The Millwood Apartments is on the National Register of Historic Places for being one of the last surviving, mostly intact turn-of-the-20th century apartment buildings in the city.
The Millwood opened in 1905 as the Ray Apartments in Detroit’s Milwaukee Junction neighborhood, named for its proximity to a junction of three main railroad lines. This made the area an ideal location for industry, as materials arrived by train in the era.
The timing of the Millwood’s construction makes sense, as a number of factories were popping up in Milwaukee Junction at the turn of the century, and the neighborhood was quickly becoming the main hub for the automotive industry. For instance, Ford Motor Co.’s famed Piquette Plant was built just south of the Millwood in 1904. Other nearby plants included the C.R. Wilson Body Co., Murray Body Corp., and Trippensee Plant, and there were many others under construction, such as the Aerocar Co. plant at Beaufait and Mack Avenue. The workers in all these factories, of course, needed places to live.
And few knew that better than Isaac Applebaum.
Meeting demand
Applebaum was a mover and shaker in Milwaukee Junction in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He was born in Russian Poland on April 19, 1854, and arrived in New York penniless in 1868. At first working as a butcher, he quickly switched to life as a traveling machinery salesman. In 1877, he focused on railway supply manufacturing in Detroit. He would become president of the Detroit Car Building & Equipment Co., president of the Detroit, Flint & Saginaw Railroad and secretary-treasurer of the Toledo-Detroit Railway Co.
Seeing Detroit’s building boom on the horizon, he quit the railway supply business and, with his wife, Rachel, got into real estate development. Rachel Applebaum was actively involved in their enterprise, with her name often appearing on property deeds. The couple appears to have started buying land in Milwaukee Junction in 1901.
On the southeast corner of Woodward and Milwaukee, he would build what would come to be known as the Applebaum Block. In August 1904, he bought the land for what is now the Millwood Apartments, and work quickly got under way.
The couple chose to call the development the Ray Apartments, after Isaac Applebaum’s nickname for his wife.
At the time of the apartments’ construction, East Milwaukee Street was mostly residential, with one- and two-story homes. Applebaum hired the Detroit architectural firm Raseman & Fisher to design the three-story apartment building. Originally, it had just eight apartments plus a caretaker unit, and was just 60 feet by 110 feet. In addition to the apartments, the basement was fitted out for a doctor's office, The Detroit News reported Oct. 30, 1904, testament to the growing neighborhood and the need for medical services with all the factories nearby. The cost of the building was estimated at $15,000, or about $550,000 in 2025 valuation, when adjusted for inflation.
The interior was finished in hardwood. Contractors on the project were Adam Burkheiser for masonry, John Patterson for carpentry; Batchelder, Wasmund & Co. for stone work; Michael Finn for plastering; J.D. Chandler for roofing; William Diederich for painting; John Kennedy for plumbing and steam heating; Frohlich Glass Co. for glass; Henry B. Lewis for ironwork; and the Detroit Marble Works for marble.
Most of the tenants listed working-class jobs such as carpenters, machinists, or toolmakers, most likely working in the nearby factories - just as Applebaum had planned. When it opened in 1905, rent was $30 per month, or about $1,100 in 2025.
At the end of the 19th century, Detroit entered an apartment-building boom. They were initially marketed as fashionable, upscale ways to live without worrying about maintenance. However, as the city’s factories and industrial might grew, more apartments were specifically marketed toward single men - or those who left their families behind in search of work in the city’s factories.
For reasons that aren’t clear, the Applebaums began to sell off their Milwaukee Junction developments. They sold the Applebaum Block for $30,000 to Fred Butzel in July 1909, the inflation-adjusted equivalent of about $1.1 million in 2025 valuation. In August 1909, the couple sold the Ray for $25,000 - about $911,000 in 2025 - to Abraham Cohen. The Detroit Free Press described the property in its Aug. 8, 1909, as “valuable pieces of improvement property.” A year earlier, Applebaum had acquired the Detroit, Flint & Saginaw interurban railway with business partner Nelson Rabor, so it’s possible he needed to liquidate assets. Either way, Applebaum didn’t get out of real estate, as he continued to develop in the city into at least the mid-1910s.
The Ray grows into the Millwood
Cohen, who also was a Russian immigrant, was already an established owner of apartment buildings and hotels in the city when he bought the Ray off the Applebaums. His biggest development was the Seville Apartment-Hotel on Second Boulevard, which he had Charles N. Agree design for him in 1924. He also owned the Glendale Lodge in Highland Park, Mich., and the Saragossa Apartments at Bethune Street and Woodward Avenue.
In 1913, Cohen embarked on a renovation of the building, and in 1922, he would tack a major addition onto the property, more than doubling the Ray’s size and increasing the number of apartments from eight to 30. The architect of this addition, built onto the southern (rear) side of the building, is unknown. Because of a stark contrast in brick between the original 1904-05 building and the addition, it is clear where the building was extended.
