This 12-story, Albert Kahn-designed Art Moderne gem opened in 1929 as just one of many buildings going up in the downtown core at the time - a beautiful and yet unremarkable building given the soaring skyscrapers going up around it. However, its moment in the spotlight would come some 85 years later as it played an incredibly important role in the revitalization of the long-depressed Capitol Park district.
Capitol Park - located between Washington Boulevard and Grand River, Michigan and Woodward avenues - takes its name from the fact that Michigan's first state Capitol was located there in the 19th Century.
What was originally known as the Griswold Building faces Capitol Park, was considered a speculative office building, that is, it wasn’t built with a tenant in hand but with the hope that various occupants would move into it after it was built. The plans for the building were announced by Clark C. Hyatt, secretary and treasurer of the Griswold Building Co., on Feb. 25, 1928. The cost to build it was estimated at $1.75 million.
The Griswold Building took the place of the Miles Theatre, a vaudeville house that had lost most of its business after the arrival of motion pictures.
The ubiquitous drug store chain Walgreen Co. opened its first Detroit store in one of the Griswold’s ground-floor retail spaces on Dec. 22, 1928. Office tenants had started moving in around the same time, but most didn't occupy their spaces until early 1929.
A change in direction for Kahn
At the time of the building's announcement, papers described it as of being in the German Gothic style, but that doesn't quite describe what Detroit wound up with. The building was part of Kahn’s transition from the heavily Art Deco to the more streamlined Art Moderne style, and is one of the earlier Art Moderne office buildings in Detroit.
Gone from this design is Kahn’s over-the-top decoration and ornamentation seen in buildings erected just a year earlier, such as the Fisher and [Maccabees]((https://historicdetroit.org/buildings/maccabees-building) buildings. Instead, Kahn relied upon bold but simple lines and contrasting colors and textures for visual impact. He also brought in some Romanesque design flavor to make the building stand out.
Kahn gave the building two distinguishing pieces: a limestone-faced, nine-bay, three-story base containing shops and a U-shaped, nine-story tower provided ample natural light for the rooms above.
Other than the decorative brickwork and limestone, exterior ornamentation was limited to small, carved stone masks above the second-story windows and stone plaques above the third-story windows.
Originally, the building’s interior featured fairly small, simply-finished, plastered office suites that were situated on either side of a central corridor. There were no grand spaces, like auditoriums or the like. Even the main entrance lobby was small and fairly simple compared to Kahn’s usual office building designs. It was covered in marble wainscoting from floor to ceiling, but its terrazzino floors and the ceiling of ornamental plaster were considerably toned down from other Kahn buildings of the era. (This space was given a Mid-Century Modern makeover in the 1960s that would remain until the building’s conversion to market-rate housing in 2014.)
There were eight storefronts on the ground floor and, originally, the second and third floors were also dedicated to shops. The rest of the building was all office space rented to a variety of tenants.
From C-suites to senior housing
By the late 1970s, Detroit had been on the decline for 20 years, and the city had lost a number of commercial and office tenants to competing suburban communities that offered more parking, newer facilities and more modern architectural designs. Capitol Park would see many of its storefronts go dark, and office towers start to empty out. The Griswold avoided closure, but it was still largely vacant. This made it an ideal candidate to join several office towers to be turned into government-subsidized low-income housing. To help facilitate the conversion, the Griswold Building was The Griswold Building was added to the National Register of Historic Places on June 9, 1980. Seniors began moving into the 127-unit Griswold Building in February 1981.
Revival and relocation
In 2009, the Detroit Economic Growth Corp. (DEGC) began efforts to reactivate the long-dormant Capitol Park district. The State bought three historic buildings that it later sold to Lansing, Mich., developer RIchard Karp for redevelopment: The [Farwell](https://historicdetroit.org/buildings/farwell-building], Capitol Park and Detroit Savings Bank buildings. Karp would receive state grants, DEGC funding and national historic tax credits to make the projects pencil out.
