As a resident of the North End, I’m afforded a beautiful neighborhood with a great mixture of housing types. These homes range from small (collapsing) wooden bungalows to large stone mansions. From country looking baptist churches, to huge beautiful cathedrals. From dilapidated, tenement-looking townhouses to carriage homes that are bigger than suburban mansions.

The best way to see this architecture is on-foot. Either while walking my dogs or running, seeing structures while slowly passing by allows you to absorb the ambiance of the neighborhood and pick up on subtle architectural cues. Last winter, on a cold evening, I ventured down Longfellow Street with my girlfriend and two dogs. We saw some of the most stunning homes in all of the city! There were squat country looking homes with cedar shake, tall, three-story tudors, massive stone castles with slate roofs, and… the occasional 70’s-ish suburban looking infill.

Crossing 2nd street, we were confronted by a huge, park with very mature trees. It took up a huge city block and had beautiful street lights, the streets were plowed, and Christmas lights were neatly placed on the surrounding homes. Come spring-time, daffodils and tulips erupted at every street corner and people were out constantly maintaining their lawns.

But there was one strange house. 610 Longfellow is a MANSION. It’s imposing brick and sandstone features overlook the park on it’s nearly one-acre lot. It’s carriage house is as big as my townhouse, and it’s 100 foot-long trellis  takes up most of the back yard. But, a second story porch is falling off, a few windows are broken out, a large tree crushed the side fence.

Doing a little research – This 10 bedroom, 9800 square foot home was built in 1910. It was commissioned by James Couzens and designed by Albert Kahn. James Couzens was the second largest shareholder of Ford Motor Company at the time, and built the home for $40,000. This was during the initial boom of Detroit’s growth, in the same era that the “Paris of the West” was the wealthiest per-capita in the country.

Fast forward 100 years and the narrative is VERY different. This is a distressed home. This home is on the verge of being considered “Vacant, Dangerous, and Open”. It appears run down, and often has “scrapper vans” parked in the driveway. Lights ARE on, but they’re the same ones every night. The home has descended into a state of disarray.

Perhaps it’s the fault of Ms. Pugh, who took out $625k in mortgages back in 2006. It could be New Century Mortgage Corporation, who was the largest sub-prime provider of mortgages in that day. It could be the city’s high-tax rate and picking-and-choosing of who gets NEZ tax exemptions. Or maybe it’s the massive financial contribution necessary to maintain such a home. Either way, it is very symbolic of Detroit. It was beautiful back in the day, slowly decayed with the advent of white flight and urban sprawl, became fleeced with the subprime show of corporate greed and government encouragement, and is now mellowing out and waiting for rebirth.

The question is… will development come more quickly than mother nature and scrappers can destroy?