Woodbridge Neighborhood Historic District Boundary Increase Two

The former Saint Dominic's Church complex was built during the district's expanded period of significance and through its architecture contributes to the district's visual and historic character. The first section of the former church complex was built in 1893 by the Brewster Congregational Church, which by 1897 had 230 members. In 1906 the congregation hired Almon C. Varney to design a large addition that, constructed to the west of the original building, became the main part of the church.

Varney (1849-1930) was a prominent Detroit architect and a member of the First Congregational Church in Detroit. Most noted for financing, designing, and supervising the construction of the first apartment building in Detroit, Varney designed numerous residences and other buildings including the Oriental Hotel and four factories for the Boydell Brothers. A number of residences designed by Varney are located in the South Cass Corridor area of Detroit, located about a quarter mile to the east of Woodbridge, including in the West Canfield Historic District (NR Listed). In 1926 the Brewster Congregational Church merged with the Pilgrim Congregational Church to become the Brewster Pilgrim Congregational Church, and relocated to Linwood Avenue about four miles to the northwest of Woodbridge.

The Brewster church was sold to the Catholic Diocese of Detroit. The church was renamed St. Dominic's Catholic Church. Responding to the rapidly increasing Catholic population in the formerly largely Protestant section of Detroit, the new parish was created from three surrounding parishes, the Cathedral, St.

Leo's, and the Most Holy Rosary. Saint Dominic's opened officially on December 8, 1926, and at that time Bishop Gallagher stated, 'Holy Rosary parish was overcrowded, and so were St. Leo's and the Cathedral parishes. That meant that masses had to be read every hour to accommodate the crowds.' St.

Dominic's Church was staffed by the Dominicans, the Order of Preachers. It was the first and only church in the Diocese of Detroit of that order. The diocese had been attempting to create a Dominican parish for five years prior to 1926, probably because at that time the diocese was under the Archdiocese of Cincinnati and the Cardinal was a Dominican.

The proposed boundary increase to the Woodbridge Neighborhood Historic District will add the former St. Dominic's Church complex and is approximately one-half block in size. The area to be added is located on the east side of Trumbull Avenue just south of West Warren. The area east of Trumbull, which here forms the existing district's east edge, is bounded by Wayne State athletic fields on the north, a 1980s public housing apartment complex to the east, and a 1990s public housing apartment complex to the south.

The former church complex's buildings date from the period of the Woodbridge Neighborhood district's development. When standing within the existing Woodbridge Neighborhood Historic District and looking towards the former church complex from both directions on Trumbull and from the west on Warren, it is clear that the buildings fit the character of the neighborhood in scale and materials. The former church complex faces two and a half story residences and larger apartment buildings nearby across Trumbull. When viewed together these form a dense urban neighborhood that, containing a variety of building types, functioned as a cohesive unit.

The former Saint Dominic's Church complex contains four buildings standing at the southeast corner of Trumbull and Warren Avenues. The site is flat with little landscaping. The former church and rectory face Trumbull, the former school faces Warren, and the former convent faces a vacated Lincoln Avenue, parallel with Trumbull.

Woodbridge is significant as an intact, turn-of-the-century, middle-class, streetcar suburb of high architectural and environmental qualities. It is important not only for the architectural excellence of the individual buildings, but also as an historical benchmark to the growth of Detroit at the turn-of-the-century. The importance of the neighborhood is underscored by the fact that ambitious redevelopment projects in recent decades have eradicated so much of Detroit's historic residential fabric that Woodbridge stands out as a rare survivor of its period in this part of the city. The residents are actively working to bring about the rehabilitation of their neighborhood and seek National Register listing as a recognition of the neighborhood's significance.

Woodbridge is located about two miles northwest of downtown Detroit. It was developed primarily between 1860 and 1920 as a middle-class neighborhood. It was all but built-up by the time the automobile industry catapulted Detroit from a prosperous manufacturing city ranking fourteenth in size in the nation to a booming automobile producing giant that was the fifth largest city in the United States.

