Posted on Saturday, August 25, 2007 - 10:44 pm:

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Developmental and Planning History

The earliest section of Rosedale Park was platted by the Rosedale Park Land Company in September 1916, on farmland in Redford Township, Michigan, located approximately twelve miles northwest of the center of Detroit. The property was originally deeded in 1835, as two 80-acre parcels in Sections 23 and 24 of Redford Township, to Otis C. Freeman and George Bellamy (Rosedale Park Improvement Association 2000:1). The parcels were further divided in subsequent decades, but the majority later came under the ownership of A. J. Stahelin, a Redford Township farmer (Belden 1876, Sauer 1916, Rosedale Park Improvement Association 2000:1). A large portion of the Stahelin property was purchased in 1916 by the Rosedale Park Land Development Company, which had been formed in the same year as a joint venture group for the purpose of "subdividing and selling real estate" (Rosedale Park Plat Maps 1916:2514 and Rosedale Park Land Development Company 1917-1918:1).

In 1916, the newly formed Rosedale Park Land Company’s combined assets amounted to $530,638.99, the majority of which was tied up in land. Despite this lack of liquid assets, board members seemed to be confident about their promotional efforts and connections within the construction trades community. It appears that several board members utilized their business interests in raw materials and skilled services to meet the company’s business objectives of development and construction. Although property buyers were free to contract with an independent construction company to build their houses, many buyers found it convenient to meet deed restrictions regarding size, style, and quality by engaging the Rosedale Park Land Company or its associates as their contractors (City of Detroit Building Permits). The company’s connections included those of board president Frederick W. Harrison in Coal and Coke Wholesale and Retail; joint venture associate William J. Burton as president of Detroit Applied Ready Roofing and Window Manufacturers, with offices in the Builders and Traders Exchange; and joint venture associate Henry W. Harding as president of H. W. Harding Lumber Company (Marquis 1914:86, 221; Polk 1918).

The business connections of these board members were augmented by the experience and tenacity of board secretary Ernest Otto Knight, the son of a Detroit merchant with interests in men’s furnishings, a grocery brokerage, and general mercantile (James T. White and Company 1966:314). Knight left the retail business in 1915, at the age of 42, to pursue real estate development with the Clemens, Knight, Menard and Paul Company, the "parent" company for the Rosedale Park Land Company. During his tenure with the company, "...it was responsible for the subdivision and sale of some 600 acres in Detroit" (James T. White and Company 1966:314). Among their developments were Greenfield Park (1915-1916), Glendale Gardens (1915), Glendale Courts (1916), Beverly Hills (c.1916), Rosedale Park (1916-1921), and North Rosedale Park (1919-1920, 1924-25, and 1937) (Statewide Search for Subdivision Plats 2004). All were located near Grand River Avenue, in what is now northwest Detroit, in the direct path of Detroit’s suburban expansion.

Rosedale Park and North Rosedale Park, which were developed as abutting neighborhoods on the south and north sides of Grand River Avenue, respectively, were by far the company’s largest and most ambitious developments. These two neighborhoods included over 2500 occupied residential lots, in comparison to the less than 600 occupied residential lots in their earlier large-scale attempt, Greenfield Park. The board members’ business associations, combined with an established partnership with each subdivision’s development company through their shared treasurer, E. Percy Ashton, allowed the Clemens, Knight, Menard and Paul Company to negotiate materials prices at reduced or volume rates, thereby making their construction costs attractive to potential buyers.

In addition to these business ties, the company principals were confident that their investments would enjoy a profitable return similar to those of other development firms of the time period, which had learned that "transit access would make undeveloped farmland attractive to potential commuters and thus raise its value" (Jackson 1985:120). This marketing tactic had been employed in Detroit for nearly two decades, with developers campaigning as early as 1892 by advertising the "‘repaving of Woodward Avenue’ as an incentive to purchasers" in the Highland Park area (Jackson 1985:165). In considering this strategy, board members likely took into account the location of their property holdings in relation to the availability of streetcar and interurban service, the relatively well-maintained Grand River Avenue as a direct automobile link to downtown Detroit, and the contemporaneous construction of Outer Drive, a concrete parkway connecting the outer suburbs of Detroit (Polk 1918).

Despite their city holding the title of motor capital of the world, the concepts of concrete automobile roadways and non-recreational motoring were relatively new to Detroiters. It had only been a few years since city officials opened the "nation’s first paved [concrete] highway" in 1909, on Woodward between Six Mile and Seven Mile Roads (Gavrilovich and McGraw 2000:237). In an attempt to impose order on increasing traffic pandemonium, the city had installed the first boulevard stop signs in 1915, while the invention of the stoplight by a Detroit police officer would not occur until 1920 (McShane 1994:127).

