  Umbound Member Username: Umbound Post Number: 34 Registered: 02-2008 |
Can somebody please post up any pictures at all of row houses in Detroit if there is any. And can somebody please tell me why aren't there any being built in the city now. thank you... | ||
Crew Member Username: Crew Post Number: 1403 Registered: 02-2004 |
Aren't most of the "lofts" being built by Crosswinds a type of row house? http://www.crosswindsus.com/mi chigan/detroit_avenue/ | ||
Neilr Member Username: Neilr Post Number: 657 Registered: 06-2005 |
Umbound, visit the West Village neighborhood. Go to Google maps, street view. Then go to the corner of Parker and St. Paul. Three of the four corners of that intersection have row houses. Also, St. Paul and Van Dyke has a couple of sets and the corner of Agnes and Parker has one set. | ||
E_hemingway Member Username: E_hemingway Post Number: 1555 Registered: 11-2004 |
Nine on Third is a good example of new row houses in Detroit. | ||
Dlb Member Username: Dlb Post Number: 10 Registered: 01-2007 |
I spent a few weeks working in and around Philadelphia. Nothing but row houses. I guess you could say it was row after row,,,,ha. But anyway, For the most part they were dam ugly. Never thought I'd say it, but I couldn't wait to get back to the Detroit area. | ||
Detroitstar Member Username: Detroitstar Post Number: 951 Registered: 01-2006 |
Dlb, you didn't like the rows of Philly? I work in Philadelphia and Baltimore part time as part of my job here in Detroit, and I always loved the miles upon miles of row housing there. To each his own I guess. | ||
Danindc Member Username: Danindc Post Number: 3894 Registered: 10-2003 |
Those Crosswinds residences look like public housing projects. Yikes! | ||
Alley Member Username: Alley Post Number: 27 Registered: 02-2008 |
http://www.corktowndetroit.org /www/history.htm | ||
Cdwaters Member Username: Cdwaters Post Number: 17 Registered: 02-2008 |
I live in the Philadelphia area and when I first moved from Detroit I lived in the city. Some of the rowhomes are pretty shoddy such as the ones rebuilt by the city due to the MOVE bombing. The city just lost a judgement and has to pay each owner to move out b/c they are literally falling apart. The older row homes, though are gorgeous and deceiving in the amount of room they have. (Message edited by cdwaters on February 18, 2008) | ||
Lilpup Member Username: Lilpup Post Number: 3511 Registered: 06-2004 |
Detroit has never been a city of rowhouses. I don't really like them being built here now. Rowhouses are an East Coast thing. | ||
Barnesfoto Member Username: Barnesfoto Post Number: 4756 Registered: 10-2003 |
but there are still quite a few in Southwest Detroit.. | ||
Fury13 Member Username: Fury13 Post Number: 3948 Registered: 10-2003 |
Not many rowhouses left in Detroit; it was never a predominant housing style here to begin with. But what about Patterson Terrace, the building in Brush Park that just had the fire? | ||
Detroitrise Member Username: Detroitrise Post Number: 1609 Registered: 09-2007 |
If you go down Henry near CT, you have Row Apartments. There used to be a lot more than that in the past. I also believe there are some near Highland Park. | ||
Ray1936 Member Username: Ray1936 Post Number: 2747 Registered: 01-2005 |
Just north of Myrtle (or whatever it's called now) on 12th Street (or whatever it's called now) was a small street, Spaulding Court. It was a row of rowhouses on each side of the "street", which was really a courtyard. I imagine it's long gone. | ||
Shotcaller Member Username: Shotcaller Post Number: 5 Registered: 02-2008 |
Row houses are more efficient, saving the money on heating and cooling costs, and causing less pollution. Also, high-density housing creates more walkable (i.e. desirable) cities, because everything is huddled closer together (not as far to walk between things) and there's more residents to support businesses. More importantly, there was a time when Detroit, with all of its detached homes with fenced-in yards, had no developable space left. A housing crisis ensued, one reason people sought out the suburbs. Then you get into a situation where you can't build, and thus can't increase your tax base. The more space the individual homeowner takes, the less money that can ultimately go into the city via property or business taxes once all land is developed. The higher the density, the more money the city gets out of every square foot. So you see, the space between homes is essentially wasted space. Also, row houses with small yards as opposed to large yards force people into parks for