Dunbar Hospital

Dunbar Hospital is significant for its role in the development of the medical profession in the black community of Detroit in the early twentieth century. It is also important as the home of two of Michigan's first black men to hold high elective political offices. The Guy W. Vinton Construction Company erected 580 Frederick Avenue in 1892 as a residence for prosperous jeweler and real estate developer Charles W. Warren. At that time Frederick Avenue was part of the fashionable residential area east of Woodward Avenue near downtown. Within a few blocks were the palatial mansions of Detroit's leading businessmen including David Whitney, Charles Lang Freer and Frank J. Hecker (all now listed in the National Register) as well as the many less elaborate houses built for the city's upper middle class professional and merchant elite. By the time of World War I, this section had lost its popularity as a preferred residential quarter and many two-family houses, apartment buildings and institutional facilities were being erected. As the wealthy families moved to newer areas further from the center of the city, parts of the neighborhood became primarily black. World War I accelerated this process by encouraging thousands of blacks to move to Detroit to work in the war industries. The early twentieth century was a period of rampant racial segregation in the United States. This racial separatism extended into all aspects of life, including the medical profession. Blacks, patients and doctors alike, were denied equal access to both private and public hospitals in Detroit. By 1917, with 30,000 blacks in the city, the medical situation was approaching the crisis stage. The thirty over-worked, black physicians could no longer deal with the situation on an individual home care basis. As a result, they banded together and formed the Allied Medical Society, forerunner of the present Detroit Medical Society. Its primary objective was to raise funds to establish a hospital to care for the black citizens of Detroit. In 1916 they acquired the Charles Warren house and opened Dunbar Memorial Hospital the following year as Detroit's first black hospital. The new hospital flourished and had outgrown No. 580 by 1924 when the house next door at No. 584 was acquired for use as offices, reception rooms, a library and nurses quarters. By this time, Dunbar had a staff of twenty-one to operate the thirty-seven bed facility and sponsored nurses training classes and an internship program for black graduate students. In 1928, the converted houses on Frederick Avenue could no longer accommodate the growing hospital and Dunbar moved to a new location at Brush and Illinois where it became known as Parkside Hospital. It remained at this location until it ceased operations in 1960, and was razed as part of an urban renewal project. Today, as a result of civil rights legislation, there is no need for an all black hospital, but 580 Frederick Avenue remains as a reminder of an earlier period when the black community was forced to establish its own institutions. The historical significance of 580 Frederick Avenue did not end with the departure of Dunbar Hospital in 1928. The house and its neighbor No. 584 were immediately acquired by Charles C. Diggs, Sr. Diggs and his wife Mayme and six year old son, Charles Jr. made 580 their home and opened an undertaking business in No. 584 (demolished). Charles Sr. was a successful businessman and community leader when he was elected in 1937 as Michigan's first black Democratic State Senator, although by this time the family had moved from Frederick Avenue. Diggs' son, Charles Jr., enjoyed an equally successful career as a businessman and became Michigan's first black member of the U. S. House of Representatives (1954-present) after succeeding his father in the Michigan State Senate from 1951-54. The structure's historical importance to the black community of Detroit was recognized when it was spared demolition as the rest of the neighborhood was cleared for urban renewal. In 1977 the building was declared a state historical site. Today, the Detroit Medical Society, the successor of the Allied Medical Society which started Dunbar Hospital, is restoring the building for use as a museum and headquarters facility.

The Dunbar Memorial Hospital at 580 Frederick Avenue in Detroit is a detached, red-brick and rock-faced ashlar, gable-roofed, residential structure with Romanesque Revival features. It is sited about twenty feet back from the sidewalk on a long, narrow, city lot on the south side of Frederick Avenue one lot west of the corner of St. Antoine Street. The surrounding area for several blocks has been almost completely cleared for an urban renewal project so that the house stands practically alone. Half a block to the east is a modern housing project consisting of cluster townhouses and a high-rise apartment building. The house is basically rectangular in plan with one projecting bay window on the west elevation. Designed in the manner of a townhouse, it is a long narrow structure with the only significant elevation facing Frederick Avenue. The building is raised on a high basement. It is a two-bay composition with a deep two-level recessed corner porch on the left balanced by a large first story cottage window surmounted by an inset second story oriel on the right. At the third story, the steeply-pitched, flank-gable-roof with wide, bracketed soffits is dominated by a tall, gabled, slate-clad dormer. Its three, canted, roundhead sash are treated as a shallow bay window inset under the steep gable which is ornamented with mock, dovecote slits. The most interesting feature of the exterior is the front porch. The first level sheltering the entrance is framed by a wide, semi-circular, brick arch springing from rough-faced stone blocks with carved rosettes. At the second floor, the porch is arcaded with the two equal arches sharing a single brick pier centered over the arch of the first level porch below. The facade is further enlivened with various brick and stone belt courses and mouldings and ornamental ironwork grilles used for the porch railings. The side and rear elevations are simple, functional compositions of one-over-one, wooden sash windows with stationary transoms.