Regardless of the dangers and inconveniences associated with automobile transportation and Rosedale Park’s distance from the city center, the company seemed to be confident that the combined options of both automobile and streetcar transportation were sound choices. They had learned from previous experience with other successful developments that transportation options, along with the development’s attractive, picturesque character, would be the key points of attraction for early Rosedale Park residents. The company’s speculative actions began to pay off in 1917, when its worth nearly doubled in a one-year period to $909,127.58. These profits were realized as returns on sales in Rosedale Park and other simultaneous subdivision developments by members of the joint venture group (Rosedale Park Land Development Company 1917-1918:4).

In response to increased land value and interest in the development, the company expanded its initial Rosedale Park development by adding the Rosedale Park #1 plat in 1917, west of the existing plat (Rosedale Park Plat Maps 1917:2599-2600). The new plat provided residential lots with frontage on the north-south streets of Outer Drive West, Westwood Boulevard, Grandville Boulevard, Harvard Boulevard, Rosedale Boulevard, Franklin Boulevard, Stahelin Boulevard, Harrison Boulevard, Greenview Boulevard, Faust Boulevard, Tennyson Boulevard, Rosemont Boulevard, Ashton Boulevard, and Mill Road (now the Southfield Freeway).

The plat for Rosedale Park was drawn and submitted to the township by Blaine T. Colman, a construction engineer who would later become the president of both Colman and Harding Construction Engineers, Inc., and Wayne Trucking Company, as well as the mayor of Highland Park during the mid-1920s (Rosedale Park Plat Maps 1917:2599-2600; Polk 1918, 1925-26). Among the many sales offices of the Clemens, Knight, Menard and Paul Company was a location at the corner of Mill Road and Grand River Avenue, at the northeastern edge of Rosedale Park (Polk 1918). According to local history accounts, the company enticed Detroit city residents to buy into the development with the slogan "Out of the Smoke Zone into the Ozone" (Rosedale Park Improvement Association 2000:1). This campaign propagated visions of bucolic country living with frequent reliable streetcars, close to well-maintained local roads and convenient markets, and flush with healthy, clean air.

Four years after the first addition was platted in 1917, Rosedale Park was enlarged a second time by the Rosedale Park Land Company with an addition at the junction of Outer Drive West and Westwood Boulevard (Rosedale Park Plat Maps 1921:17611). This additional expansion was located west of the north/south portion of Outer Drive West, and was bounded by Fenkell on the north and Stoepel Park on the south. It extended as far west as the residential lots fronting the east side of Evergreen Road, and included all of Plainview Boulevard, Auburn Boulevard, Minock Boulevard, Westwood Boulevard, and the curve of Outer Drive West. This second expansion was likely in response to the city’s prodigious growth in the mid-1920s. It may also have anticipated future annexation by the City of Detroit, which took place in 1926 (Scott 2001:85). The annexation resulted in regular water and sewer service, but onset of the Great Depression in 1929 slowed expected development for several years. A building resurgence occurred after 1934, with the availability of mortgage loans through the relaxation of crediting procedures by the FHA (Jackson 1985:205).

The planning concepts for the second Rosedale Park addition appear to have differed from those for the earlier plats in a variety of ways. This plat features residential lots fronting both sides of Outer Drive West, which is a major ring-road boulevard, as opposed to the earlier practice of fronting residential lots only on secluded north-south side streets. With the exception of the large-scale boulevard landscaping on Outer Drive West, these additional streets lacked the signature landscaped traffic islands of the original plat and first addition. In contrast, the landscaped islands on residential streets in the earlier portions act as a defining characteristic, creating a park-like setting. These shifts in design for the second addition may have been an effort to accommodate lots on Outer Drive West, which had been opened in 1918 and thus pre-dated this 1921 expansion (Polk 1918).

