42°19′ N   83°02′ WINDEPENDENT CITY GUIDE · HU / ENDETROIT + MICHIGAN
QUARTER
DETROIT
Menu
QUARTER
DETROIT

Events

Eat & drink

Things to do

Stay

For hotels

Shows & music

Getting around

People & community

About usFor venues

DETROIT / Places to explore / ¼

Places. A thousand stories.

Explore museums, parks, stages, and distinctive neighborhoods across Detroit and nearby cities. Each place comes with its own story and related events.

369 places found

Architecture & icons

Fox Theatre

The splendor of a 1928 movie palace, now home to major concerts and stage productions.

Architecture & icons

Masonic Temple

A Gothic-scale Detroit landmark with towers, performance spaces, and concert nights inside a vast complex.

Parks & nature

Detroit Zoo

A spacious zoo visit in Royal Oak, with conservation stories and distinctive habitats.

Sports & live nights

Comerica Park

Baseball, tiger sculptures, and downtown skyline views at the home of the Detroit Tigers.

Sports & live nights

Ford Field

An indoor NFL stadium downtown, hosting Detroit Lions games and major events.

Food & neighborhoods

Greektown

Restaurants, historic facades, and evening city life around Monroe Street.

Food & neighborhoods

Corktown

Historic Detroit streets, Irish heritage, cafes, and the renewed Michigan Central station.

Food & neighborhoods

Grand Trunk Pub

Grand Trunk Pub preserves the story of a former railway ticket office on Woodward Avenue.

Architecture & icons

Detroit Metropolitan Airport (DTW)

Red or blue? Detroit’s airport has two terminals and more surprises than you’d expect, from a glowing tunnel to a floating train. Everything for your trip is right here.

Architecture & icons

Detroit People Mover

Everything about the Detroit People Mover: 13 stations, a live timetable loop on an aerial photo, a virtual ride, a timeline from 1863 to 2027, 19 works of art, technology, ridership, contacts and social media.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Midtown

Closed – archive entry

3-D Record Mart

Berry Gordy's first business, a short-lived jazz record shop on Detroit's west side that taught him the lessons behind Motown.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Brush Park

Albert Kahn House

The Prairie-style house Albert Kahn designed for himself in 1906, where he lived until his death in 1942; now the Detroit Urban League's headquarters.

Famous people's places / Detroit

Closed – archive entry

American Motors Headquarters (Plymouth Road)

Detroit's 1927 Kelvinator/Nash-Kelvinator complex, American Motors' headquarters where George W. Romney ran the company; demolished in 2022–2023.

Famous people's places / Detroit

Closed – archive entry

Anna Records

The Detroit label run by Berry Gordy's sisters Anna and Gwen Gordy, a direct forerunner of Motown where Lamont Dozier got his start.

Famous people's places / Detroit – University District

Bates Academy

A Detroit public school for academically gifted students, attended in the 1990s by America's Next Top Model winner Naima Mora.

Famous people's places / Detroit – East Side

Battle of Bloody Run Historical Marker

A 1977 Michigan historical marker on East Jefferson Avenue recalling the 1763 ambush of British troops by Pontiac's warriors near Elmwood Cemetery.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Belle Isle

Closed – archive entry

Belle Isle Bridge (1889–1915)

The original span to Belle Isle, from which Harry Houdini made his famous handcuffed river jump in 1906, before it burned down in 1915.

Famous people's places / Belleville

Belleville High School

The Van Buren Public Schools high school where Juan Atkins, Derrick May and Kevin Saunderson met and became the Belleville Three, founders of Detroit techno.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Near East Side

Closed – archive entry

Black Bottom

Detroit's historic African American neighborhood east of downtown, home to a thriving Black community until 1950s–60s urban renewal razed it for I-375 and Lafayette Park.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Midtown

Bob's Classic Kicks

A Woodward Avenue sneaker store and hub of Detroit hip-hop culture, where rapper Dej Loaf performed early in her career at its Air Up There showcase.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Boston-Edison

Boston–Edison Historic District

A grand residential district on Detroit's west side, once home to Henry Ford, Berry Gordy, Joe Louis and other prominent Detroiters, still a residential neighborhood today.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Near East Side

Closed – archive entry

Brewster-Douglass Housing Projects

The nation's first federally subsidized housing for African Americans, home to Diana Ross, Mary Wilson, Florence Ballard, Joe Louis and Smokey Robinson; demolished 1991–2014.

