Perennial Corktown

The Corktown Historic District is significant as the traditional Irish immigrant neighborhood in the City of Detroit and for its continuing role as an entrepot neighborhood for subsequent immigrant groups. Corktown is also important because of the diversity of its architectural styles and its combination of land uses which typified development in the nineteenth-century walking city. The City of Detroit, although founded in 1701, remained a frontier village until the second quarter of the nineteenth century. The city's geographic location between Lake Huron and Lake Erie became more important with the opening of the Erie Canal in the 1820s. Many Irish immigrants, who had enough money to take them beyond Boston or New York, then began to make their way west and started to settle in Detroit in the 1830s. By 1850 one of every two persons in Detroit was foreign born. One in seven was Irish, and people from Ireland constituted the city's largest national group. Although Irish were located in all sections of the city, the greatest numbers lived on the west side in the first and eighth wards. In 1853 the eighth ward, which included most of the area referred to as Corktown, was 47 per cent Irish. The Irish originally rented or purchased existing houses. When some Irish acquired enough money to build houses in Corktown, they built in styles then in fashion. Most Holy Trinity Church, an Irish Catholic Parish established in 1834, moved its frame building from Michigan and Bates to Sixth and Porter Streets in 1849. The new location proved more central for the parishioners and a brick structure was built on the same corner in 1855. During the last half of the nineteenth century, Irish immigration dwindled. The population of Detroit in 1880 was still 46 per cent foreign born, but only one in twenty Detroiters had been born in Ireland while one in five had come from Germany. In 1880, however, 50 per cent of the Corktown residents could still claim at least one parent born in Ireland. This figure had dropped to 34 per cent by 1900, when families of Irish descent were scattered throughout the city. Nonetheless, Corktown remained the center of Irish culture within the city and many families continued to attend services at Most Holy Trinity Church. Today Corktown continues to provide the center of

The Corktown Historic District is broadly bounded on the west by Rosa Parks Boulevard, on the north by Michigan Avenue, on the east by the John Lodge Expressway and on the south by Porter Street between the Lodge and Trumbull Avenue and by Bagley Avenue between Trumbull and Rosa Parks. This is the last remnant of an area, stretching from Third Street to Twelfth Street, now Rosa Parks Boulevard, from Michigan Avenue to the Detroit River, that was known as Corktown. During the last quarter of the nineteenth century, expansion of the Central Business District began to encroach on the eastern edge of the district; at the same time the final development of the western edge was taking place. Urban renewal programs of the 1950s and 1960s leveled large areas north of the river for light industrial redevelopment. The building of the John Lodge Expressway destroyed another large area of the neighborhood and effectively cut it off from downtown. Another expressway running east-west parallel to, and slightly north of, Michigan Avenue eliminated housing to the north of Corktown. The western edge of the neighborhood is defined by large warehouse and trucking operations on the west side of Rosa Parks Boulevard. The section of the neighborhood to the east of Trumbull Avenue contains some of the oldest houses in the City of Detroit. At least ten houses and Most Holy Trinity Church were built prior to 1860. Several of these structures are small brick townhouses in the Federal style. One similar structure still exists as a house museum on the east side of Detroit, but Corktown has the only remaining houses of this type which still serve as residences in Detroit. Another house design which is found in the older section of Corktown is the shot-through cottage, many of which possess carpenter Gothic detailing. This type of dwelling was very common in sections of Corktown which were cleared under the Urban Renewal programs. Occasional larger, somewhat Italianate, structures appeared in Corktown in the 1870s. Other two story homes were built between 1875 and 1890. This older section of the Corktown neighborhood has suffered the most from neglect and intrusions. Large open spaces, now used as impromptu parking lots for Tiger Stadium, which is located immediately to the north of the District, contribute to an appearance of desolation when viewed in context with the peeling paint and rotting porch steps of many of the structures. Out of scale industrial buildings also affect the area. These influences currently are being overcome, though slowly, through a Community Development Block Grant program of loans and grants for rehabilitation. A cartage company operation was recently relocated out of the neighborhood, and plans are being formulated for moving houses onto vacant sites from surrounding areas that are beyond saving.