During the first half of the nineteenth century Woodbridge was a flat plain divided into strip farms with their long dimension extending from south to north. The strip farms had been laid out by Detroit's French founders, who parcelled land by river frontage with an approximate depth of three miles, or almost as far north as today's Grand Boulevard. As property was sold or inherited, it was sub-divided, always lengthwise, so that each of the parcels retained their river frontage but became very narrow. Woodbridge was built on four such narrow farms whose approximate width (in their east to west order) were:

Woodbridge Farm 960 Ft. Lognon Farm 580 Ft. Thompson Farm 440 Ft. Lafferty Farm 530 Ft.

The neighborhood, in fact, takes its name from William Woodbridge, territorial governor of Michigan from 1819 to 1920, who owned the largest farm in the neighborhood.

Two important features antedating the development of Woodbridge are: to the south, Grand River Road, the historical road to Lansing, which was improved as a plank toll-road for a distance of about three miles out from the city center; and to the north, the Detroit, Monroe and Toledo Railroad, which had obtained a 100-foot right-of-way for its tracks in 1856.

After the abandonment of Judge Woodward's hexagonally generated street layout plan for the city, all of nineteenth century Detroit was platted as a grid with streets perpendicular to the river and parallel to the boundaries of the narrow strip farms. Trumbull Avenue (originally Ninth) and Twelfth Street (originally Thompson) were produced in this manner. Subsequent streets in Woodbridge were laid at right angles between the two, yielding a gridiron pattern.

The first platting occurred in Woodbridge in 1857. Within a few years, other subdivisions were platted as farm owners sold off parcels of their land. With the exception of the Hodges Brothers, those responsible for platting the subdivisions did not actively develop their land. Instead, they sold vacant lots, often one at a time, to small developers, land speculators, builders or even prospective residents who, in turn, constructed houses on them. Partly because of this practice, Woodbridge's growth period was relatively long, spanning the years from 1870 to 1920. Because of the difference in size and price of lots in the various plats, the neighborhood included both working class and upper class sections. Working class homes (smaller and usually of frame construction) were located primarily in the western part of the district, while the wealthier residents' homes (typically of brick) were situated in the eastern and southern portions of the district.

The area derives its basic architectural character from the traditional Detroit preference for detached, single-family houses. Even the two-family flats and duplexes are sited and built to be as visually similar to single-family homes as possible. Building lots, however, were usually narrow (30 to 50 feet) and deep (130 to 150 feet) with the result that the large one-and-one-half- to two-and-one-half-story houses often filled the width of the small lots, resulting in a dense urban streetscape. Automobile and service access was afforded by narrow alleys at the rear of the lots. Since there were no municipal regulations or setback ordinances in effect at the time, the original subdividers of the more costly plats introduced deed restrictions establishing uniform setbacks from the street as well as minimum construction costs. Throughout much of the area trees were planted along the streets adding to the visual appeal. Because of the additional light and air they provided, corner lots were at a premium in Woodbridge. These were usually developed with stately homes or, less frequently, as terraces of row-houses, a building type unusual for Detroit.

The first subdivision in Woodbridge, the 1857 William B. Wesson plat, a part of the Thompson Farm, consisted of a large number of thirty-foot-wide lots oriented to Thompson Street (later Twelfth, today Rosa Parks Boulevard) and the newly platted streets running off it. It was slowly built-up with modest, one-and-one-half-story, frame cottages, most of which were constructed after 1870. Later subdivisions of the Thompson and Lafferty farms and the neighboring plats spread this working-class development throughout the western part of Woodbridge.

A different type of development began in 1871 at the southeast corner of the district. The Hodges Brothers' subdivision, recorded in November of that year, was centered on the then newly-opened Lincoln Street, which was 70 feet wide. By 1879 Lincoln Street had been paved with cedar blocks, a luxury for the time. In contrast to most of the developers, the Hodges Brothers built and sold completed houses on ample sized lots. In 1879 the weekly newspaper advertised "Elegant New Modern Brick Houses on Lincoln Avenue...Location very desirable at the low price of $6,500." While a substantial part of the subdivision, which extended almost to Warren Avenue, appears to have been personally developed by the brothers, some vacant lots were sold to others.

