Grand Circus Building

The Grand Circus Park Historic District is significant as a collection of late 19th and early 20th-century commercial buildings by noted architects including Albert Kahn; Daniel Burnham; George W. Post; C. Howard Crane; Smith, Hinchman and Grylls; and Gordon W. Lloyd. The buildings include substantial commercial, luxury hotel and ornate theater buildings possessing a grand scale and sophisticated character. The district is also significant in urban planning as including the major nucleus of Judge Woodward's 1807 Detroit street plan. Woodward's plan was based on a hexagon, divided into twelve sections which could be repeated ad infinitum. The original plan called for principal parkways two hundred feet wide and secondary diagonals one hundred and twenty feet wide intersecting at circles or circuses. Woodward intended Grand Circus Park to be the heart of the city. Unfortunately, uncooperative land owners prevented all but a fragment of the original plan from being carried out. As a result of the opposition of the landowners, who preferred the grid system of land subdivision, Grand Circus Park itself was never constructed as the full circle indicated in the Woodward plan and the streets to the north were laid out as a regular grid at right angles to Woodward Avenue. The district is also significant as the early 20th-century hub of social, cultural and business activities during the early decades of the dynamic growth of Detroit as the automobile-manufacturing capital of the world. The Grand Circus Park area superseded Monroe Street as the center of Detroit's theatrical activity and within a dozen years was ringed by eight theaters. Two of Detroit's major early twentieth-century luxury hotels were built facing the park and served as the setting for numerous social events.

The Grand Circus Park Historic District is a collection of forty commercial buildings surrounding and radiating from Grand Circus Park, a major feature of the 1807 Judge Woodward street plan for Detroit. Intended by Woodward to be the heart of the city, the Grand Circus Park area became the major focus of the northern end of downtown Detroit. The district includes one block along each of the streets radiating from the park on the south, east and west with Clifford and John R streets forming most of the south, east and west boundaries. The northern boundary generally runs along the rear (northern) lot lines of the properties on the north side of Adams Street, thus including all buildings facing the park. Major arteries, Madison, Broadway, Washington Boulevard and Bagley, focus on and terminate at the park. Woodward Avenue bisects the park, extending in a continuous vista to the horizon and lending a sense of spaciousness and depth to the street plan. The district is distinct from its immediate surroundings due to the focus on Grand Circus Park. The buildings in the district range from two stories to eighteen stories in height and are in a variety of styles including Gothic Revival, Beaux-Art classicism, Neo-classical, Tudor Revival and early 20th-century commercial. The oldest building in the district dates from 1867 with the majority built between 1915 and 1928. The nucleus of the district is Grand Circus Park, a tree-dotted semi-circle bisected by Woodward Avenue. The park includes two statues and two fountains dating from 1903 to 1921 and one sculpture constructed in 1975.