Famous people's places / Detroit – New Center

Cadillac Place

Albert Kahn's General Motors headquarters, home from 1922 to 1978 to the Campbell-Ewald ad agency, where copywriter Elmore Leonard worked; now Michigan state offices.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Downtown

Cadillac Square

Downtown Detroit's historic public square, once the site of City Hall and the Central Market, named for the city's French founder Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Downtown

Carl M. Levin Public Dock and Terminal

Detroit's riverfront cruise-ship terminal, opened in 2011 on a site used by passenger ships since 1909, named for U.S. Senator Carl Levin.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Midtown

Cass Technical High School

Detroit's storied magnet high school for technical, arts and academic training, opened in 1907, whose alumni include Diana Ross, Jack White and Big Sean.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Boston-Edison

Cathedral of the Most Blessed Sacrament

Detroit's Catholic cathedral on Woodward Avenue, built 1913–1915 and consecrated as a cathedral in 1938, seat of archbishops Edmund Szoka and Allen Vigneron.

Famous people's places / Detroit

Central High School

Detroit's oldest public high school, founded in 1858, once housed in the former Michigan State Capitol building; alumnus Carl Levin graduated in 1952.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Downtown

Century Theatre

A small downtown Detroit theater built beside the Twentieth Century Club's 1903 clubhouse; moved five blocks in 1997 to make way for Comerica Park.

Famous people's places / Hamtramck

Closed – archive entry

Chevrolet Gear & Axle Plant

GM's Chevrolet forge and axle complex on the Detroit-Hamtramck border, where poet Philip Levine worked nights in the 1950s; closed 2012, demolished 2013.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Downtown

City Theatre

A 400-seat downtown Detroit theater, opened in 2004 inside the Hockeytown Café, where Mitch Albom's play Ernie premiered in 2011.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Mexicantown / Hubbard Farms

Clark Park

Southwest Detroit's main community park since 1890, in the heart of Mexicantown, where musician Jack White played baseball as a boy.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Midtown

College for Creative Studies

Detroit's leading private art and design college, descended from the Detroit Society of Arts and Crafts, founded by George Gough Booth in 1906.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Conant Gardens

Conant Gardens

Once Detroit's most prosperous Black neighborhood, settled from 1928 by families shut out of restricted districts elsewhere; birthplace of jazz pianist Tommy Flanagan.

Famous people's places / Detroit – North End

North End, Detroit

One of Detroit's most important historically Black neighborhoods, home in the 1940s and 1950s to Smokey Robinson, Aretha Franklin and the Four Tops.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Delray

Holy Cross Hungarian Catholic Church

Delray's twin-spired neo-Gothic church, built under pastor Lajos Kovács and dedicated in 1925; still the heart of Hungarian Catholic life in Detroit.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Downtown

Closed – archive entry

Garrick Theatre

Downtown theater where Budapest-born Harry Houdini gave his last performance on October 24, 1926; closed in 1928 and razed in 1929.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Midtown

Closed – archive entry

Grace Hospital

Detroit's 1888 Grace Hospital, where Harry Houdini died on Halloween 1926; the original building was demolished in 1979.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Midtown (Cass Corridor)

Closed – archive entry

W. R. Hamilton Co. Funeral Home

Cass Corridor funeral home where Harry Houdini was embalmed in 1926; the vacant buildings still stand and await restoration.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Downtown

Closed – archive entry

United Artists Theatre

1928 movie palace whose empty auditorium became the Detroit Symphony's recording studio under Antal Doráti; the auditorium was razed in 2022.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Belle Isle

William Livingstone Memorial Lighthouse

Belle Isle's Art Deco memorial lighthouse of 1930, the only marble lighthouse in the U.S., designed by Géza Maróti with Albert Kahn.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Downtown

Casimir Pulaski Monument

Bronze statue of the Polish hero of the American Revolution by Hungarian émigré sculptor Ferenc Varga, dedicated downtown in 1966.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Milwaukee Junction

Ford Piquette Avenue Plant

Ford's 1904 factory and birthplace of the Model T, where Hungarian engineers József Galamb and Eugene Farkas worked; now a museum.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Downtown

Closed – archive entry

Hotel Statler

Grand Circus Park hotel of 1915 where Harry Houdini stayed during his final Detroit engagement; closed in 1975 and demolished in 2005.

Food & neighborhoods / Detroit – Delray

Delray

Southwest Detroit riverside district that was the heart of Hungarian Detroit, its “Little Hungary,” from the 1890s to the 1960s.