Between working-class Twelfth Street and upper-middle-class Lincoln Avenue lay the Lognon Farm and the remainder of the Woodbridge Farm. These were not fully platted until 1890 and were the last sections to be developed in the district. Two large plats constituted the bulk of this area: The Avery and Murphy Subdivision (platted in two parts in 1876 and 1885) and the William B. Wesson Subdivision (of the Lognon Farm) of 1887. Unlike the Hodges Brothers, neither of these two developers actually built any houses on their plats, with the result that the development was prolonged and irregular.

Building began on southern Trumbull Avenue in the early 1880s. James Scripps, the founder and publisher of the Detroit News, set the tone of Trumbull Avenue in 1879 when he built his spacious house at the corner of Grand River Avenue. Within the street was lined with similar dwellings, many of which remain today.

Similar houses were built on Grand River Avenue, but all of these have been replaced by commercial structures. Only one vestige remains of its brief hey day as a fashionable residential area. The Eighth Precinct Police Station at Grand River and Twelfth (now Rosa Parks Boulevard) was built about 1901 in emulation of a large chateauesque mansion of the period. This building, now listed on the National Register because of its transcendent architectural qualities, was lavishly designed to blend with the upper-class residences in the area at the turn-of-the-century.

On the Lognon and Woodbridge farm tracts most of the houses were built by professional builders, several of whom had long careers (up to twenty years) within the neighborhood. Occasionally, houses were designed by architects who, by the rather flexible job classifications of the era, could actually have been merely builders. Between 1895 and 1914 the remaining vacant lots were built up with middle-class dwellings. These houses were, for the most part, brick structures grander than the frame cottages in the western sections, but less imposing than the frame cottages in the western sections, but less imposing than the first brick mansions. Most of the two-family flats and duplexes date from this period as do the multi-family terraces. Very well constructed, handsome and comfortable, these houses dominate the blockscapes on Avery and Commonwealth which, in general, are the best preserved streets in Woodbridge.

The final stage in the development of Woodbridge began in the early 1900s. The tendency at this period was to crowd new buildings between and in the rear of existing houses. Frequently, apartment buildings were built behind corner houses, and occasionally, existing single-family houses were replaced with apartment buildings or terraces. This activity was stimulated by housing pressures brought about by the tremendous growth of the city's population between 1900 and 1920 as a result of the mushrooming auto industry. By 1920, the Woodbridge district was virtually complete as it stands today, although remodelling and exterior renovation continued through the 1960s.

Beginning in the 1920s, some of the wealthier residents left the neighborhood for newer, more fashionable homes in the expanding suburbs. Woodbridge, nevertheless, remained solidly middle class and residentially desirable through the Depression years of the 1930s when the curtailed construction of new suburban tracts slowed the exodus from the area. The war years of the 1940s put new pressures on Woodbridge. A patriotic campaign encouraged the owners of the ample houses in Woodbridge to rent rooms or to create apartments to house defense industry workers from the large, nearby plants. As a result, the density of population increased tremendously.

After the war, few of the houses were converted back to single-family use. At the same time, a boom in suburban construction made new housing on the fringes of Detroit available inexpensively to most middle-income families. Almost immediately, the younger, more mobile residents began to leave congested Woodbridge. The lost population was replaced by less affluent residents, many of whom were black. Although the newcomers inherited an aging housing stock whose maintenance had been deferred during the Great Depression and World War II, they struggled to renovate and preserve the physical fabric of the community. The dwellings owned by absentee landlords, however, were often allowed to deteriorate to the point that they became uninhabitable, were abandoned and subsequently demolished.

The deterioration of Woodbridge excelerated in the 1960s as the adjacent areas became blighted and were marked for clearance by Urban Renewal authorities. Virtually with the bulldozers at the door, the Woodbridge residents organized a Citizen's District Council and succeeded in getting the city to designate the area for conservation rather than for clearance. After this important step, the fortunes of Woodbridge began to improve.