By 1910, Detroit was the ninth-largest city in the country in terms of population, and more than 430 apartment buildings had been built in the city. As the automobile industry grew, so, too, did the population. In just 10 years, Detroit’s population had increased 113 percent, from 465,766 in 1910 to 993,678 in 1920. Multifamily residential buildings were built at a quick clip to meet the incredibly increasing demand, and smaller apartment blocks like the Ray were added onto to grow the number of units they had on offer.
After the addition was finished in 1923, the Ray was renamed the Millwood Apartments, most likely a combination of “Milwaukee” and “Woodward.” Following the renovation, furnished two-room suites in December 1924 were leasing for $65 a month, about $1,250 in 2026 valuation.
Cohen sold the Millwood to Julius Berman in 1928. Berman, a native of Poland, built dozens of apartment and office buildings throughout metro Detroit starting in 1908. Among the World War I vet's developments were the Berman Building - built in 1914 at East Forest and Beaubien Street - as well as Indian Village Manor, the Lafayette Building, the Wilshire Hotel on Collingwood Street, and the Stimson Apartments on Stimson Place. He also was one of the principal promoters of the E&B Brewing Co. in Eastern Market.
The Millwood would live an incredibly quiet existence, avoiding scandal or sensational headlines - save for one night in 1924.
The raid
In the early morning hours of Feb. 24, 1924, police stormed four apartments at the Millwood as part of a series of raids on “candy stores, grocery stores, near-beer saloons and numerous other places wearing business masks for illegitimate trade in hooch,” the Detroit Free Press reported the following day. In all, 29 people were arrested in four raids across the city.
The police arrived at the Millwood shortly after midnight and found illegal poker games and alcohol in this era of Prohibition. In Apartment 110, seven men were arrested on gambling charges, and 96 pints of beer and 12 of wine were confiscated. Down the hall, in Apartment 103 saw four men and a woman busted with 94 pints of beer, a half quart of wine and some whisky One floor up, Apartment 209 was hosting a party of six men and three women enjoying 54 pints of beer and a quart of whisky, and next door, eight men in Apartment 210 were arrested on a gambling charge.
As Detroit’s fortunes fell starting in the 1950s, the Millwood fell on hard times. It became what is known as “naturally occurring affordable housing” - apartments that are cheap because they are undesirable, but because they’re cheap, there’s little if any money to reinvest into fixing up the building.
Over the years, though the building would retain much of its original details and features, it would suffer from neglect. Even minor fire damage went unrepaired - the owners just didn’t rent out those units.
The Millwood today
The Millwood features 30 studio units, with 10 on each floor. Its rooms are oriented to the east and west of a central hallway, and each has a living space, kitchen, bathroom and closet. Though technically all studio apartments, they are more akin to one-bedroom units in size.
Other than a balconette that once hung below the third story window on the center window bay, and the painting of the brick, the Millwood has not changed much on the outside since the 1925 addition. The 120-plus-year-old building still features its original arched entryway, stone relief fanlight, Doric columns, stone cornice, and swirl, scroll, and garland motifs. At the center of the front elevation is a Mission-style center parapet arch, giving the building a distinctive look compared to many other apartments in the city.
Walking into the Millwood, one enters a small vestibule tiled in 1-inch-by-1-inch squares in tans, reddish browns and a blueish green. Its wainscotting is 5-inch-by-5-inch clay tile with a grayish brown glaze with a band of blueish green and gold decorative tile to break up the pattern. The west side of the staircase is fitted with the original wooden handrail on iron newels and balustrades, the latter of which feature ironwork featuring stylized sun designs.
Interestingly, the building features most of its original doors, including half of the 30 units. Three sets of original, wood-paneled double fire doors are present on each floor. Each apartment maintains its original ornately decorated iron radiators. Even the original trash chute and antique intercom system are still here.
There are four types of apartment floorplans. Room 105 retained the most original details of any unit in the building, with historic flooring, living area walls and ceiling intact. Room 310 was also said to be “virtually untouched,” still retaining the original flooring and plaster.
In 2022, the building was acquired by Danny and Linda Dedvukaj, who began the process of getting the building added to the National Register of Historic Places in order to make it eligible for historic tax credits. These tax credits were essential to helping to not only restore the building properly but return it to its original glory. For instance, when faced with broken original tiles, most developers would just rip out the lot and replace it with new. Instead, they had replica tiles produced that matched the originals.
“Millwood Apartments possesses historic integrity and continues to convey its historic architectural significance,” reads its nomination for the National Register of Historic Places. “The interior plan and arrangement of spaces within each apartment unit remain intact. Individual units retain a varying amount of historic material, but taken together the interior possesses historic integrity of materials, design, and workmanship.
“Millwood Apartments retains historic integrity through its design, materials, workmanship, location, setting, feeling and association, and conveys its significance as an important apartment building form in the rapidly developing Milwaukee Junction and New Center areas of early 20th-century Detroit.”
The Millwood was added to the National Register on Aug. 21, 2024.
The fully restored Millwood is expected to reopen by July 1, 2026.