Architecture & icons / Detroit – Delray

Closed – archive entry

Hungarian Reformed Church (Delray)

Delray's largest Hungarian Reformed church, organized in 1941; the congregation moved to Allen Park in 1965 and the building burned in 2022.

Famous people's places / Detroit – East Side

Denby High School

Detroit's east-side Art Deco high school from 1930, where self-help author Wayne Dyer and rapper 42 Dugg both studied.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Downtown

Closed – archive entry

Detroit Free Press Building

Albert Kahn's Art Deco tower that served as the Detroit Free Press headquarters until 1998, now reopened as The Press/321 apartments and offices.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Indian Village

Detroit Waldorf School

Michigan's first Waldorf school, in an Albert Kahn–designed Indian Village building from 1914, attended by Sufjan Stevens and Big Sean.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Cass Corridor

Closed – archive entry

Detroit Artists Workshop

A cooperative of poets, jazz musicians and artists founded by John Sinclair in the Cass Corridor in 1964, an incubator for Detroit's underground music and arts scene.

Famous people's places / Beverly Hills

Detroit Country Day School

A private college-preparatory school founded in Detroit in 1914, now in Beverly Hills, where future Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer graduated as valedictorian in 1973.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Cultural Center

Closed – archive entry

Detroit Institute of Musical Arts

A private music conservatory that trained singer Freda Payne as a teenager in the 1950s before merging into a successor school in 1970.

Famous people's places / Warren

Detroit Memorial Park East

Michigan's first Black-owned cemetery, founded in 1925 in Warren, where Supremes founder Florence Ballard is buried.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Midtown

Detroit School of Arts

Detroit's public arts high school in a Midtown building since 2005, whose recital hall is named for alumna Aaliyah.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Downtown

Closed – archive entry

Detroit Times Building

Albert Kahn's Art Deco newspaper plant at downtown's Times Square, where James Lipton worked as a copy boy; demolished in 1978.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Woodward Ave

Dodge Brothers Mausoleum

An Egyptian Revival tomb guarded by two granite sphinxes in Woodlawn Cemetery, the shared resting place of automakers John and Horace Dodge.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Downtown

Closed – archive entry

Donovan Building

Motown Records' corporate headquarters from 1968 to 1972, an Albert Kahn–designed office block demolished in 2006 before Super Bowl XL.

Famous people's places / Detroit – East Side

Closed – archive entry

Eastern High School

Detroit's original 1901 Eastern High School building on Mack Avenue, where journalist Helen Thomas studied in the 1930s; demolished in 1982.

Famous people's places / Detroit – East Side

Elmwood Cemetery

Michigan's oldest non-denominational cemetery, dedicated in 1846, the burial place of Governor Lewis Cass and site of the Bloody Run creek.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Poletown East

Factory ZERO

The GM assembly plant built on Detroit's cleared Poletown neighborhood, retooled in 2021 into Factory ZERO, GM's first all-electric vehicle plant.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Grandmont-Rosedale

Fellowship Chapel

Detroit church founded in 1966, led since 1987 by the Reverend Wendell Anthony, where rapper Proof's funeral drew about 2,660 mourners in 2006.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Fitzgerald

Closed – archive entry

Fitzgerald Elementary School

The Detroit elementary school Stevie Wonder attended in the 1950s; the building now houses Mary McLeod Bethune Elementary-Middle School.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Warrendale

Ford Cemetery

The small Ford family cemetery beside the closed St. Martha's Episcopal Church in Detroit, where Henry and Clara Ford are buried under an ornate iron mortsafe.

Famous people's places / Detroit – East Side

Forest Lawn Cemetery

Detroit's east-side non-denominational cemetery, opened in 1889, where journalist Helen Thomas's ashes were buried in 2013.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Cass Corridor

Closed – archive entry

Fortune Records

Jack and Devora Brown's independent Detroit record label, founded in 1946, where Kenny Burrell and Donald Byrd made early recordings; the building was demolished in 2001.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Virginia Park

Closed – archive entry

Aretha Franklin's Childhood Home

Detroit's Virginia Park house where the Reverend C. L. Franklin's family, including Aretha Franklin, lived from the late 1940s; still a private home.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Downtown

Gem Theatre

Detroit's 1927 Gem Theatre, moved five blocks on wheels in 1997 in a Guinness world record; now an event and wedding venue.