Although considerable demolition occurred within the area as whole blocks were destroyed to provide sites for a new high school and the Detroit District Council Boy Scouts building, the community was able to utilize funding from the city to begin a preservation-oriented, neighborhood housing rehabilitation project which included a grant program and technical assistance provided by means of a restoration manual. As a result of extensive publicity and a professional staff, Woodbridge has managed to change its city-wide image to that of an up-and-coming, integrated, inner-city, residential area. Prospective homeowners throughout the city are attracted by its commodious housing and bargain prices. Long-time residents are increasingly determined to stay and improve their property.

Woodbridge residents seek National Register listing to aide their neighborhood conservation efforts, to render property owners eligible for the economic benefits of National Register listing, and to increase their voice in the ongoing city and state-sponsored projects that continue to effect the area.

Woodbridge is a middle-class, turn-of-the-century, urban, residential area of primarily one-and-two-family homes covering about 162 acres in the northwestern part of Detroit approximately two miles from the central business district. It is laid out on a grid plan within the modified triangle formed by Grand River Avenue, Trumbull Avenue, the Edsel Ford Freeway, and the Grand Trunk Railroad tracks. The neighborhood originally occupied the entire triangle, but urban renewal in the 1960s cleared a tract aggregating almost one-fifth of the total land area bounded by Twelfth, Fourteenth, Warren, and Grand River avenues to accommodate a new public high school. Subsequently, the modest residential area to the west and north of this site deteriorated so badly, and so many buildings were destroyed, that this entire section is excluded from this nomination because of its lack of unity and visual integrity. The best preserved portion of Woodbridge is located between Trumbull Avenue and Wabash/Twelfth avenues. This forms the heart of the historic district. In addition, a small area east of Trumbull including Lincoln Avenue from Calumet Avenue south to Grand River is included, even though it is somewhat deteriorated, because it so closely relates to the upper-class residential development on adjacent Trumbull Avenue. The area east of Trumbull and north of Calumet was cleared for an urban renewal project several years ago.

Although there is some commercial development on Trumbull, Twelfth, and Fourteenth avenues, the most important neighborhood shopping center is Grand River Avenue. The buildings are mostly small, one- or two-story, brick structures of little architectural interest built about the time of the First World War. They form part of the continuous commercial strip that lines Grand River Avenue from the central business district to the city limits. For this reason most of the Grand River Avenue frontage is being excluded from the district.

Woodbridge's historic character is determined by the houses facing Commonwealth and Avery and to a lesser extent Twelfth, Vermont and Wabash avenues and the east-west cross streets. The neighborhood is laid out in almost square blocks bisected by north-south service alleys. An exception to the general orderliness of the street plan are the blocks between Avery and Twelfth which are virtually honeycombed with narrow alleys and courts. This section differs from Avery, Commonwealth, and Trumbull in that the housing is oriented primarily to the east-west cross streets and is much more modest in size and architectural pretension.

The building stock illustrates the architectural diversity of the period from 1885 to 1920. The houses range in form from rambling Queen Anne structures with towers and elaborate spindlework porches to modest, boxy cottages. The majority of the dwellings are brick or frame, two-and-one-half-story, one- or two-family houses with bay windows, broad front porches and modest Queen Anne or Colonial Revival features.

The houses are uniformly sited back from the sidewalk close together on narrow lots. Although there are few churches or civic buildings, streetscapes are varied by the introduction, here and there, of small apartment houses and blocks of row houses. The community originally lacked parks, except for Scripps Park at the corner of Trumbull and Grand River avenues, donated in 1907 by the Scripps family. The demolition about a decade ago of an entire block of houses at Avery and Warren avenues for the modern Boy Scout's of America Detroit Area Council Building has provided some additional landscaped open space.

