Nacirema Club

The Nacirema Club's clubhouse housed a leading social organization in Detroit's African American community. This men's social club was first established in 1922 and formally organized the following year. In 1925 the club occupied the present building, constructed as a house five years earlier. From its beginnings until the height of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, the Nacirema Club was one of a limited number of Detroit social clubs open to African Americans (the others including the Urban League and the Association of Women's Clubs). The Nacirema Club was a key institution not only in the African American neighborhood on the city's West Side in which it stood that, bounded generally by West Grand Boulevard and Livernois between Tireman and Warren, housed many leading members of the city's African American community, but for African Americans in the city as a whole. The club was the place to go for wedding receptions, proms, anniversary parties, and all social events that made up African American life in the city. In its heyday it boasted a ballroom, dining room, roaring fireplace, well stocked bar, and spacious lobby furnished in leather sofas. Members and their guests met and mingled and enjoyed dinner and late night dancing. The highlight of the year was 'Nacirema Week.' During this special time the club hosted a Sunday church service, racetrack party, dinner dance, picnic, card party, and a moonlight boat ride. But the clubhouse also hosted a broad range of meetings and events that included not only church and block club events not directly related to the club but also such other events as speakers' forums and campaign stops for political candidates. As long time Detroit Urban League secretary John C. Dancy noted, the club 'had a resounding voice in the community' and 'lent its efforts and influence to worthwhile projects all over the city.' Although the wives of members supported the club by sponsoring card parties, fashion shows, and other fund raisers, women were not afforded membership until 1998. The Nacirema Club declined rapidly in membership in the last few decades as older members passed away and the old West Side African American neighborhood itself has disappeared building by building. Though not formally dissolved, the club no longer has meetings or makes use of the clubhouse. Despite this, the building retains much of the club furnishings and memorabilia.

Built in 1920 as a single-family house, the Nacirema Club's clubhouse is a two-story, reddish-brown textured brick foursquare with a large one-story rear addition that extends outward slightly from the house's side walls on either side. Standing on a brick foundation that matches the superstructure, the building has a steeply pitched hip roof that, now clad in pinkish asphalt shingles, flares outward slightly at the eaves. A broad hip-roof dormer, with battered sides, is centered in the front and either side roof; the rear roof displays a smaller, gable-roof dormer. All are now clad in asphalt shingles. A broad chimney stack rises along the left or north facade to a height well above the adjacent roof and dormer. At one end of the front a staircase with brick parapets leads to a hip-roof entry porch, with square-plan brick corner posts and brick parapets. The building's windows are primarily one-over-ones, single and in pairs, but there are also several three-over-one windows. The first floor front left of the front entry porch was renovated, perhaps in the late 1940s, with two broad single-light windows- old photographs show these each replaced a triple, three-over-one window- flanking a center door, now bricked in. A terrace, with brick parapets, that extended across the rest of the front adjacent to the front entry porch has been removed except for a small section near the porch. A c. 1972 photograph shows what seems to be an aluminum canopy over the terrace that may have been a temporary structure used during the warm weather months.