Famous people's places / Detroit – University District

Gesu Catholic School

Detroit's Gesu Catholic parish school, opened in 1925 on Oak Drive, where singer Aaliyah first performed on stage as a girl in the 1980s.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Old Redford

Great Faith Ministries International

Detroit church led by Bishop Wayne T. Jackson, known for its television ministry, where actor Brandon T. Jackson performed as a boy and Donald Trump attended a 2016 service.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Grandmont

Greater Grace Temple

Detroit megachurch founded in 1927, rebuilt by Bishop David L. Ellis Sr. and led since 1996 by Bishop Charles H. Ellis III, host of Rosa Parks's and Aretha Franklin's funerals.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Downtown

Closed – archive entry

Grinnell's Music Store

Detroit's largest music and piano retailer for a century, whose flagship Albert Kahn–designed Woodward Avenue store still stands today as offices and shops.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Downtown

The Hand of God

Carl Milles's monumental bronze sculpture of a man rising from a giant hand, standing outside Detroit's Frank Murphy Hall of Justice since the courthouse opened in 1970.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Midtown

Harper University Hospital

One of Michigan's oldest hospitals, founded in 1863 to treat Civil War soldiers, and the Midtown Detroit hospital where Mitt Romney was born in 1947.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Downtown

Hart Plaza

Detroit's riverfront plaza, opened in 1975 on the site of Cadillac's 1701 landing, home to the city's biggest festivals including the Movement electronic music festival.

Famous people's places / Detroit – New Center

Henry Ford Hospital

The New Center hospital Henry Ford financed and opened in 1915, tied to figures from Bob Seger and Frida Kahlo to Frank Murphy and Francis Ford Coppola.

Famous people's places / Harper Woods

Closed – archive entry

The Hideout

A Harper Woods teen dance club and record label where local promoters Dave Leone and Ed 'Punch' Andrews launched the careers of Bob Seger, Suzi Quatro's band the Pleasure Seekers, and other 1960s Detroit rockers.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Southwest Detroit

Holy Cross Cemetery

One of Detroit's oldest Catholic cemeteries, tracing to an 1835 mission in the old Dix Settlement, where singer Sixto Rodriguez was buried in 2023.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Southwest Detroit

Holy Redeemer Catholic Church

A landmark Southwest Detroit Catholic parish founded in 1880, whose current Renaissance Revival church dates to 1923, where Congressman Keith Ellison addressed a community organizing meeting in 2006.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Downtown

Horace E. Dodge and Son Memorial Fountain

Isamu Noguchi's steel ring fountain at Hart Plaza, commissioned by Anna Dodge in memory of her husband Horace Dodge and their son, and installed as the plaza's centerpiece.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Downtown

Closed – archive entry

Invictus Records / Hot Wax Records

Detroit's Invictus and Hot Wax Records, the labels songwriting trio Holland–Dozier–Holland launched from downtown's Cadillac Tower after leaving Motown in 1968.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Downtown

Closed – archive entry

J.L. Hudson's Department Store

Detroit's legendary downtown department store, once the world's second-tallest retail building, where Diana Ross and Ellen Burstyn both worked before it closed in 1983 and was imploded in 1998.

Famous people's places / Detroit – East Side

James and Grace Lee Boggs School

A Detroit charter elementary school named for activists James and Grace Lee Boggs, opened in 2013 and built on their place-based philosophy of community-rooted education.

Famous people's places / Detroit – East Side

Closed – archive entry

Jared W. Finney High School

A northeast Detroit public high school, open from 1962 to 2009 and later demolished, where opera singer Maria Ewing sang in the chorus in the 1960s.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Midtown

John D. Dingell VA Medical Center

Detroit's Department of Veterans Affairs hospital in Midtown, opened in 1996 to replace a 1937 facility and named for the longest-serving member of Congress in US history.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Virginia Park

Closed – archive entry

Klein's Show Bar

A Virginia Park jazz club on 12th Street where Yusef Lateef led the house band for five years and Barry Harris, Kenny Burrell and Pepper Adams all worked, before it changed hands in 1960 and was later cleared for redevelopment.