There are many interesting examples of the major styles that were popular for domestic architecture in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The earlier houses were principally of two types. In the western part of the neighborhood, modest, one-and-a-half-story, frame cottages began to appear in the early 1880s. These long, narrow, closely-spaced houses were a traditional working-class building type in Detroit and continued to be built until the end of the century although the detailing changed periodically to reflect newer architectural trends. The stark severity of the earlier cottages such as 5042 Wabash gave way by the mid-1880s and 1890s to more ornamented houses such as 1931 Putnum with its varied shinglework and 1925 Merrick with its spindlework porch and oriel window. For the more prosperous, picturesquely massed compositions such as 5026 Wabash could be fashioned within the basic cottage format, although into the early 1900s spartan little cottages like 4906 Twelfth Street were still being constructed in the neighborhood.

East of Twelfth Street, building was initiated on a somewhat more oppulent scale. The newly opened tracts were liberally sprinkled in the 1880s and 1890s with the individually-designed, single-family, Queen Anne houses of Detroit's expanding and increasingly affluent merchant and professional classes. Their homes were unique compositions that relied upon complicated massing and intricate applied ornament for effect. There are countless examples, each notable in some way for its unique appearance. The trends were set by the oppulent brick homes of the wealthy on Trumbull Avenue, which ranged in design from the stately Durelle T. Glidden House at 3946 built in the already rapidly fading Second Empire style, through the solid, proper, James E. Scripps House at 3664, a sober stick style dwelling, to the picturesque, Romanesque-influenced Queen Anne of the John D. Baer House at 4305 and the confused eclecticism of the William Northwood House at 3985. Trumbull and Lincoln avenues remained the principal bastions of the upper class in the 1880s and 1890s, although a few adventurous nouveaux riche located elsewhere in Woodbridge, such as Charles S. C. Charbonneau, who built his opulent, Queen Anne, brick and stone mansion at 4105 Commonwealth in 1891.

Within a few years, the homes of affluent merchants and professionals were appearing throughout the vacant plats. These imitated the lavish houses of their wealthier counterparts in their brick construction and use of such fashionable architectural features as corner towers, wide verandahs, leaded glass, and stone trim. The 1894 William Williams House at 4807 Commonwealth and the contemporary Frederick Genther House at 4237 Commonwealth are typical of the spacious Queen Anne houses of the 1890s. This type of construction continued into the early 1900s, particularly on Commonwealth and Avery avenues, when informal, rambling house plans became popular under the influence of the Shingle Style. An interesting comparison of the changing tastes is provided by the neighboring Emil Mathis (1895) and William Rumsey (1902) houses at 4241 and 4235 Avery Avenue.

A great many homes in the 1880s and 1890s were built of wood. These were mostly the dwellings of minor merchants or skilled tradesmen who capitalized upon the flexibility and relative inexpensiveness of frame construction to create architecturally distinctive houses at much less cost than was possible in brick and stone. Such rambling compositions as the 1889 John S. Sherman House at 1738 Forest with its domed tower and spindlework porch epitomized the middle class ideal of the period in domestic architecture. Site limitations could restrict this spacious informality to a mere rectangular box with a tall gabled-roof but the additon of a spindlework porch, some multi-paned sash and a projecting gable sheltering a half-round oriel as at 4823 Avery or even so modest an element as the round turret perched precariously at the corner of 1659 Merrick were sufficient to express the picturesque eclectic spirit of the Queen Anne period. For most home owners a spindlework porch wrapping around two sides of a clapboarded house with several different patterns of wood shingles and multitudes of windows of various sizes and shapes satisfied their architectural aspirations for a cozy, comfortable and unique dwelling. Of the many houses in Woodbridge that illustrate this, 4867 Avery and 1639-41 Merrick, both built about 1890, are among the most typical. As late as 1898, however, wide porches and corner towers were still in vogue for pretentious dwellings such as 4304 Avery built for the successful fuel dealer, Daniel Sullivan.

