulus money and funding through Proposal N, a voter-approved bond measure aimed at eliminating blight - Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan would embark on razing as much of the city’s blighted homes, schools, factories and buildings as he could. This included about 27,000 single-family houses that were past the point of being saved.

Amid all this, the City’s Buildings, Safety & Environmental Engineering Department (BSEED) conducted an inspection of the CPA Building on Feb. 5, 2015, and deemed it a danger to the public on March 11 - a little less than a year after Sequoia had bought the building.

“The building was found to be vacant, open to trespassers and structurally unsound,” John Roach, a Duggan spokesman, told The Detroit News for a March 12, 2015, article. “The city hasn’t filed a nuisance abatement lawsuit because we’ve heard the building owners have a plan for redevelopment. …

“We’ve done this process with dozens of commercial buildings in the city,” said Roach. “The idea is it’s just not acceptable to leave your building sitting vacant and being a nuisance to the public anymore. The goal is to get property owners to take responsibility for the condition of their buildings.”

Sequoia was “kind of watching the area and they are looking at rental rates,” Greg Newman, principal of Keystone Commercial Real Estate, who represented Sequoia, told The Detroit News for a March 12, 2015, story. “As soon as the rental rates rise, which they are doing, they will move forward when it makes sense economically.”

“These guys do not want to demo that property, they want to remodel it,” said Newman, who represents Sequoia on the deal. “They know it’s an important property for the area. There’s so much history there.”

Roach says the process now allows for Sequoia to discuss plans and work on a consent agreement with the city that would establish certain benchmarks and timelines for the redevelopment.

On Nov. 22, 2016, the Detroit City Council voted unanimously to stop the demolition by granting the building interim historic designation for the period of one year.

Sequoia would get the biggest motivation and boost to property values imaginable about a year-and-a-half later, when Ford Motor Co. announced that it had acquired the iconic but long vacant Michigan Central Station across the street, and planned to restore it to serve as the heart of a 30-acre tech innovation campus.

But instead of renovating the building amid these increasing rents as promised, Sequoia opted to capitalize on Ford’s reopening of The Station on June 6, 2024, by listing it for sale that September for $9.9 million - 10 times what it had paid for it 10 years earlier. So, it continues to sit.

Protecting the Conductors Protective Assurance Building

In early November 2025, Sequoia unveiled its first plan for the CPA - but it wasn’t the news many wanted to hear, nor did it inspire excitement or hope for a redevelopment of the building in the near future. This plan called for decorating the building’s empty windows with portraits of Detroit cancer survivors.

While the real estate speculation continued, the Detroit City Council passed a resolution on Nov. 26, 2024, ordering the city’s Historic Designation Advisory Board (HDAB) to study whether the CPA Building should receive local historic district protection.

On March 3, 2026, the Detroit City Council approved the district, 10 years after it bought the building more time by passing the interim designation. Meanwhile, Sequoia continues to try to capitalize on the redevelopment of Michigan Central Station across the street, seeking millions in profit on its $900,000 investment.