The Milaflores Apartments was a handsome apartment building, but it's biggest legacy was being the site of one of the grisliest gangland massacres, a terrifying hit that struck terror in both the public and the criminal underworld.
The Milaflores was built by Harry J. Pelavin on East Alexandrine Street, between Woodward Avenue and John R Street. Designed by architect Jacob I. Weinberg, the 31-unit, four-story building was completed Jan. 1, 1923. Ads for the building boasted that the building offered valet and maid service, was located on a bus line, had shower and tub baths, had "beautifully furnished" two- and three-room apartments and "all cool outside rooms."
"Architecturally, it ranks among the finest in the city, having front of cut stone and face brick," the Detroit Free Press reported April 8, 1923. "The main lobby is unusually large, with a marble fountain in the center."
Shortly after it was completed, the building was sold in April 1923 to Elmer C. Rau and Litta W. Rau of Mt. Clemens for about $200,000, or about $3.9 million in 2025 valuation, when adjusted for inflation. "The deal is one of the largest cash transactions in apartment house properties reported this year," the Free Press noted.
The Milaflores Massacre
About 4:45 a.m. on March 28, 1927, the Thompson submachine gun – better known as “the Tommy gun” or “the Chicago typewriter” – made its grisly Detroit debut at the Milaflores Apartments.
The Purple Gang was a notorious criminal outfit known for its absolute brutality and ruthless protection of its stranglehold on the rumrunning racket across the Detroit River during Prohibition. By having a number of members of the Detroit Police Department and City Hall on the take, the gang was able to operate with virtual impunity and would completely control Detroit’s seedy underbelly throughout the 1920s and into the ‘30s – the only Jewish criminal syndicate to fully control a major U.S. city’s criminal underworld.
Though the gang’s name might not sound menacing, the Purples were as savage as gangsters came in the 1920s. Under the four Burnstein brothers - Abraham, Isadore "Izzy," Joe and Ray - the Purples would become so powerful, so feared that not even Al Capone dared muscle in on their turf, choosing to partner with them instead. The Purples are believed to have run up a body count of more than 500 murders in less than 10 years, including brazen street executions and assassinations in crowded hotel lobbies. Some theories even suggest the Purples orchestrated and carried out the infamous St. Valentine’s Day Massacre in Chicago as part of the partnership with Capone.
The Milaflores Apartments was one of many establishments that would find itself caught up in the Purple Gang’s bloody rampage.
On Dec. 27, 1926, Johnny Reid, a saloon keeper, was gunned down behind his apartment on 3025 E. Grand Boulevard. Reid was a liquor agent for the Purples, and had been gang mates in the Egan’s Rats with Fred “Killer” Burke, a name that will be important in a second.
The main suspect in Reid's murder was Frankie "The Pollock" Wright, aka Frank Burke and Edward O'Brien. Wright was a jewel thief wanted in Chicago in connection with a $1.9 million jewel heist there. Looking to beat the heat, he moved to Detroit in October 1926, where he fell in with two burglars from New York City, Issac Reissfeld, 24, - aka Joe Bloom - and Reuben Cohen, 26, aka George Cohen. The three men quickly landed themselves on the Purple Gang’s radar.
On Feb. 3, 1927, Wright, Cohen and Bloom are believed to have gunned down Purple Gang drug dealer Jake Weinberg in Detroit’s North End. The Purples had enough and decided to exact revenge on the three small-timers. As the story goes, the Purples tapped Burke, an associate of Capone’s who was doing literal hired-gun work for the Purples and former colleague of Reid’s.
To get that revenge, Wright was lured into a trap.
Meyer "Fish" Bloomfield, a friend of Wright’s and lieutenant in Charles “Doc” Brady’s Detroit gambling racket, was kidnapped, likely by Burke. Wright got a late-night call in his room at the Book-Cadillac Hotel on March 27, 1927, instructing him to go to Apartment 308 of the Milaflores to arrange Bloomfield’s release. Several hours later, around 4:30 a.m. on March 28, Wright, Bloom and Cohen arrived. When they knocked at the designated apartment, a fire door at the end of the hall flung open, and hitmen sprayed the corridor, mowing the three men down. It was the first documented case of a Tommy gun being used in Michigan.
"How earnestly Reid's friends were bent on exterminating Wright can be seen from the number of shots that were fired at him and his companions," The Detroit News wrote March 29, 1927. "Wright, Cohen and Bloom were not given the slightest chance to defend themselves.