Although Detroit has always been primarily a city of single family houses, in the 1880s two-family houses appeared and gained rapidly in popularity. Woodbridge shared in this city-wide phenomenon. Except for the fact that they had two front doors, sometimes paired as at 1627-29 Merrick and sometimes separated as 4415-19 Avery, these houses closely resembled the single-family houses of the period and blended well with the prevailing building stock and neighborhood social fabric. In plan, the houses featured one apartment each on the first and second floors that shared equally the extra bedrooms on the third floor and the storage and laundry rooms in the basement by means of a common rear stairway.

After 1900, the two-family house became an increasingly prominent part of the neighborhood building inventory, although single-family house construction remained strong.

The greatest period of growth for Woodbridge was between 1900 and 1915 when the neighborhood echoed with the sounds of construction on every street. Commonwealth and Avery, in particular, were almost entirely built-up during these years. The majority of the new houses were fairly similar, brick, two-and-one-half-story, hip- or gable-roofed, two-family houses with wide front porches and bay windows. The houses at 4736-40, 4834-36 and 4844-48 Avery illustrate three typical designs that can be found repeated, with small variations, throughout Woodbridge. Some of the two-family house builders strove for greater architectural pretension, such as contractor Thomas R. Sharp who endowed his commission at 4752-56 Avery with a monumental, pedimented, Ionic portico. This house, like most of the others, was probably copied, with little alteration, from a house plan book of the period and identical houses can be found elsewhere in Woodbridge and throughout Detroit.

Duplexes were constructed as a fashionable alternative to the single-family house. The brick duplexes at 4859-65 Commonwealth and 4509-13 Avery exemplify the spacious double houses built to shelter prosperous middle-class families. More common, however, were clusters of three or more attached units. These rowhouse blocks, such as the handsome, Tudor Revival style row at 1645 Hancock built about 1895, were frequently quite elegantly designed and included many of the architectural attributes of a fine single-family house. Other examples are the Shingle Style dwellings at 1532-1538 Hancock and the imposing late Queen Anne group at 4403-7 Commonwealth. Within a few years longer rows of attached houses began to appear in Woodbridge. These were known as terrace blocks and the units were much more modest in size and architectural detailing than the earlier groups. A good example is the row at 2010-22 West Warren which wraps around the corner to include 5001-15 Vermont.

The four or six unit apartment building was as prevalent as the rowhouse in the first decades of the twentieth century in Woodbridge. The apartment had slowly become an acceptable habitation for middle-class Detroiters after the turn-of-the-century as the tremendous population growth of the city necessitated building higher density housing on the increasingly scarce vacant land near downtown.

The apartment houses in Woodbridge illustrate the experimentation with the new building type that was occurring. One solution was to take the two-story rowhouse building form and divide the interior into two floors of apartments. An example of this is 1944-64 West Warren. Another possibility, where the site was smaller, was to divide the interior of a building which resembled a two-family house into four apartments, each with a separate entrance from the street, as at 5147-53 Wabash. Within a few years, though, most of this experimentation was abandoned in favor of center-entrance, brick, two- or three-story, buildings with bay windows and sometimes a front porch. The two-story type is illustrated by 5129 Vermont while the three-story version, represented by 3975 Commonwealth, could occasionally grow into multi-building complexes such as the adjacent structures at 4711 Trumbull and 1510-1520 Forest. Once established, this three-story apartment building type remained the standard into the 1920s, although the exterior detailing changed to reflect the latest styles including Art Deco, Tudor or, in the case of 4800 Commonwealth, Georgian Revival.

By 1920, Woodbridge had been completely built-up and there has been little significant new construction since that time. Except for the addition of an occasional residential garage and some plain commercial structures, few changes have occurred on the quiet, tree-lined streets since the First World War. The destruction of the surrounding neighborhood by decay and by urban renewal has left Woodbridge an oasis of turn-of-the-century domestic architecture in this rapidly re-developing part of the city.

Woodbridge Neighborhood Historic District Non-contributing Structures

Of the approximately four hundred structures in the Woodbridge District only the following twenty-six properties do not contribute to its historic character.

