Hilzinger Block

The Hilzinger Block is historically significant in representing the related Storz and Hilzinger families, who played a diverse role in downtown Royal Oak's commercial history for more than three quarters of a century beginning in 1859. The building, constructed in 1925, stands on property around the southwest corner of Main Street and Eleven Mile Road that has housed a succession of Storz and Hilzinger business interests since Philip Storz built his home and shoe shop at the Main/Eleven Mile corner in 1859. William Hilzinger, who married Phillip and Dorothea Storz's daughter Mary in 1883, conducted a variety of commercial enterprises over the years in buildings that stood on the Storz/Hilzinger property southwest of the Main/Eleven Mile intersection: a wholesale business in milk and butter, a mineral spring water business (using a well drilled on the same property in 1901), and an electric light plant from 1900 to 1904. Hilzinger, who had the present building constructed during the 1920s wave of commercial redevelopment in downtown Royal Oak resulting from nearby Detroit's massive growth, was also involved in other commercial enterprises, such as concrete block manufacturing, real estate, and banking. Standing on a part of the long-time Storz-Hilzinger property and initially housing the hardware business established by William Hilzinger's two sons, Albert and Carl, the Hilzinger Block is the only commercial building in downtown Royal Oak possessing an association with this family important in the downtown's commercial history. With its exterior newly restored to reflect its original appearance, the building stands today as one of only a small number of intact buildings reflecting the 1920s boom in downtown Royal Oak.

The Hilzinger Block is a rectangular two-story, three-storefront wide commercial building in downtown Royal Oak. Constructed in 1925, it forms part of a row of commercial buildings that directly adjoin it on either side. The building with its red brick exterior presents a Commercial Brick facade simply detailed with broad piers at the ends of the facade and narrower piers between the southern and central storefront areas in the first story and between the broad windows in the second - the piers formed of stacked brickwork, headers on the outsides flanking stretchers in the centers - supporting a broad frieze edged. on each side and top and bottom by a course of headers on edge. A slightly projecting limestone cornice with only a simple modillion-like detail to offer a suggestion of classical styling crowns the building, and there are also narrow horizontal limestone bands across the facade at second-story window sill and head level and below and above the frieze. At the frieze's midpoint a horizontal limestone plaque, outlined by header brick on edge, with square limestone corner blocks and a lozenge shape in limestone just beyond either end, displays the building's name, Hilzinger Block, in capital letters. Projecting at right angles to the building's facade at the second-story level between the south and center storefront, an open metal sign with lights along its outer edges is a historic feature of the building that was moved from the north end of the building and updated with the name of the current business occupying the southern two storefront's, Leo's (Coney Island), as part of the recent renovation.