Meanwhile, suburban developer Broder & Sachse bought the Griswold in early 2013 and planned to renovate the building into market-rate housing for $8 million (the equivalent of $11.5 million in 2026 valuation, when adjusted for inflation). Though the redevelopment would mean fulfilling a need for more upscale apartments downtown, it also would mean displacing low-income seniors living there and the loss of affordable housing in the heart of the city.
"The project became (a) flashpoint in the city's increasingly hot debate over gentrification and who benefits from the downtown revival," legendary Free Press reporter John Gallager wrote Feb. 17, 2019. Then-Mayor "Mike Duggan has cited the case as a spur for the city's policy requiring all new projects getting City help to reserve at least 20 percent of their units for low- to moderate-income residents." However, Gallagher noted that the controversy "did not dent the growing popularity of Capitol Park.”
Basically, Broder & Sachse informed tenants using U.S. Housing & Urban Development Section 8 housing vouchers to pay a portion of their rent, would expire on March 31, 2014. Without the vouchers, most seniors were unable to afford to stay there. If they could afford the rent - which they shouldn’t have been able to in order to qualify for the vouchers - they didn’t have to move. So, technically, nobody was forced to move, but most low-income seniors in the Griswold had no choice but to do so.
"We've got people living here who've lived here 29 years," Doreen Randall, then-59 and who had lived in the Griswold for more than eight years, told the Free Press for a May 3, 2013, story. "It's going to be hard for some of them."
Writing in a letter to the editor in the Detroit Free Press on May 11, 2013, Detroiter Thomas F. Hinsberg said, "Once again, the most vulnerable bear the burden of 'progress.' There has to be a more humane way to make progress."
In the developers’ defense, the seniors were given a year to find a new place to live, and Broder & Sachse paid for their moving costs, which was not something it had to do..
Since being reopened in July 2014, the building has been known as "The Albert," after the architect who designed it.
But it wasn’t just the relocation of seniors that raised eyebrows.
"The Albert caused a stir in the market by introducing $2-per-square-foot rents throughout an entire downtown building that, until then, was typically seen only in showcase apartments, usually with rare and breathtaking views."
At the time of its reopening, rents for the The Albert’s 127 units started at $1,295 for one-bedroom apartments. Todd Sachse, vice president of Broder & Sachse, told the Free Press for a Dec. 7, 2014, article, defended the rents, citing 24-hour concierge service, dog-washing stations, a fitness room and a common area featuring billiards tables and fountains. The rents didn't deter many people, as just five months after opening, The Albert was already leasing two-thirds of its apartments.
Gallagher’s Feb. 17, 2019, column in the Detroit Free Press said that "a mere 10 years ago, downtown's Capitol Park district stood as a shabby and seldom-used public space surrounded by mostly empty buildings. Today, Capitol Park has emerged as one of downtown's trendiest enclaves,” with more than more than 500 new residential apartments in and a slew of new shops and amenities.
Though the displacement of seniors, most of whom were Black and all of whom were low-income, was tragic, the redevelopment of the Griswold Building did give a major boost to a wave of investment that has made the one-time home of the state Capitol relevant once again. But the question remains about what is the middle ground of bringing about the greatest amount of good to the most people at the cost of the few?
If relocation of lower-income Detroiters who stuck with the city in its worst times means they aren’t able to take advantage of its comeback, is that a cost that’s too high? In fairness to Broder & Sachse, the developer did go above and beyond what was required and what other developers of historic properties have done in similar situations.
Some will say that few U.S. downtowns put low-income housing in its trendiest, most-desirable areas. Are relocation efforts that go above and beyond enough if it’s for the best of the city’s future? This remains to be determined, but the fact that it did spur changes by the Duggan administration in City housing policy shows that leaders are at least aware of, and concerned by, the problem.
Either way, there is no arguing that Capitol Park has come a long way thanks to the redevelopment of The Albert, Farwell, Capitol Park, Detroit Savings Bank and Malcomson buildings.
“The turnaround of Capitol Park is by no means done. But already, it serves as a case study of an urban district rescued from oblivion," Gallagher concluded.