3666 Grand River Avenue: Frederick Douglass Public Library (c. 1975). A 1-story, flat-roofed, brick and concrete block modern library.

1935 Mark: Thomas Goodfellow, Inc. (c. 1965). A 1-story, flat-roofed, concrete block, storage garage.

1831 Merrick: Hoffman Trucking, Inc. (c. 1955). A 1-story, flat-roofed, concrete block, truck garage.

1935 Merrick: House (c. 1965). A 1-story, end-gable-roofed, frame, pre-fabricated house.

1904 Putnum: First Fellowship Baptist Church (c. 1950). A 1-story, flat-roofed, concrete block, industrial building with steel windows that is now used as a church.

3714 Trumbull: Trumbull-Selden Market (c. 1925). A 1-story-flat roofed, brick commercial building.

3975 Trumbull: Faith Memorial Lutheran Church (c. 1965). A flat-roofed, brick and metal sheathed, modern church.

4100 Trumbull: Georges Auto Clinic (c. 1950). A 1-story, flat-roofed, enameled-metal-panel sheathed, service station.

4543 Trumbull: University Food Center (c. 1955). A 1-story, flat-roofed, brick supermarket with large plate glass windows.

4569 Trumbull: Tiger Cleaners (c. 1940). A 1-story, flat-roofed, brick commercial building with large plate glass windows.

5239 Trumbull: Welding Shop (c. 1920's). A 1-story, flat-roofed, brick, building with no architectural features.

5257 Trumbull: Building (c. 1950). A plain, 1-story, flat-roofed, brick commercial building.

4220 Twelfth: Ritter Printing Company (c. 1920's). A 1-story, flat-roofed, brick industrial building.

4300 Twelfth: R & R Towing Co. (c. 1920's). A 1-story, flat-roofed, brick, industrial building with large steel framed windows.

4400 Twelfth: Building (c. 1920's). A 1-story, flat-roofed, stuccoed building.

5175 Twelfth: Alpha Communications Company (c. 1955). A 1-story, flat-roofed, concrete block, commercial building.

5201 Twelfth: Thomas Goodfellow, Inc. (c. 1950). A 2-story, flat-roofed, brick, combination office building and truck terminal with modest Moderne features.

5203 Twelfth: Building (c. 1950). A 1-story, flat-roofed, brick building with steel windows and a recessed entrance.

5337 Vermont: Vogue Carpet Mills (c. 1920). A 3-story, brick, factory burned and in ruins.

5048 Wabash: Building (c. 1920's) A 1-story, flat-roofed, brick building.

1955 West Edsel Ford: Florence and Sons Auto Wrecking (c. 1950). A 1-story, gable-roofed, brick building with a small porch at the entrance.

1759-67 West Forest: Glanz & Killan Co. (c. 1920). A 2-story, flat-roofed brick office and warehouse building.

1745 West Hancock: Hancock Primary School (c. 1970). A 1-story, flat-roofed, brick elementary school.

1611 West Warren: Kidney's Market (c. 1920's). A 1-story, flat-roofed, brick commercial building with a plate-glass window.

1745 West Warren: Food and Munch (c. 1930's). A 1-story, flat-roofed, composition veneer diner built in front of a fine Queen Anne house. The house is a contributing element within the district.

1776 West Warren: Boy Scout Headquarters (c. 1975). A 2-story, flat-roofed, brick and concrete office building with a plate glass entrance treatment.

1900 West Warren: Gas Station (c. 1960). An abandoned, 1-story, flat-roofed, brick gas station of modern design with large plate glass windows.

All three buildings fall within the period of significance for the Woodbridge Neighborhood, which was built up between 1870 and 1920. The two residential structures on Trumbull are indicative of the duplex and relatively modest single family house as desirable middle-class building types constructed in Woodbridge around the turn-of-the-century. Patterson Dog and Cat Hospital is significant in its own right as a longstanding Detroit business and, additionally, it contributes to Woodbridge as a neighborhood business along Grand River, the historic commercial thoroughfare. The Paterson Dog and Cat Hospital, established in 1844, is the oldest privately operated veterinary hospital in the state of Michigan.