In comparison to the original plat and subsequent first addition, the second Rosedale Park addition is much more utilitarian in form. In addition to the lack of traffic islands and unexpected lot orientation to a wider ring-road, the plat exhibited a reduction in lot size and the resulting neighborhood shifted away from high-style architecture. Such an alteration in design suggests that this portion of Rosedale Park was deliberately platted to accommodate the financial circumstances in which potential buyers found themselves after years of Depression. According to City of Detroit Building Permits, this section did not undergo development until the mid-1930s, after the advent of the automobile as an everyday mode of transportation. The majority of construction did not occur until the late 1930s and early 1940s. Vacant lots continued to be purchased and developed with modest houses in the early post-World War II era. Although the 1921 section presents a distinctly separate appearance and design, it nevertheless reflects another stage in the development of Rosedale Park. While three non-contributing apartment buildings were built in the 1970s on the district’s fringe at Outer Drive West and Grand River Avenue, the most recent contributing structure in this section, an International Style house at 14901 Minock, was built in 1955 (City of Detroit Building Permits).

In 1925, four years after the final addition to Rosedale Park and nearly a decade after its original platting, the City of Detroit issued a Master Plan that detailed what the Rosedale Park Land Company had already known. The city’s plans for transportation and suburban development targeted Grand River Avenue as a 204-foot wide major transportation artery for the northwest side of the city (City of Detroit Common Council Advisory Committee 1925:5). Due in part to his vision and connections for the development of Detroit, Ernest Otto Knight later joined the Detroit City Planning Commission in 1938. He served in that position until 1953. Although the City of Detroit’s plans to expand Grand River Avenue were later abandoned in favor of constructing Interstate 96 in a similar direction, the path of suburban development nevertheless continued in the direction that the company had predicted.

Early residential suburbs such as Rosedale Park "fostered an emerging American aspiration for life in a semi-rural environment, apart from the noise, pollution, and activity of a crowded city, but close enough to the city for commuting daily to work" (Ames and McClelland 2002:3). Rosedale Park was served by streetcar and interurban service with stops at thirty and sixty minute intervals on Fenkell (Gavrilovich and McGraw 2000:232). Grand River Avenue, also known as the Lansing Road, was the principal carriage and automobile route between Detroit and points northwest (Hudson and Lillie 1948:2). It was also a connection to the business district in Redford, located only a few miles west of Rosedale Park, on the other side of the newly completed Outer Drive Concrete Road (Polk 1918). According to Polk’s 1918 city directory, the Township of Redford, in which Rosedale Park was located, also got into the act of suburban promotion. In that year, it took out a full-page advertisement extolling the virtues of suburban living in Redford Township, including the village center’s location on Grand River Avenue, "the paved highway which crosses the state;" its municipal water system; and eleven miles of paved sidewalks. The advertisement listed other desirable features of this "village fast becoming a residence section" of Detroit, including Redford Township’s fine schools, two state deposit banks, a variety of Protestant and Catholic houses of worship, and proximity to grocery and general goods stores (Polk 1918:2483). Despite the competitive presence of an established commercial district in the nearby village of Redford, the developers of Rosedale Park also included in their plans nearly ninety commercial lots. Located on the fringes of the residential lots, with frontage on Fenkell and Grand River Avenue, the majority of these lots were never developed due to road widening.

Although the majority of commercial lots within Rosedale Park remained undeveloped, commercial interests soon appeared near the district, catering to new residents with basic goods and services in direct competition with similar services located in Redford Township and Detroit. A. J. Stahelin, the former owner of the Rosedale Park lands, continued to maintain a residence on Fenkell and opened a country market on a triangular lot between Grand River Avenue, Fenkell Avenue, and Glastonbury Boulevard. Stahelin’s farm market thrived on the business brought by the expanding local population, and helped create for residents a sense of country living in the city. Stahelin’s house was replaced by the First Church of the Nazarene in 1950 (City of Detroit Building Permits). It is presently occupied by the Greater Ebenezer Missionary Baptist Church and listed as a contributing resource to the district. The farm market property is located directly adjacent to the Rosedale Park Historic District and is currently the location of the c.1970s Grandland Shopping Center.

In addition to the amenity of market shopping, Rosedale Park residents were also able to conduct their banking business close to home. According to Detroit Today (Polk 1921:214), in 1920 Detroit had twenty-five banking institutions but a combined total of 191 banking main offices and branches. These numbers continued to expand, with the "visible evidence of growth and prosperity of the banks . . . found in the magnificent main and branch banking houses which they are constantly building" (Polk 1921:214). Central Savings Bank, with eight branches listed by Polk in 1921, continued to expand well through the 1920s. The simplified Neoclassical style Rosedale Park branch was a minor work from the famed Detroit architectural firm of Albert Kahn and built in 1927 for the Central Savings Bank (City of Detroit Building Permits). It is located at 18203 Fenkell, on the flat-iron corner of Grand River Avenue, Fenkell Avenue, and Ashton Boulevard near the Southfield Freeway. Included as a contributing resource in the Rosedale Park Historic District, this bank building is currently occupied by a Bank One branch office. Little exterior ornament was used on the flat-roofed building, which was limited to minimal dentils along the cornice and recessed framing around each door and window. Large plate-glass windows punctuate the stone façade on two sides, facing both Ashton Boulevard and the Southfield Freeway to the east and Fenkell and Grand River Avenue to the north. The main entrance, signified by double doors and a sign overhead, is thoughtfully oriented to face northeast into the intersection.

