Today, it is the home of an art campus that has garnered international attention, but for a century, it was a religious campus where Detroit Catholics went for salvation.
The complex began as the home of Annunciation Parish, which was founded in April 1906 when Bishop John Foley decreed that a new parish be established on what was then the sparsely populated eastern-most reaches of the city. Foley tapped Father James Stapleton to become its first pastor, and set its jurisdiction as Charlevoix Street to the north, Fisher Avenue on the west, just beyond Fox Creek to the east and all the way to the Detroit River on the south.
The father of Annunciation
Stapleton was born in the Village of Emmett, Mich., in St. Clair County. He was ordained in 1896, serving as a pastor in Bad Axe before being called to Detroit.
With orders to start this new Detroit parish but no church to preach from, Stapleton held Mass at parishioners’ homes. Eventually, the parish secured a former Protestant church that was described as a “modest frame structure.” All the while, Stapleton was growing his flock and passing the hat in order to build a more suitable home for his faithful.
With sufficient funds raised, the Detroit firm Donaldson & Meier was hired to design a 16,000-square-foot Romanesque church, as well as a 5,500-square-foot rectory and a parochial school. The church’s cornerstone was placed Aug. 6, 1911, and this fine house of the holy would be dedicated on Dec. 25, 1912 - Christmas Day. The church would feature murals painted by A.Z. Bellante.
The school, at 1255 Parkview, opened in 1909. The six Sisters, Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary (IHM) running the school expected that 275 students from first to eighth grade would enroll. Instead, 400 signed up, requiring two more sisters to be hastily deployed. In 1915, the school added a ninth grade, and within eight years of its opening, the school had more than 1,000 students. By the early 1920s, that number had grown to some 1,700. Dealing with overcrowding and having to turn pupils away, in 1922, it was decided that only children from Annunciation Parish would be allowed to attend. Enrollment would remain between 800 and 900 students through the 1940s, but as Detroit's population began to fall in the 1950s, the student body dropped to about 600. In June 1967, the high school was closed; the grade school followed June 5, 1969.
The rectory, at 1265 Parkview, would follow in 1914. Though the rectory still stands, the school was demolished years ago.
In October 1921, a banquet was held in honor of Stapleton’s silver anniversary of his ordination. Detroit City Councilman William P. Bradley was among those in attendance and saluted the priest for going beyond his church’s walls to make a difference in the community.
“People of every walk of life, of every religious belief, who have known him are his friends,” Bradley said. “Protestants and Jews alike love him. White and Black have known his faithfulness, his friendliness, his generosity, his unstinted charity.”
Annunciation benefitted from a number of auto plants that sprang up around Conner Creek on Detroit’s east side. These factories not only brought workers but new working-class neighborhoods that grew around them. Many of these newly minted Detroiters were Catholics, helping to make Annunciation one of the largest parishes in the Detroit Diocese in the early 20th century. At one point, the parish reached a membership of 5,000 people.
Under Stapleton's leadership, the Annunciation Community Hall was built for young Detroiters, and he founded Camp Stapleton near Richmond, Mich., which he later donated to the St. Vincent de Paul Society to serve as a children's summer camp. Gov. Albert E. Sleeper made Stapleton a member of the state library commission, and he'd also become first chaplain of the Gabriel Richard Council of the Knights of Columbus and the first spiritual director of the Holy Name Society in Detroit. He would lead Annunciation for 36 years.
In 1932, Stapleton would be elevated to monsignor by Pope Pius XI. He would continue his work at the parish until his death at the Annunciation rectory of a heart ailment on July 27, 1942. He was 73 years old. As a testament to his legacy, the Most Rev. Edward Mooney, Detroit's archbishop, sang a solemn high Mass in his honor on July 31, 1942, at Annunciation Church. Male parishioners also held a “Msgr. Stapleton Memorial” retreat Sept. 24-27 in his honor. The Rev. Father Thomas J. Carroll was named that September to replace the late Stapleton, effective Oct. 6.
Another priest with a heavenly resume
Over the next four decades, Annunciation would see a number of priests come and go. In November 1968, however, Msgr. Wilbur F. Suedkamp took over the helm, and for two decades, he dedicated himself to not only the parish but to continuing his personal mission of building affordable senior housing.
Suedkamp was ordained a priest in 1945, but it wasn’t long before he dedicated himself, not only to the lord, but to helping the elderly. He had a vision for senior housing that offered dignity and privacy similar to that found at college dorms. In 1954, Suedkamp got a small loan from the Archdiocese to test his idea, and acquired a former parish hall of St. John Nepomucene Church on Detroit’s west side and turned it into a retirement home. This building was dubbed the Kundig Center in honor of Father Martin Kundig, a Detroit priest who had championed the causes of the city’s poor.