picnics and playing, fostering a sense of community, rather than everybody spending nice days in their own sectioned-off yard. In Brooklyn, the brownstone and limestone row houses are the most desirable homes in the borough. It wasn't always like that, but once the neighborhoods were restored to their original beauty, people started clamoring to move back to the tight-knit neighborhoods. Michigan, in its present state, would never be able to sustain a mass transit system because its buildings are spread too far apart, with massive parking lots the size of football fields separating sidewalks and entrances, making going shop to shop a chore (with a few exceptions like Ferndale and Royal Oak, both built the old fashioned way, with connected buildings rather than detached). | ||
Pam Member Username: Pam Post Number: 3522 Registered: 11-2005 |
Here is another one in Corktown. (Last picture.) http://www.modeldmedia.com/fea tures/corkmove.aspx | ||
Royce Member Username: Royce Post Number: 2547 Registered: 07-2004 |
Alley, that's old info. The "Row House" in Corktown is a "house" not a true group of attached houses. That other info about the houses being moved never happened. Those homes were torn down to make way for the permanent MGM Grand Casino. Now concerning rowhouses, if you want to see some modern row houses, with nice curb appeal, in my opinion, take a look at the ones on Labrosse between Sixth and Brooklyn in Corktown. The first floor and second floor bay windows and the brick facade along the front really make these rowhouses stand out. However, these look more like "brownstones" as opposed to being "row houses" since they look nothing like rowhouses in Philly(someone help me out with the definitions). Rowhouses in Philly and Baltimore are right up to the sidewalk, where there's no porch or a patch of grass. Hideous looking for someone from the midwest like myself. There is one strange group of rowhouses on Rosa Parks just north of the Fisher Freeway. They are on the west side of the street and they face each other with a concrete courtyard in between. I'd like to know the story behind these. Very unique to Detroit. There is a similar set in Highland Park which you can see the back of some of the units from Woodward. Speaking of Woodward, there's a group of old rowhouses along Woodward at either Blaine or Gladstone, just north of Euclid, that have a nice look. A few of the units are on Woodward and the rest are on Blaine/Gladstone. There are also some rowhouses along East Outer Drive, east of Conant. They're not as old as the ones on Woodward and Blaine/Gladstone. They have a more modern, but "projects" look about them. Finally, there's also a group of rowhouses along the Ford Freeway just west of the ON ramp to the Ford from the Jeffries. They're visible while on the ramp. They are south of McGraw and are on the service drive. Now, Neilr mentioned some other rowhouses in West Village. There are others that folks know about that I haven't mentioned and I know of a few others. I'll take a break now and see if someone else mentions them. | ||
Shotcaller Member Username: Shotcaller Post Number: 6 Registered: 02-2008 |
also, when all the land is eventually taken by the detached homes and yards, people are forced to move elsewhere, creating new hubs of activity and essentially creating competition for the city. That type of planning leads to sprawl, which is terrible for the environment is so many ways. | ||
Lilpup Member Username: Lilpup Post Number: 3514 Registered: 06-2004 |
"row houses with small yards as opposed to large yards force people into parks for picnics and playing, fostering a sense of community" that's what porches were for rowhouses do away with greenspace, don't insulate from adjoining neighbors' noise, and are less like to be maintained by their occupants mass transit was effective for decades, despite suburban sprawl, and is still sustained in places like D.C. (hardly a compact area) | ||
Neilr Member Username: Neilr Post Number: 659 Registered: 06-2005 |
Royce, one of my favorite rows of townhouses is that row of ± 10 Tudor style homes on Ewald Circle and Schoolcraft. The row follows the curve of Ewald Circle. You might like them because they are set back some distance from the sidewalk, providing for deep front lawns. There are several rows of similar, though much smaller and less impressive, townhouses across the street. | ||
Danindc Member Username: Danindc Post Number: 3895 Registered: 10-2003 |
quote: Trying *real* hard to bite my tongue on this one. | ||
Iheartthed Member Username: Iheartthed Post Number: 2706 Registered: 04-2006 |