Located on the northern border of the district and facing Grand River Avenue and Fenkell, Rosedale Park’s eastern group of commercial lots borders an elaborate set of brick and stone piers erected by the developers at the northern terminus of Ashton Boulevard at the intersection of Fenkell and Grand River Avenue. These piers are echoed by a somewhat less ornate version a few blocks west at Glastonbury Boulevard and Grand River Avenue; this set is adorned with a plaque stating the area was "Developed by Clemens Knight Menard Co." Finally, the westernmost gates, located in the 1917-platted subdivision, were erected at Grand River Avenue and Peidmont Boulevard with piers topped by large stone globes. These piers were likely erected in the 1930s during the construction of many homes in that section of the district (City of Detroit Building Permits).

The combined elements of commercial activity and monumental entry features serve to signify the shift to a residential area upon entering the district from Grand River Avenue or Fenkell. This shift in atmosphere is further emphasized by landscaped traffic islands placed in the center of many north/south street blocks, which require the road to curve around them. In addition to regular traffic on Fenkell and a narrow service alley behind the commercial lots on Grand River Avenue, five additional streets provide residents with east-west access to the area at regular intervals and include Midland Avenue, Keeler Avenue, Chalfonte Avenue, Eaton Avenue, and Lyndon Avenue. From the 1920s on, these side streets provided access to side yard driveways and garages by affording street parking and garage access for corner lots.

Posted on Saturday, August 25, 2007 - 10:46 pm:

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Architectural History of Rosedale Park

The first house in Rosedale Park was built in 1917 at 15001 Ashton Boulevard for Thomas Barkley and family (Rosedale Park Improvement Association 2000:1; United States Department of Commerce 1920). This two-story side gable masonry house occupies a lot at the corner of Ashton Boulevard and Chalfonte Street, one block west of the Southfield Freeway and one block south of the streetcar service on Fenkell. This location provided the Barkley family both easy access to transportation and the attractive feature of relative seclusion. The neighborhood developed slowly at first, with only fifteen families residing in Rosedale Park just after the end of World War I (United States Department of Commerce 1920). The small community soon grew, however, with building surges in the mid-1920s and late 1930s. Development moved west from Ashton and Rosemont Avenues, with homes dotting the streets during the 1920s. By the end of the decade, building and home sales ground to a halt when "between 1928 and 1933, the construction of residential property [nationwide] fell by 95%" and "half of all home mortgages in the United States were in default" (Jackson 1985:193).

Construction and home purchase activities made a slow comeback in the mid-to-late 1930s, in response to several Federal incentive programs for home financing. These programs included the Federal Home Loan Bank Act in 1932, the Home Owners’ Loan Act in 1933, and the National Housing Act in 1934 (Ames and McClelland 2002:30). The Federal programs resulted in the rapid acceleration of mortgage closings after 1936 (Jackson 1985:203, 205). Development in Rosedale Park was resuscitated by these and other economic improvements, resulting in an increase in housing construction in the late 1930s and early 1940s (City of Detroit Building Permits). In 1938, a particularly active year for new home construction in Rosedale Park, 399,000 homes were built or sold nationwide through the FHA (City of Detroit Building Permits; Jackson 1985:205). As shown on a 1938 Sanborn Fire Insurance Map, the blocks of the original 1917 subdivision averaged only one or two vacant lots, with some blocks completely occupied (Sanborn Fire Insurance Company 1938). In contrast, the 1921 subdivision located to the west of Outer Drive and Westwood was somewhat more sparsely occupied. This area averaged six or eight vacant lots per block, with some blocks containing as many as fourteen vacant lots in a forty-lot block. This western end of Rosedale Park was completed by postwar development of the late 1940s (Rosedale Park Improvement Association 2000:1).