Famous people's places / Detroit – North End

Closed – archive entry

Lee's Sensation Club

A North End 'black and tan' nightclub opened in 1944, where a young Jackie Wilson worked as a solo singer and formed the vocal group that launched Levi Stubbs of the Four Tops.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Downtown

Closed – archive entry

Old Detroit City Hall

Detroit's Victorian seat of government on Campus Martius from 1871 to 1961, torn down over fierce preservationist objections; One Kennedy Square stands on the site today.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Downtown

One Woodward Avenue

A 28-story downtown office tower designed by Minoru Yamasaki, completed in 1962 for Michigan Consolidated Gas and clad in his signature slender white ribs.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Osborn

Osborn High School

A Detroit public high school opened in 1957 on the city's northeast side, named for education-board pioneer Laura Freele Osborn.

Famous people's places / Detroit – East Grand Boulevard

Closed – archive entry

Packard Automotive Plant

Albert Kahn's pioneering reinforced-concrete car factory on East Grand Boulevard, built from 1903 for the Packard Motor Car Company and largely demolished from 2022 onward.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Osborn

Pershing High School

A northeast Detroit public high school that opened in 1930 and counts Saturday Night Live star Tim Meadows among its graduates.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Midtown

Prentis Building and DeRoy Auditorium

A paired business-school and auditorium building on Wayne State University's campus, designed by Minoru Yamasaki and opened in 1964.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Midtown

Rackham Building

A marble-clad Art Deco memorial building in Detroit's Midtown Cultural Center, opened in 1942, whose Engineers' Lounge still holds a 1941 mural by Hungarian-born painter Zoltan Sepeshy.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Elmwood Park

Ralph J. Bunche Preparatory Academy

A Detroit public school on Macomb Street, near where Nobel Peace Prize winner Ralph Bunche lived as a boy, named in his honor.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Old Redford

Closed – archive entry

Redford High School

A large northwest Detroit public high school that opened in 1921, attended by actor George C. Scott, closed in 2007 and demolished in 2012 for a Meijer store.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Regent Park

Regent Park

A roughly 97-block residential neighborhood in Detroit's far northeast corner, once home to many city workers, and the childhood neighborhood of rapper Sada Baby.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Downtown

Rosa Parks Transit Center

Downtown Detroit's central bus hub at Michigan and Cass avenues, opened in 2009 and named for civil rights icon Rosa Parks, who spent most of her adult life in the city.

Famous people's places / Roseville, MI

Roseville High School

A public high school in the Detroit suburb of Roseville where actress Crystal Reed, later known for Teen Wolf and Gotham, graduated in 2003.

Famous people's places / Royal Oak, MI

Rustbelt Studios

A working recording studio in downtown Royal Oak where Alice Cooper recorded much of his 2021 album Detroit Stories with local Michigan musicians.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Palmer Park

Sacred Heart Major Seminary

The Archdiocese of Detroit's Gothic Revival seminary, founded in 1919, that trained and employed a string of future bishops and cardinals, including Cardinal Edmund Szoka.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Greektown

Second Baptist Church

Michigan's oldest Black congregation, founded in 1836, a key Underground Railroad station and the church where Ralph Bunche was baptized.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Downtown

Closed – archive entry

The Second City Detroit

Detroit branch of the Chicago improv institution, open from 1993 to 2005 next to the Fox Theatre, where Keegan-Michael Key was a mainstage cast member.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Sherwood Forest

Sherwood Forest

Northwest Detroit neighborhood of grand 1920s Tudor and Colonial homes, platted in 1917, where the Knight family raised singer Gladys Knight.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Near East Side

Closed – archive entry

Sidney D. Miller School

Detroit school building opened in 1921, a de facto high school for Black students until 1957, where jazz greats Yusef Lateef and Milt Jackson studied music.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Downtown

Closed – archive entry

Fort Lernoult (Fort Shelby)

British-built fort at Fort and Shelby streets, constructed in 1778–79 and demolished in 1827, whose 1812 surrender is tied to William Hull, Isaac Brock and Tecumseh.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Southwest Detroit

Sixto Rodriguez mural, Vernor Highway

Building-high portrait of musician Sixto Rodriguez by Mexican artist Elton Monroy Durán in Southwest Detroit, completed for Rodriguez's birthday in 2020.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Rivertown

Closed – archive entry

Soup Kitchen Saloon

Rivertown blues bar and former speakeasy, once billed as Detroit's oldest bar, where Tim Meadows got his start in comedy before it closed in 1999 and was razed in 2006.

