West Village District

West Village is architecturally significant for its handsome assemblage of individually distinguished buildings and its cohesive period streetscapes. The neighborhood is of historical importance as a benchmark to the growth of Detroit in the early twentieth century and as the home of a number of prominent Detroit residents some of whom achieved National notoriety. Perhaps the one facet of West Village’s architectural legacy that makes the area especially important in Detroit is its interesting variety of early twentieth century housing types. The terrace house rows and the Shipherd Court development are largely without precedent in Detroit. Although some similar rowhouse groups can be found in the upper middle class residential areas of northern Woodward Avenue, which were being developed at the same time, West Village contains the greatest number and variety of architectural styles. The influence of English and Continental architectural trends are more evident in West Village than anywhere else in Michigan, with the exception of neighboring Indian Village. Detroit’s flourishing early twentieth century Arts and Crafts movement, with its strong ties to England and Northern Europe, may account for these uncharacteristic housing forms. It is possible that this type of architectural experimentation found acceptance in Detroit, in much the same way that the Prairie style was flourishing in the Chicago vicinity, as a result of the progressive temperament of the city’s industrial entrepreneurs. It could be that the open-mindedness that allowed many of these men to experiment with the revolutionary new technology of auto manufacturing made them receptive to imported architectural concepts as well. In Detroit, the pre-existing corp of artists, architects and artisans associated with the Arts and Crafts Society directed this interest toward Europe rather than to the emerging Chicago-based Prairie style with the result that stuccoed courts of terrace houses appeared amidst the more typical Detroit vernacular dwellings in West Village. Although there are some interesting single family houses reflecting English trends, the finest examples are to be found in adjacent Indian Village.

West Village is a Late-nineteenth/early-Twentieth-century residential area occupying about twenty square blocks on the east side of Detroit approximately three miles up the Detroit River from the central business district. It is bounded approximately by Seyburn, Parker, Kercheval and Jefferson Avenues. It is made up of approximately 275 single and two-family houses, thirty apartment buildings, and about twenty commercial structures. The great majority of the buildings were constructed between 1890 and 1920 on what, up to that time, had been open farmland. It is now a racially integrated mixed-income-level, neighborhood with a population of about 3,190. The neighborhood is layed out on an irregular grid plan with the major streets extending north to Kercheval intersected by minor east-west streets. Parker, Van Dyke Seyburn and Lafayette are the principal streets. The neighborhood is honeycombed with a network of service alleys and short, narrow cross streets. The buildings are uniformly set back from the curb behind small front lawns, and most are centered on their narrow lots. Although many of the streetside trees have been lost, the building lots are well-landscaped with mature shrubs and trees giving a parklike character to the neighborhood. West Village contains a great variety of dwelling types representing the full range of housing concepts popular in the period from 1850 to 1930. The neighborhood has always sheltered a mixture of income groups with the result that there are modest frame workers’ cottages, two-family houses, commodious middle-class single-family dwellings, spacious upper class mansions, terrace houses and various types of apartment buildings. In addition, there are neighborhood commercial strips on Jefferson and Kercheval, and a few churches spotted throughout the area.