Sherwood Forest

01 / The story of this place

Make time for these

Sherwood Forest was platted in 1917 by developer Manly Daniel Davis, who also built the adjoining Palmer Woods, on farmland northwest of downtown Detroit. Its developers modeled the district on an English village, complete with curving streets bearing English names and grand Tudor Revival and Georgian Colonial homes, most built in the late 1920s and early 1930s; a second section, Sherwood Forest Manor, was added in 1926. Singer Gladys Knight, who rose to fame with Gladys Knight & the Pips, lived here with her family in the 1960s as one of many prominent Black Detroiters who moved into the neighborhood in that era. The Sherwood Forest Association, formed in 1929, still promotes the district's original design standards, and the roughly 435-house neighborhood was listed as a local historic district in 2002. It remains a residential area of large, well-kept homes bounded by Seven Mile Road, Livernois Avenue, Pembroke Avenue and Parkside Street.

1. Platted in 1917 as an English-village-style suburb
2. Homes mostly built in the late 1920s and early 1930s
3. Gladys Knight's family lived here in the 1960s
4. About 435 Tudor and Colonial Revival houses
5. Local historic district since 2002