It was first located at 71 W. Columbia by Dr. James W. Patterson.

He was the only practicing veterinarian in Detroit at that time. His son, Elijah E. Patterson, graduated from the Grand Rapids Veterinary Medical College in 1901, and moved the practice to 591 Grand River Avenue. In 1909 he purchased property at what was then 650 Grand River (the present location) and built a house and a two story brick hospital.

The downstairs had room for twenty-five horses and the upstairs could house fifty dogs. Dr. Elijah's son, James E. Patterson, joined him in the practice in 1926 and, in that year, the building was remodeled.

The basic layout of the hospital has not changed since then. The hospital was purchased by Dr. Eugene E. Miller in 1966.

He practiced at this location until retiring in 1985, when Dr. Glynes D. Graham, the present owner, bought the practice from him. The Manchester Double House at 4304-08 Trumbull Avenue was in the family of Eugene W.

Manchester from the time it was built in 1891 to when it was sold out in 1937. Manchester, superintendent of the press room at the Detroit Free Press, was issued permit #1019 on November 17, 1897 for the construction of this double-house at a cost of $5,000. Eugene W. 8. Manchester occupied 740 Trumbull and John L.

Gibson, a travel agent, occupied the other half, 742 Trumbull (old addresses), according to the 1900 Detroit City Directory. Anthony L. Hoenscheid, a laborer, occupied the house at 4314 Trumbull shortly after it was constructed under a permit issued to N.S. Praigg, a contractor, on December 9, 1897 at a cost of $2,700.

The three buildings in this proposed addition to the Woodbridge Neighborhood Historic District are adjacent to the existing district and are compatible architecturally and historically. They contribute to the Woodbridge Neighborhood, which was built as a middle-class, turn-of-the-century urban residential area of primarily one and two family homes and scattered small-to-moderate scale apartment buildings, with a strong commercial presence on Grand River Avenue. The two residential buildings, 4304-08 and 4314 Trumbull Avenue, are contiguous to each other and are within the boundaries of the Woodbridge Farm local historic district. The Patterson Dog and Cat Hospital at 3800 Grand River Avenue occupies the above-referenced Grand River Avenue commercial frontage.

The two residential structures on Trumbull Avenue contribute to the array of architectural styles found in Woodbridge from the period between 1885 to 1920, ranging from the Queen Anne style to the vernacular Prairie style. Like their neighbors on Trumbull and the Woodbridge neighborhood as a whole, the buildings exhibit the characteristic projecting porches, bay windows, and half-stories within the roofs. The Manchester Double House at 4304-08 Trumbull Avenue is typical of the turn-of-the-century Queen Anne duplexes found in the Woodbridge community. Measuring 40 feet wide by sixty-two feet deep, the two-and-one-half story brick building has a three-story engaged conical tower as the major feature of its southern unit.

This tower, projecting from the roofline, marks the southwest corner of the building and the corner site. The rest of the roofline is comprised of a gable roof with intersecting gables; the one facing frontally forms the gable over the north unit. The building immediately to its north, 4314 Trumbull Avenue, is a modestly scaled two and one-half story brick veneer single-family residence completed in 1898 by the contractor N. S.

Praigg. In style, it can be characterized as Queen Anne, with its sharply angled three-sided, two story bay, shingled gables, and substantial projecting porch, now enclosed. Its rectangular plan is twenty-six feet across the front and forty-two feet deep. Patterson Dog and Cat Hospital is a long, rectangular shaped two story brick building originally measuring forty feet across and eighty feet deep.

Its roof is flat and not visible from the street. Recent removal of the aluminum siding revealed the original orange brick underneath, as well as the original pattern of openings. Rectangular double-hung, four-over-four sash windows with relieving arches on the second floor and small boarded windows on the first floor, east elevation; ocular window to right of entrance, second door with a transom above the west side of front facade.