CORONADO APARTMENTS

The Coronado Apartments is architecturally significant as a well-preserved, late-Victorian apartment building of imposing design displaying fine craftsmanship. The structure was built in 1894 by contractor George D. Nutt, a prominent Detroit builder, who constructed the Pasadena, the city's first, highrise, luxury apartment house in 1898-1902. It is possible that Fred L. Smith (1862-1941) of Mortimer L. Smith & Son, architect of the Pasadena, also designed the Coronado. The striking similarity in detailing of the two buildings lends to this speculation. Fred Smith represented the third generation of the Smith family architectural firm in Detroit and eventually became the senior partner in the nationally known and still extant firm of Smith Hinchman and Grylls of Detroit. It is also possible that Detroit architect Almon Clother Varney (1849-1902) designed the structure. Varney was particularly interested in multi-family housing types and is credited with the design of a number of early apartment buildings. The structure is similar to the double house he executed for William C. Boydell in 1895 several blocks north on Cass Avenue, which has also been submitted for nomination to the National Register. Apartment living was just becoming an acceptable residential alternative for the affluent middleclass in the mid-1890s when structures such as the Coronado were being built. As a result, the building was located in the then fashionable Cass Avenue residential area amidst substantial single-family houses constructed during the previous two decades. The apartments were designed to provide as many of the amenities of a single-family house of the period as possible. They featured double parlors with leaded-glass windows and carved mantel pieces, and ample dining rooms with built-in buffets. The listings in the city directories indicate that the Coronado was successful in attracting childless married couples and single professionals, merchants, lawyers, doctors, management level executives and the owners of small businesses. The Coronado remained a popular place of residence into the 1930s, when the general cessation of construction in Detroit and the difficult economic circumstances of the time created a strong demand for small apartments. As a result, each of the large floor-through flats was divided into two units during this period, although few substantial alterations were made in the apartments themselves. The decline of the Cass Corridor area into a zone of roominghouses and cheap apartments in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s created an unfavorable climate for investment and the Coronado was spared from exterior alteration or interior remodelling. The new owners wish to avail themselves of the benefits of the Tax Reform Act to help finance their planned restoration of the building to its original state as a twenty-four unit luxury apartment house, in concert with the general restoration effort now beginning in the Cass Corridor area.

The Coronado Apartments are located about one mile north of the Detroit central business district, two blocks west of Woodward Avenue, in a Late Victorian residential area of nineteenth century single-family houses and early twentieth century apartment buildings. The building is sited at the southwest corner of Second and Selden avenues across from a new city park. Neighboring the Coronado on Second Avenue is a c. 1880 brick, Victorian house, now being restored, while adjacent to the west on Selden Avenue is a brick, six-story, apartment hotel that was probably built in the early 1920s. The Coronado is a four-story-on-high-basement, yellow-brick-and-rusticated-sandstone, flat-roofed, Romanesque-style apartment house. It has architecturally designed elevations facing both Second and Selden avenues with common brick side and rear elevations of utilitarian design, without decorative features. The alley west elevation is completely covered by plain, four-level, wooden porches and stairways. The Second Avenue elevation is the building's facade. It is a long flat-fronted composition that terminates in a curved bay window at the south end and a round turret at the north corner. Between these projections the symmetrical facade is articulated by three entrances, each surmounted on the upper floors by open loggias. The building is divided horizontally into two parts by the rusticated brownstone clad basement, first and second stories, and the yellow-brick-sheathed third, fourth and attic levels. The broad, wood-and-metal, bracketed cornice and the wide panelled brick frieze form a monumental cornice treatment that effectively caps the building. The frieze is pierced by numerous, small, square ventilation openings. The three recessed entrances with their carved stone enframements and the upper loggias with stone columns are the most interesting features of the fenestration. The windows are large, single-hung, single-light, wooden sash units with leaded glass transoms. The windows on the fourth floor have arched tops. The Selden Avenue north elevation is similar to the facade except that it contains no entrances, or loggias. The interior is divided into three separate sections each originally containing two apartments per floor on either side of a central stair hall. The many interior apartments are lighted through deep light wells extending in from the rear about two-thirds the depth of the structure, further accentuating the three-part nature of the building. In the 1930s, the large apartments were divided into two units each, doubling the number of flats from twenty-four to forty-eight. Each of the sections is similar in floor plan and appointments. Only the four apartments overlooking Selden Avenue vary from the others in that they are more elaborately finished and each contain additional fireplaces. The street entrance leads into a wainscotted foyer with a patterned mosaic tile floor. The wooden, closed-stringer, Colonial Revival style staircases have square panelled newels enriched with foliated caps and applied scrollwork decoration and closely-spaced turned balusters. The wainscoting and stair soffits are paneled. The apartments are all identical in plan. Although divided in half in the 1930s, no substantive changes were made and the units remain basically intact. The hall door leads to a long interior hall extending through the unit to the rear porch. All of the rooms open off one side of this hall. The linear progression of rooms includes a front parlor with a fireplace opening into a second parlor through a wide opening. Beyond this are two bedrooms. Toward the back of the apartment is the dining room with its built-in buffet, beyond which is the kitchen, a pantry and a bathroom. The apartments have simple Colonial Revival style woodwork including various types of plain, Federal-influenced mantels with reeded pilasters or gouge-work friezes, art-tile surrounds and hearths, and cast iron gas grates in the fireboxes. The simple window and door enframements, panelled window aprons, dining room wainscoting, and the built-in buffets with cupboards, drawers and open shelves are other handsome features. The four apartments facing Selden Avenue are more elaborately trimmed than the other units. They have three fireplaces, one in the front parlor, one in the dining room, and one in the master bedroom. The mantels with their mirrored over-mantels and colonnettes are more elaborate than the others in the Coronado. The dining room buffets are similarly more complex with mirrored shelves and carving.