Famous people's places / Detroit – East Side

Southeastern High School

Detroit east-side public high school opened in 1917, nicknamed the Jungaleers, where rapper Dej Loaf graduated in 2009.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Southwest Detroit

Closed – archive entry

Southwestern High School

Southwest Detroit public high school open from 1916 to 2012, alma mater of congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, demolished in 2023 after a failed redevelopment.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Corktown

Ste. Anne de Détroit

Detroit's founding parish, established by Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac in 1701, one of the oldest continuously operating Catholic parishes in the country and now a minor basilica.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Midtown

Sugar Law Center for Economic and Social Justice

Detroit public-interest law center founded in 1991, on Cass Avenue in Midtown, where congresswoman Rashida Tlaib represented workers after leaving the state legislature.

Famous people's places / Bloomfield Hills

Temple Beth El

Tent-shaped Bloomfield Hills synagogue designed by architect Minoru Yamasaki for Detroit's oldest Reform Jewish congregation, completed in 1973.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Downtown

Closed – archive entry

Temple Theatre

Vaudeville house on Monroe Street opened in 1901 as part of the Wonderland entertainment complex, Harry Houdini's most frequent Detroit stage, later demolished for downtown redevelopment.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Corktown

Closed – archive entry

Tiger Stadium

Detroit Tigers ballpark at Michigan and Trumbull, open from 1912 to 1999, where Marvin Gaye sang the anthem in 1968 and Tom Selleck took batting practice in 1986; demolished in 2008–2009.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Grand Circus Park

Closed – archive entry

Tuller Hotel

Grand Circus Park luxury hotel built in 1906 that grew to 550 rooms, later a Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell film location before its 1992 demolition.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Livernois-McNichols

University of Detroit Mercy

Michigan's largest Catholic university, tracing to Detroit College in 1877 and Mercy College in 1941, whose alumni include novelist Elmore Leonard and Senator Gary Peters.

Famous people's places / Ann Arbor

University of Michigan

Michigan's flagship public research university, chartered in Detroit in 1817 and moved to Ann Arbor in 1837, whose students have included musician Don Was, artist Mike Kelley and cartographer Marie Tharp.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Bagley

University of Detroit Jesuit High School

Detroit's oldest continuously operating high school, a Jesuit school founded in 1877, whose graduates include novelist Elmore Leonard and actor Michael Moriarty.

Famous people's places / Grosse Pointe Woods

University Liggett School

Grosse Pointe Woods private school tracing to an 1878 Detroit girls' school, formed through mergers into today's University Liggett School, attended by novelist Jeffrey Eugenides.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Warrendale

Warrendale

A residential Detroit neighborhood on the far west side, bordered by Dearborn, where rapper Tee Grizzley grew up with his grandmother.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Midtown

Wayne State University

Detroit's Midtown public research university, founded in 1868 as the Detroit Medical College, whose students and faculty include dozens of famous Detroiters.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Midtown

WDET 101.9 FM

Detroit's public radio station, founded by the United Auto Workers in 1948 and owned by Wayne State University since 1952; poet John Sinclair and musician Don Was both hosted shows here.

Famous people's places / Wayne

Westlawn Cemetery

A Wayne, Michigan cemetery renamed in 1922 by Detroit pastors to serve the city's Black community during the Jim Crow era; Motown singer Jackie Wilson is entombed here.

Famous people's places / Detroit – New Center

Closed – archive entry

WJBK-TV Studios Building

A 1956 New Center studio building purpose-built for TV station WJBK, where a young Casey Kasem, later the voice of Shaggy on Scooby-Doo, worked in the 1950s.

Famous people's places / Detroit

Woodlawn Cemetery

A grand Woodward Avenue cemetery opened in 1896, home to the mausoleums of Aretha Franklin, Rosa Parks, Edsel Ford and rapper Proof.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Southwest Detroit

Woodmere Cemetery

A grand 1867 Detroit cemetery where automotive pioneers rest, and where Eddie Slovik, the only US soldier executed for desertion since the Civil War, was reburied in 1987.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Belle Isle

Levi L. Barbour Memorial Fountain

The Leaping Gazelle fountain on Belle Isle, dedicated in 1937: Marshall Fredericks' first big public commission and the start of his career.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Midtown

Closed – archive entry

Charles Lindbergh Birthplace

The vanished Queen Anne house on West Forest Avenue where aviator Charles Lindbergh was born in 1902; it was torn down in 1973.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Belle Isle

MacArthur Bridge

The 19-arch 1923 bridge that carries East Grand Boulevard to Belle Isle, better known locally as the Belle Isle Bridge.