The success of the Kundig Center would lead to a network of other senior homes known as the Ryan Homes, named in honor of Detroit industrialist William Ryan whose $12 million bequeathal in 1971 helped fund them. They included Casa Maria in Imlay City, Madonna Villa in Fraser, Marlon Oakland Ward in Farmington Hills; Marydale Center in Port Huron; Mary Haven in Southfield; and Villa Marie in Livonia, as well as one located near Annunciation, appropriately named the Stapleton Center, in honor of the parish’s founder and longtime priest. Suedkamp also played a key role in buying the former Detroiter Hotel in 1955 and turning it into Carmel Hall, a retirement home run by the Carmelite Sisters. Suedkamp performed this work while maintaining his regular priestly duties at St. Patrick and St. Leo in Detroit, as well as St. Clement in Romeo and St. Michael in Pontiac. For his efforts, the Archdiocese made Suedkamp the secretary for Catholic charities and elevated him to monsignor in 1959.
All of this made Suedkamp a noted expert on gerontology, and he was appointed to the Presidential Commission on Aging in the early 1960s. He also was invited to lecture on his senior housing campus concept in Vienna, Austria, in 1966.
After arriving at Annunciation in 1968, Suedkamp would lead the parish through some tough times as Catholics began flooding out of the city amid urban sprawl, the rise of the freeway system and in the wake of the civil unrest of 1967. Despite these challenges, Annunciation remained a strong parish in the city under his watch.
Suedkamp stayed at Annunciation until his death on March 30, 1987, at age 67. His funeral was held at the church, and in his funeral program was printed, “His great gift was in truly caring about people, and his great talent was in doing something about it.”
Lord, grant them the strength …
Detroit’s challenges with white flight have been well-documented. The city reached its peak population of about 2 million in 1950, and it would be all downhill from there for the next 60 years and change. Beyond an overall drop in church attendance - regardless of denomination, white flight drained Detroit of many of its Catholics. Yet, it still had a roster of churches to serve not only a city of 2 million, but a far more Catholic population.
By 1980, the city of Detroit had lost 850,000 people in 30 years, most of them white and many of them Catholic. For example, in 1976, there were 104,380 Catholic households in Detroit, Hamtramck and Highland Park; by 1988, just 12 years later, there were only 48,800. Keep in mind, that is a 53% drop in a little more than a decade in the number of households, not individuals.
In the early part of the 1980s, the Archdiocese would spend about $20 million to try to keep struggling parishes and parochial schools afloat. With that being unsustainable, and with nno end to the struggles in sight, the Archdiocese had to make some difficult decisions.
On Sept. 28, 1988, Cardinal Edmund Szoka announced that the Archdiocese of Detroit would close 43 Catholic churches - more than a third of the 112 in the city - the most extensive closure by a Catholic diocese in the country's history. Those churches slated for closure served 10,000 parishioners at the time. Most of the closed parishes would be merged into other congregations. "Our bottom line is we want alive, vibrant parishes that really make a difference in the community," Szoka said in a televised announcement at the time. "Money certainly has to be a consideration. We live in a world where we need money." As Detroit entered the 21st century, the Archdiocese found its problems getting only worse. By 2000, only 1 in 10 Detroiters were Catholic, and empty pews in aging buildings continued to squeeze already cash-strapped congregations. More closing and mergers would follow, and in 2000, Our Lady of Sorrows merged with Annunciation Church, using the latter’s building on Parkview. The Our Lady of Sorrows building on Meldrum Street was sold to the New Liberty Baptist Church.
But the white flight complicated things in another key way, too. As noted, the Archdiocese was juggling the older mother parishes in Detroit as well as all of the newer churches that had sprung up in the suburbs to accommodate the Catholics migrating from the city. As the Archdiocese continued to open new churches in the suburbs to meet the Catholics where they were, well, you need priests to run all these churches. Coupled with a decrease in interest in joining the clergy was the fact that the Archdiocese’s priests were aging and dying. On top of money troubles, the Archdiocese was now dealing with a major shortage of priests. To illustrate this problem, in the six years between 2000 and 2006, the Archdiocese saw a 23% drop in its number of priests.
Much like Szoka had 18 years earlier, Cardinal Adam Maida, Detroit’s archbishop, had to make difficult and unpopular decisions. On March 22, 2006, Maida rolled out a rather vague but drastic plan that called for even more churches in the city as well as the suburbs to be closed or merged.
Among those cuts would be the closure of St. Anthony Parish on the east side, merging it with Annunciation/Our Lady of Sorrows to form a new parish to be known as Good Shepherd Catholic Church. At the time of the merger, Annunciation/Our Lady of Sorrows had just 108 families attending services; St. Anthony, despite being located in the shadow of the infamous Packard Plant, had 111.
Detroit Cardinal Adam Maida told the Free Press for a March 30, 2006, story on the mergers and closings plan that, "What we're saying today is that Catholic life will continue to change in Michigan. The real challenge I want our people to help us address is how to keep our lives and our communities spiritually healthy, and how to keep reaching out to embrace our neighbors, even as we go through difficult changes."