Reporters at the scene counted more than 110 bullet holes - not counting those that were said to have nearly ripped Cohen and Bloom in two. The obscene display of overkill was a stern message to anyone else who was even considering crossing the Purple Gang.
Bloom, 24, and Cohen, 26, were pronounced dead at the scene. Wright, despite being hit more than a dozen times, somehow was still alive. He was asked whether he could identify the gunmen who shot them, and Wright simply replied, “The machine gun worked, that’s all I can remember.” The 23-year-old Wright died about 20 hours later.
Some of the cops investigating the case said they didn’t think the Purple Gang could be involved because the apartment had been leased to some of its members - Sam and Abe Axler, John Tolzdorf and Joseph "Honey Boy" Miller. The Purples couldn't be that stupid, could they? Or were just that brazen?
The day after the shooting, Detroit police scooped up Burke, Sam Axler and Purple Gang enforcer Eddie Fletcher, and also took Ray Burnstein, Miller and Tolzdorf into custody for good measure. Despite their arrests, all were released as police could not definitively tie them to what had come to be called the Milaflores Massacre. No witnesses or informants came forward – no doubt helped by the intimidation caused by the hit. The investigation went cold, and the Milaflores case would officially go unsolved.
However, it has since become accepted that Fletcher, Burke and Abe Axler were involved in the killings. This was partly because Burke was known to be working for the Purples and was an "artist" with the Tommy gun, and because Axler and Fletcher were two of the Purples' most trusted hit men and something of a package deal, being "so inseparable, the underworld called them 'the Siamese twins,'" The Detroit News wrote Nov. 27, 1933. Axler was arrested 24 times but convicted only thrice; Fletcher had 14 arrests but only one conviction.
"Both looked insignificant enough," The Detroit News continued. "Fletcher was 5 feet, 3 inches tall; Axler 2 inches taller. Fletcher was broad-shouldered, equipped with a left hook that made him feared, a wise-cracker at heart. Axler was swarthy, close-mouthed and independent. But those two strange and opposite temperaments became inseparable companions."
Regardless of who pulled the triggers at the Milaflores, the murders firmly cemented the Purple Gang’s reputation for ruthless violence. The Detroit Free Press wrote July 28, 1929, that "the triple slaying put the Purple Gang in complete command of the city's vice."
Bloomfield was released soon after the Milaflores killings, after Brady paid a reported $25,000 ransom – almost half a million in 2025 valuation. Burke was convicted in 1931 of the killing of a St. Joseph, Mich. police officer two years earlier and died in Marquette State Prison in 1940. Abe Axler and Eddie Fletcher were gunned down, together, in Bloomfield Township, Mich., in November 1933 in a likely gangland hit.
Earthquakes and demolition
Around 1 a.m. Nov. 1, 1935, a 6.2-magnitude earthquake centered in Timiskaming, Québec, was felt in Detroit, rattling windows and jostling loose gas pipes at the Milaflores. By 5 a.m., gas had filtered through the building and forced its 92 tenants into the street. Two firefighters were overcome by the gas.
A Detroit vice squad raid on the Milaflores busted up an alleged handbook operation in 1950. But other than that, things at the Milaflores had settled down from their calamitous peak.
For a little while, anyway.
In 1958, the Detroit Medical Center urban renewal plan was announced. It called for the redevelopment of 250 acres of what is now Midtown around a core of what was then four of Detroit’s existing hospitals, supported by a ring of medical-related support buildings. The area identified for this transformation was bounded by Mack, Warren and Woodward avenues and the newly created Chrysler Freeway (Interstate-375). The Milaflores happened to be located in this footprint.
The grand plan was the vision of the Arden-Campbell Co., whose principals had worked on the development of shopping centers and the Westland and Northland malls. In all, the developer planned 16 buildings across 15.4 acres. There would be three 12-story, one seven-story, and one single-story medical office buildings, five one-story retail buildings, two general office buildings, and four parking facilities. The price tag for the project was $25 million, the equivalent of about $262 million in 2024 valuation, when adjusted for inflation.
A demolition permit was issued for the Milaflores on Nov. 19, 1964, and it fell shortly thereafter.
A groundbreaking ceremony was held Feb. 11, 1964, for the Professional Plaza, the first piece of the Medical Center to rise. It would be dedicated April 13, 1966, and would turn out to be one of the only projects from the planned Medical Center plan to be built. The site of the Milaflores would sit undeveloped for more than a decade.
The Bicenennial Tower apartment building was later erected in 1976 on the site of the Milaflores and other victims of the wrecking ball that were torn down for the Medical Center projects that never happened.