Randolph Street Commercial Buildings Historic District

The Randolph Street Commercial Buildings are architecturally significant as a rare surviving Victorian commercial streetscape in the heart of Detroit's retail district. The buildings include an interesting range of Victorian Italianate designs as well as a rare survivor of the 1840s and an interesting 1920s marble store front structure. Although the buildings were continuously altered over the years at the first floor level and two had new top stories added, they retained their characteristic Victorian brickwork and metal window hoods. Unfortunately, a city-sponsored cornice removal program in the 1950s resulted in the loss of all of the fine bracketed entablatures on Randolph Street as well as most of the other wood or metal cornices in the city. Historically, Randolph Street has been a center of retail activity in downtown Detroit since it was first settled in the 1840s. The building on the corner of Macomb is a remnant of this earlier period. Over the succeeding decades, as the city spread north from the river to the Pingree Square area, the demand for retail space prompted the construction of larger commercial structures such as the Odd Fellows Hall Building, 1218-24 and 1228-30. The area flourished as a shopping district into the twentieth century, but escaped the wholesale rebuilding that occurred in other areas, such as Woodward Avenue and the financial district. Only Number 1224, the twin to 1218, was replaced by a new branch bank building in 1929. Over the years the Randolph Street Buildings have housed a great variety of commercial enterprises. The earlier tenants included the Independent Order of Odd Fellows and the Laitner Brush Factory ("over 300 kinds of brushes and other varieties kept in stock"). A gas lamp company was later joined by an electrical supply concern. Photographers, sculptors, artists and architects found space here. Medical, dental, legal, insurance and real estate offices appeared before 1900. The street offered a druggist, a barber, jewelers, tailors, printers, publishers and a plumber. Restaurants and saloons, a wine shop, numerous cigar stores and a laundry utilized this diverse commercial district. By the early 1900s the area was dominated by dry goods and clothing establishments—shoes, hats, gents furnishings. It is still one of Detroit's most viable retail clothing markets. The Randolph Street Commercial District thrives in contrast to the general decline of retail business in the Detroit central business district. More than half of the buildings are owner occupied and operated. The practice of bartering that disappeared with the fixed price department store of the late 1800s still operates in the clothing and shoe stores in the district. According to a Detroit Free Press article dated November 1978, "it is a lively area, music booming from the stores; an ethnic area, where the black working class comes to buy clothes." It is unique to downtown Detroit, and an ongoing part of Detroit's commercial and social history.

The Randolph Street Commercial Buildings Historic District consists of six adjacent structures located in the retail heart of downtown Detroit on the east side of Randolph Street between Macomb and Monroe streets facing a wide intersection known as Pingree Square. Several blocks to the east of these buildings is the proposed Greektown Historic District, while directly to the west across Randolph Street is the Cadillac Square Shopping Mall project slated to be redeveloped with a low rise, suburban type, shopping mall. The surrounding buildings are primarily early twentieth century commercial structures and office buildings. The structures range in height from two to four stories. Only one building, the St. Claire Hotel, formerly at the northeast corner of Randolph and Monroe, has been demolished to alter the original blockscape.