Chancery Building

The Washington Boulevard Historic District is significant as an intact streetscape of architecturally distinguished commercial buildings dating from 1901-1930 with a majority built in the 1920s. The buildings individually represent some of the finest early Twentieth Century architecture in Detroit and as a group illustrate the evolution of the commercial style in Detroit as it was practiced by some of Michigan's master architects. The district is also significant as a product of a planned real estate development inspired by the City Beautiful movement and carried out as the private artistic endeavor of one family and their architect, Louis Kamper.

There were other property owners on Washington Boulevard in addition to the Book family. The congregation of St. Aloysius Catholic Church hired Detroit architects Donaldson and Meier in 1924 to design a parish house-office building next to their church in the middle of the block between Grand River Avenue and State Street. The resulting Chancery Building at 1234 Washington Boulevard is an eight-story, limestone sheathed eclectic structure of Romanesque-Italian Renaissance inspiration. The facade is composed of three, slightly-recessed central bays flanked by buttress-like end bays. The arcaded first and second stories of the central three bays are surmounted by four stories of vertically unified fenestration with panelled spandrels. The upper two floors are treated as a gabled, arcaded, open loggia.