I think Detroit's answer to row houses and brownstones come in the form of two family flats. Also, there are parts of the near east side which have the houses built close enough to essentially accomplish the brownstone/row house space efficiency effect. Unfortunately, the population trends in Detroit for the past few decades have tilted towards the outer edges of the city where the housing was less dense. | ||
Stromberg2 Member Username: Stromberg2 Post Number: 67 Registered: 10-2006 |
Ray1936, Spaulding Court is still there, rundown, but still there. Stromberg2 | ||
Troy Member Username: Troy Post Number: 215 Registered: 10-2003 |
I was trying to post a good pic but I cant seem to get the file size small enough without complete lack of quality in the image. What is the secret? | ||
Shotcaller Member Username: Shotcaller Post Number: 7 Registered: 02-2008 |
Detached homes are still a waste of land and environmental resources. That land between your house is never going to create jobs (other than the landscape company you hire to do your mowing and mulching), it's never going to house another citizen who will contribute to the tax base. The carbon footprint of the average New Yorker is less than a third the size of the average American, and sprawl doesn't just mean more open space gobbled up, it means more parking lots, cars, sewage lines, power lines, strip malls, etc. I haven't been to DC in a while, but I remember it filled with rowhouses, so I checked google maps and I was right. New Yorkers don't just use mass transit as a personal choice (roughly a third drive). Mass transit drastically reduces travel time (especially taking finding a parking space into consideration) and is less expensive. If the other two-thirds of the people drove, well that just wouldn't be possible because there's not enough room on the street. Here's some math: Just ONE subway car (not the entire train) can hold 240 people, the equivalent of 0.7 miles of cars if each person is in their own vehicle (each automobile needs at least 16 feet). But even assuming an average of two people per automobile (very generous), with an average weekday ridership of 4.9 million, the city's subway system removes 7,424 miles of cars from the street every week day, and that's not including the commuter railroads and buses. Density and mass transit go hand in hand. A city can't grow past a certain point without mass transit, and without a certain level of density, fewer people would take mass transit because it's easier to drive. Especially when it's a pain in the ass to walk places because they're so far apart. | ||
Royce Member Username: Royce Post Number: 2548 Registered: 07-2004 |
The row houses I mentioned earlier, off of the Jeffries/Ford interchange, is on Hudson Street. Some other row houses I've seen are on Shiperd Street in West Village and a group of row houses on Ardmore Street east of the Southfield Freeway between Puritan and Fenkell. | ||
Jimaz Member Username: Jimaz Post Number: 4585 Registered: 12-2005 |
Troy, try this tool: http://www.irfanview.com/. | ||
Corktownmark Member Username: Corktownmark Post Number: 364 Registered: 12-2004 |
Stromberg2 when was Spaulding court moved north of Martin Luther King Jr. or as some real old timers call it Myrtle? | ||
Wolverine Member Username: Wolverine Post Number: 424 Registered: 04-2004 |
The ones in SW Detroit are nice. I'm actually a huge rowhouse fan, so I tend to travel to other cities to see them. But the very few we have are quite exceptional in their architecture. Hopefully the ones that are vacant will be rehabbed. | ||
Hudkina Member Username: Hudkina Post Number: 123 Registered: 12-2004 |
A lot of the "rowhouses" that are in Detroit are actually "apartment rows". The difference is that a "rowhouse" is a standalone building that is built directly adjacent to another. The two buildings generally do not share a common wall. In fact rowhouses don't technically have to touch, though in most cases they do. On the other hand an "apartment row" is generally one building where the individual units share a common wall with their neighboring unit. They are designed to appear similar to rowhouses, but are a different type of construction. The biggest difference is that you can completely demolish an individual rowhouse without damaging its neighbors, while you can't tear down an individual unit in an apartment row. There are a handful of examples of true rowhouses within the city, but they are few and far between. One good example is on E Jefferson across from the Ren Cen. |