Architectural styles and forms are widely varied in Rosedale Park. Builders and buyers selected their design ideas based on personal taste, popular opinion, perceived status, cost, and the fashion of the times. Between the years 1917 and 1955, residences were built in styles identified as English Tudor Revival, Arts & Crafts, Bungalow, Colonial Revival, Dutch Colonial Revival, Foursquare, Prairie, French Renaissance, Ranch, Garrison Colonial, and International Style. Throughout the history of Rosedale Park’s development, mass-produced pattern books and house plans were constant sources of inspiration. It appears that private architects were rarely engaged for construction in Rosedale Park; rather, development companies or contractors, such as the Rosedale Park Land Company, worked with plans that owners obtained from pattern books or chose from a building company’s standard offerings. These designs were often christened with romantic names, such as "The Glastonbury," or "The Warwick." The romantic names of these house plans appear to have influenced the renaming of several streets within Rosedale Park in the mid-1920s to names reflective of "merry old England – places like . . . Glastonbury and Warwick" (Scott 2001:86). Although many new subdivisions of the time included deed restrictions setting minimal building requirements and dictating particulars such as cost of construction, square footage, building materials, design guidelines, or contractors for the purpose of uniformity or neighborhood character, no deed restrictions have been uncovered for the English country theme of Rosedale Park.

The perpetuation of this English country aesthetic appears to have been encouraged by the Rosedale Park Land Company, Rosedale Park’s developers-turned-building contractors. Favored choices included the artificially aged appearance of the English Tudor Revival style, the naturalistic Bungalow, and the stately Colonial Revival style, all styles of many early Rosedale Park homes. Other styles occurred in more episodic fashion, such as the Dutch Colonial Revival and French Renaissance. These imposing abodes were both costly and labor intensive to construct, but fit the financial means of many Rosedale Park residents during the years prior to 1929 and the onset of the Great Depression.

In 1935, the FHA’s Better Housing Program launched its pamphlet, How to Have the Home You Want, in conjunction with new lending programs. Mail-order catalogs, such as those from Sears, Roebuck and Company as well as Detroit area firms also influenced popular taste to a certain degree (Stevenson and Jandl 1986; Schweitzer and Davis 1990). Locally produced brochures and pamphlets had particular impact, as they placed model homes in familiar contexts and offered assistance in obtaining plans or even building contractors. These publications included Homes of Distinction, by Thomas A. Parks of Detroit, and plan books published by several Detroit newspapers that reproduced designs originally printed in their weekend home sections. As budgets got tighter and materials and labor became more costly, the popularity of period styles faded in favor of less elaborate Colonial Revivals, early Ranches, and, to a lesser degree, Moderne style dwellings. These structures, however, still conveyed a scale and presence appropriate to Rosedale Park. Many dwellings of this time period blurred stylistic lines between two or more styles. A common example is the hybrid of a scaled-back Colonial Revival style, typically a one-and-one-half story home with sparse eaves and low pitched roof, and the English Tudor Revival, with artfully random stonework, arched entries, and irregular, massive chimneys.

Garages also figured prominently in the building tastes of Rosedale Park homebuilders and homebuyers. As discussed earlier, the automobile played an increasingly important role in the lives of Rosedale Park residents. After World War II, the personal automobile was very often the transportation mode of choice for at least one member of the average household. According to an article entitled "A House for the Automobile: The Changing Garage" in the Old House Journal, the "garage evolved in surprising ways to meet the demands of the automobile age" (Wahlberg 1998:60). Housing for the family car was a natural outgrowth from this new transportation lifestyle, sparking a range of one, one-and-one-half, and two car garages. These automobile shelters could be as simple as an enclosed stall or, in some cases, were built as miniature carriage houses for the car, echoing the construction style and materials of the home. The wider lots in Rosedale Park permitted side drives, so garages were most often placed behind the house at the rear of the lot. Corner-lot owners who saved side yard space by placing the garage to face the side street achieved particularly convenient garage placement. Other owners wished to prominently declare their automobile ownership by placing porte-cocheres or archways adjoining the house. This feature may be observed in the previously discussed English Tudor Revival residence at 14626 Artesian, as well as the Prairie style dwelling at 15034 Rosemont. A small percentage of residences featured garages integrated into the main body of the dwelling, but the combined factors of relatively narrow lots and aesthetic preferences resulted in the dominance of freestanding garage structures in Rosedale Park. The majority of builders and homeowners tended to select modest, utilitarian designs, "settl[ing] for the simple box garage with a gable or hipped roof, double doors, and perhaps a stock window or two" (Wahlberg 1998:62). Approximately half of original garages remain in Rosedale Park, while the remaining examples either have been torn down or replaced with larger, newer versions dating from around the mid-twentieth century to the present.