Garden Bowl

Garden Bowl, continuously operated as a bowling alley since its opening in 1914, meets national register criterion A as Detroit's oldest operating bowling alley and one of only two bowling alleys left in a city that was once one of America's leading bowling towns. Garden Bowl in its present incarnation, primarily dating from 1966, meets the requirements of criteria consideration G in that it possesses exceptional significance in the local context for its uniquely long history as a commercial bowling center in Detroit and the United States- one that has weathered the ups and downs of Detroit's bowling and general history and whose function and appearance have evolved to respond to the city's evolution. The building's present appearance is largely the result of changes made in 1966 to respond to the rapidly growing suburban exodus from inner city Detroit - a critically important aspect of the city's history that continues to have a major impact on its character today - and the ongoing need to attract customers from an evolving population base.

Garden Bowl is a single one and two-story building that resulted from the removal of the wall between two adjacent buildings and the combining of the formerly separate spaces. It combines two flat-roof brick-wall commercial buildings constructed in 1913, the original broad-fronted two-story wood-frame Garden Bowl and an adjacent lower and narrower steel-frame commercial building. The two buildings were combined into a larger Garden Bowl building in 1966 and the combined facades and interiors then substantially remodeled, assuming for the most part their present appearance. The combined building now displays a broad horizontal facade visually dominated by a gold-colored aluminum grill upper facade, above the street-level storefront, that displays the Garden Bowl name, in large script letters in red, positioned on an upward slant to the right near the midsection of the facade. A broad, projecting horizontal band of black enameled aluminum paneling demarcates the upper facade from the storefront below with its bright red enameled aluminum panel finish flanking raw aluminum door and window trim. A semi-spherical (half-bowling ball-shaped) canopy now shelters the main double-door entry. The interior features a bar and pizza restaurant located at the Woodward Avenue front of the building. Behind, in the building's east end, is the bowling alley, containing sixteen lanes in all, ten of them within the old Garden Bowl building space and the six at the south end within the space once belonging to the separate adjoining building. The second story contains a pool hall, dance floor and bar.