Famous people's places / Detroit – West Side

Closed – archive entry

Mackenzie High School

West-side Detroit high school (1928–2007) trimmed in Pewabic tile, alma mater of Tom Skerritt and Marge Piercy; demolished in 2012.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Downtown

Mariners' Church of Detroit

Detroit's 1849 sailors' church, moved whole in 1955, whose bell rang 29 times for the Edmund Fitzgerald; Patti Smith married here in 1980.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Midtown

McGregor Memorial Conference Center

Minoru Yamasaki's luminous 1958 conference building at Wayne State, with a skylit atrium and reflecting pool; a National Historic Landmark.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Downtown

Mom's Spaghetti

Eminem's walk-up spaghetti shop on Woodward Avenue, named for a line in Lose Yourself and open since September 29, 2021.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Northwest

Mount Hazel Cemetery

A small 1855 city-owned cemetery on Detroit's northwest side, where Delta blues giant Son House lies under a monument raised by blues fans.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Northwest

Mumford High School

Northwest Detroit high school, opened in 1952, whose gym shirt Eddie Murphy's Axel Foley wears in Beverly Hills Cop.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Dexter-Linwood

New Bethel Baptist Church

Rev. C. L. Franklin's church, where Aretha Franklin grew up singing and recorded her first album in 1956; a civil rights landmark.

Famous people's places / Detroit – East Side

Closed – archive entry

Northeastern High School

Demolished east-side Detroit high school (closed 1982) where Berry Gordy, Supremes Florence Ballard and Mary Wilson, and Martha Reeves studied.

Famous people's places / Detroit – North End

Closed – archive entry

Northern High School

North End high school on Woodward (1917–2007) where Smokey Robinson formed the Miracles and Aretha Franklin studied; the building is still a school.

Famous people's places / Detroit – West Side

Northwestern High School

West-side Detroit high school since 1912 whose alumni include John Conyers, Casey Kasem, James Jamerson, Mary Wells and Willie Horton.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Capitol Park

Griswold Lofts (1217 Griswold Street)

A Capitol Park loft building where Detroit's 1990s techno and rave promoters lived, partied and built the scene that grew into the Movement festival.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Downtown

36th District Court

Detroit's busiest court, downtown at Madison and Witherell, where a young Greg Mathis served as judge before he became television's Judge Mathis.

Famous people's places / Beverly Hills, MI

Acacia Park Cemetery

A Masonic cemetery in the Detroit suburb of Beverly Hills, open since 1924, where General Motors leaders Charles Erwin Wilson and William S. Knudsen are both buried.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Downtown

Alexander Macomb statue

A 1908 bronze statue on Washington Boulevard honoring Detroit-born general Alexander Macomb, the War of 1812 hero who beat back the British at Plattsburgh.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Belle Isle

Alpheus S. Williams equestrian statue

A bronze equestrian statue on Belle Isle honoring Civil War general and longtime Detroit congressman Alpheus S. Williams, dedicated in 1921.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Southwest Detroit

Ambassador Bridge

The 1929 suspension bridge to Windsor, Canada, still privately owned today by the Moroun family, who bought a controlling stake in 1979.

Famous people's places / Fair Haven, MI

Anchor Bay High School

A public high school in Fair Haven, north of Detroit, where animator Butch Hartman and actress Kathleen Rose Perkins both grew up and graduated a few years apart.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Midtown

Barbara Ann Karmanos Cancer Institute

A Midtown Detroit cancer hospital and research center named for Peter Karmanos Jr.'s first wife, who died of breast cancer in 1989, formed in 1994 from Detroit's oldest cancer research institution.

Famous people's places / Southfield, MI

Berberian Woods Nature Preserve

A wooded city nature preserve in Southfield named for Detroit-born Metropolitan Opera bass Ara Berberian, who sang more than 300 performances at the Met over 18 years.

Famous people's places / Detroit – East Side

Better Made Snack Foods

Detroit's hometown potato chip maker, founded in 1930 by Sicilian immigrants Cross Moceri and Peter Cipriano, still making chips at its Gratiot Avenue plant with a factory store open to the public.