Those difficult changes would keep coming, and in 2016, the Archdiocese pulled the plug on Good Shepherd, too. Its final Mass was celebrated Jan. 10, 2016. The parish was merged with Our Lady Queen of Heaven at 8200 Rolyat, 7 miles to the north.
Fortunately, unlike many of the other historic Catholic churches in the city, the Annunciation/Good Shepherd building would find a savior.
It has risen
In October 2021, plans were announced to turn the former Annunciation campus into an art district. Library Street Collective founders Anthony and JJ Curis said they would resurrect the vacant church complex as an entire block of gallery space, a Black arts library, performance space, a six-room bed and breakfast in the former rectory, a public sculpture garden honoring late Detroit artist Charles McGee, and a skate park designed by famed skateboarder Tony Hawk on the block’s southwest side. Two vacant houses behind the church were transformed into four commercial spaces for the culinary arts known as BridgeHouse. Meanwhile, a garage was to be converted into a cafe. In all, the venture brought 3.5 acres of park and green space to the East Village neighborhood.
The husband-and-wife team started the Library Street Collective in 2012 and dedicated themselves to boosting the city’s art and culture and connecting it to the international arts community. The gallery, located at 1274 Library St., quickly took off and developed collaborations and partnerships with major museums and taking on large-scale public art projects. The collective also raises money for nonprofits and other worthy causes in Detroit.
The Curis’ dubbed their ambitious project Little Village. They rebranded the church as a cultural arts center known as The Shepherd, paying not only homage to Annunciation’s time as the Good Shepherd Catholic Church but also to how it would shepherd in “this new identity for the building itself and maybe even the immediate neighborhood,” Anthony Curis told The Detroit News for an Oct. 26, 2021, article.
The project was financed by the Curises with support from Dan and Jennifer Gilbert and through a partnership with Jefferson East Inc., an east-side community development organization.
As part of the transformation, the Curises chose to preserve the historic church’s stained glass windows, domed ceiling and church confessionals, which would be turned into reading booths for materials from the archives. The church’s altar was outfitted as a space for music and performance. Peterson Rich Office, a Brooklyn, N.Y.-based architectural firm specializing in adaptive reuse and cultural spaces, was tapped to oversee the church’s transformation.
"Because this church was so important to this community and this neighborhood in general — and obviously because it's an incredible structure — we're not going to be doing any modifications to the exterior of the church," Anthony Curis told The News. "The only thing we'll be doing beyond restoration is some very subtle lighting improvements."
The Shepherd opened with an inaugural exhibition featuring McGee’s work, done in collaboration with the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit (MOCAD). It ran from May 18 to July 20, 2024.
Asmaa Walton, founder of the Black Art Library, was tapped to curate the library focused on artists of color from around Michigan.
“My work with Black Art Library has been dedicated to promoting arts education on Black art and visual culture, ensuring that this is accessible to all communities and filling gaps that our institutions have left,” Walton told the Detroit Free Press for a Nov. 1, 2021, story announcing The Shepherd project.
The Charles McGee Legacy Park celebrating the artist’s work stands next to the church and features several large-scale works 8 to 12 feet tall. McGee, one of the city’s most prominent Black artists, finished the designs for the park before his death in 2021. It was the last project he worked on.
“Charles was a dear friend of ours,” Anthony Curis told the Free Press. “We’d been working with Charles for several years on this project, and it was really our intention from Day One to include something relevant that honored him and his legacy in the work he’s done in Detroit” even before his death. “It was always about creating a space not only to show his work in a public setting but also creating something that allows togetherness and unity, which are concepts Charles always came back to in his work.”
Lyndsay McGee was quoted on The Shepherd’s website as saying, “My father loved the city of Detroit and its people, and the plans for East Village gave him great joy, especially knowing that it would anchor a cultural district in the city. … There is no better legacy for him than a meditative place that has the express purpose of enabling the public, especially children and younger generations, to experience and be inspired by art.”
The former rectory became ALEO, a bed and breakfast catering to artists and “those seeking a cultural retreat in Little Village.” The building features six guest rooms as well as communal spaces, and showcases the work of about 30 Detroit-based artists or those with deep roots in the city. The building’s third floor is home to Modern Ancient Brown, a foundation started by artists McArthur Binion in 2019 that supports the intersection between the literary and visual arts. The foundation provides four visiting fellows of color each year with a private apartment and studio in the former rectory.
Among the first tenants of BridgeHouse will be James Beard award-winning chef Warda Bouguettaya, who is to open a pâtisserie, and Father Forgive Me, a wine and cocktail bar.
In March 2025, Time magazine recognized The Shepherd as one of "The World's Greatest Places," the only spot in Michigan to win such a distinction. The honor came a little less than a year after its opening.