The city's grand old YMCA would serve as the home for countless young Detroit athletes - and ended up being demolished for a new home for some of its best-known ones, the Detroit Tigers.

This downtown YMCA stood along East Grand Circus Park, at Witherell and East Adams streets, and was designed by the firm Donaldson & Meier.

Origins of the Detroit Y

The Detroit Young Men’s Christian Association’s origins go back to 1851, when efforts began in the interest of bettering “the spiritual and mental condition of young men.” Detroit was a city of just 27,000 souls at the time, and things didn’t really take off. Following the Civil War, however, the YMCA saw a boost in popularity nationally, and Detroit was no exception. The Detroit YMCA was re-established in 1867; at the time, the pre-motor Motor City had just shy of 80,000 residents.

But as we know, the automobile changed everything, and would lead to a seemingly inexhaustible demand for places to stay for the workers flocking to the city for jobs on the line. To put this into context, in 1900, Detroit had about 286,000 people, good for 13th largest city in the country. But by 1910, it would grow to nearly 466,000 - an increase of 63 percent in just 10 years. Even growing at a break-neck clip, that’s still a lot of housing to build in such a short time.

Needless to say, this growing city had outgrown the old Y at Grand River Avenue and Griswold Street, which opened in 1887, so department store magnate J.L. Hudson and other benefactors set out to raise a small fortune to build something a little bigger.

On April 12, 1908, Hudson dipped a trowel in mortar and buttered the cornerstone of what would become the largest YMCA on the planet.

The YMCA was also growing. By the time 1909 rolled around, the YMCA had a total membership of more than 446,000 nationally and 1,939 buildings - 84 of which were built in 1908 alone. There was a new “Y” opening almost every week somewhere in the U.S. The opening for Detroit’s Y would come on Jan. 1, 1909, when the doors were informally opened for what was then the largest YMCA in the world. The Grand Circus Park landmark had living quarters to accommodate 160 men. It cost $400,000 to build, or about $14.2 million in 2024 dollars, when adjusted for inflation.

Membership in the Detroit YMCA jumped from around 4,000 men around the time of the downtown Y’s opening to some 14,000 in 1930. The nine-story Downtown main branch was simply not going to be enough. In 1925, a $5 million expansion fund was announced by the YMCA (about $92.5 million in March 2025 valuation), which sought to build seven new branches in areas across the city. There would eventually be nine YMCAs sprinkled across the city and Hamtramck from 1925 to 1931, including the Hannan Memorial YMCA on the east side, Fisher Branch on West Grand Boulevard and the Western Branch along Clark Park.

The downtown branch would serve Detroiters for 88 years, offering a spot for sport and to lay their heads. It had about 250 residential rooms, a 75-foot swimming pool, courts for handball, squash and paddleball, an indoor track and health services.

The Downtown Y wasn't just for the common man. Frank Murphy, a Detroit mayor and later Michigan governor and U.S. Supreme Court justice, was a member. So were U.S. Sen. Carl Levin and Mayors Roman Gribbs and Coleman Young, among many others. It was also where Mayor Albert Cobo said he pumped weights.

Though the YMCA was for seemingly everyone, it wasn't that way at first. During its early decades, when segregation was still alive and sadly well in Detroit, Black Detroiters were not allowed. There was a separate Black YMCA branch on St. Antoine Street in Detroit's Black Bottom neighborhood.

Despite the decline of the city's population amid white flight, even as late as 1982, more than 2,000 men stayed in the downtown Y each year. They paid $40 a week, the equivalent of $136 in 2025 valuation, when adjusted for inflation. Some of them had called the building home for decades.

But when the Ilitch family decided to ask the City to help it build a new stadium for the Detroit Tigers downtown, the YMCA found itself in the way of progress.

Members left asking, 'Y?'

The building was sold in October 1996 for $5 million, more than five times its assessed value of $990,800, but close to the fair market value set by an appraiser for the Stadium Authority. But this wasn’t an abandoned eyesore or underutilized building. When it closed Jan. 30, 1997 -- 88 years and 29 days after it opened -- the downtown Y had 1,000 members and 60 residents living in its then-120 rooms.

"In the Y's last days, it wasn't the exercise that kept them coming back," the Detroit Free Press wrote the morning after the closure. "It was the camaraderie."

Though the YMCA pledged to build a new facility downtown, those plans weren't unveiled at the time of the closure. The board was blasted by members. As it would take just shy of nine years for its replacement to open.

"This was their fellowship," Jerry Miller, a retired Detroit police sergeant and Downtown Y member for 26 years, told the Free Press. "Now a part of their lives is being cut out."

Some of the longtime members suspended or canceled their memberships in protest. But all of those who called it home had to find a new place to stay.

Jimmy Pappas, who had become a member at the Y in 1928, told the Free Press: "I got a lifetime membership at Fitness Center USA in 1969. I think I'm going to start using it."

The YMCA fell to the wrecking ball in late 1997 and early 1998. Comerica Park opened in 2000.

The long-awaited replacement for the Downtown Y - known as the Boll Family YMCA - was dedicated on Sept. 8, 2005, but did not open to the public until that Dec. 5. The $32 million, 100,000-square-foot facility at Broadway and John R is named after the Boll family of suburban Grosse Pointe Shores, who donated $4 million for the project. John "Jay" Boll was a retired contractor and developer who founded Chateau Estates and Lakeview Construction Co. who had died Feb. 7, 1996.