Famous people's places / Madison Heights, MI

Bishop Foley Catholic High School

A Catholic high school in Madison Heights, open since 1965 and named for a longtime Bishop of Detroit, where singer Porcelain Black studied before leaving without graduating.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Palmer Woods

Closed – archive entry

Bishop Gallagher Residence

Detroit's largest private home, a nearly 70-room Tudor mansion in Palmer Woods built for Bishop Michael Gallagher in the 1920s and later home to two cardinals before it passed into private hands.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Midtown

Closed – archive entry

Bonstelle Theatre

A 1902 synagogue turned Broadway-style theatre on Woodward Avenue, home to Rabbi Leo M. Franklin's congregation and later Wayne State's theatre program, now an event space inside a new hotel.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Downtown

Book-Cadillac Hotel

A 1924 downtown skyscraper hotel that housed bandleader Jean Goldkette's booking agency, closed for two decades after 1984, then restored and reopened in 2008 as the Westin Book Cadillac.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Harmonie Park

Breitmeyer-Tobin Building

A 1906 Beaux-Arts office building on Broadway built for Detroit's leading flower business, run by future mayor Philip Breitmeyer, still standing in the Broadway Avenue Historic District.

Famous people's places / Detroit – near Brush Park

Brewster–Wheeler Recreation Center

The Black Bottom recreation center where young Joe Louis trained in the 1930s, closed for two decades after 2006, and reopened in December 2025 as the new home of the legendary Kronk Gym.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Brush Park

Brush Park

A once-grand Victorian neighborhood just north of downtown, developed from the 1850s on land that belonged to Detroit militia officer Elijah Brush, now a mix of restored mansions and new construction.

Famous people's places / Detroit – University District

Buy Rite Music

A West Seven Mile record shop open since 1980 where DJ Stingray worked and sold early Drexciya records, becoming a training ground for Detroit's ghettotech and techno scene.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Downtown

Cadillac Tower

A 40-story Neo-Gothic skyscraper on Cadillac Square, opened in 1927 as the Barlum Tower and still one of downtown Detroit's tallest buildings.

Famous people's places / Detroit – University District

Calihan Hall

The University of Detroit Mercy's home arena since 1952, where Dick Vitale coached, Earl Cureton played, and Daedra Charles later coached.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Downtown

Capitol Park

A downtown square on the site of Michigan's first statehouse, where Governor Stevens T. Mason was reburied in 1905 beneath a 1908 bronze statue.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Islandview

Capuchin Soup Kitchen

A Detroit soup kitchen founded in 1929 by friar Solanus Casey and Herman Buss that still serves free meals to the city's hungry today.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Midtown

Carhartt Detroit Flagship Store

An Art Deco 1928 car showroom on Cass Avenue where Preston Tucker once sold Dodges, now the flagship store of Detroit-born workwear brand Carhartt.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Southwest Detroit

Closed – archive entry

Chadsey High School

A 1931 southwest Detroit high school where Tuskegee Airman Alexander Jefferson graduated in 1938; an elementary school now stands on its site.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Midtown

Charles Lang Freer House

Industrialist Charles Lang Freer's 1892 Ferry Avenue home, once home to Whistler's Peacock Room, now a Wayne State institute open for occasional tours.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Rivertown

Charles Trowbridge House

Detroit's oldest surviving house, built in 1826 for banker Charles C. Trowbridge on East Jefferson Avenue and now home to small offices.

Famous people's places / Eastpointe

Cloverleaf Bar & Restaurant

The Eastpointe bar Gus Guerra opened in 1953, carrying the Detroit-style pizza recipe he invented at Buddy's Rendezvous seven years earlier.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Seven Mile & Woodward

Closed – archive entry

Club Heaven

A 1989 after-hours club above the Gas Station bar at Seven Mile and Woodward, a refuge for Detroit's Black LGBTQ community and Ken Collier's DJ home.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Cass Corridor

Cobb's Corner

A 1970 Cass Corridor jazz bar where Lyman Woodard's trio played through the 1970s, closed for decades, then reopened by its original founder in 2018.

Famous people's places / Detroit – East Side

Coleman A. Young International Airport

Detroit's east side airport, opened in 1927 and renamed in 2003 for Coleman Young, the city's longest-serving and first Black mayor.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Virginia Park

Closed – archive entry

Collingwood Manor Apartments

An apartment building where Purple Gang members killed three rival Chicago gunmen in 1931; the building is gone and the site is now a vacant lot.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Downtown

Closed – archive entry

Concept East Theatre

Detroit's first Black theater company, founded in 1960 and based from 1962 at 401 East Adams Avenue, which launched Ernie Hudson and others to fame.

Famous people's places / Southfield

Congregation Shaarey Zedek

One of Detroit's oldest Jewish congregations, whose Percival Goodman-designed Southfield sanctuary is where Rabbi Morris Adler was shot in 1966.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Northwest Detroit

Closed – archive entry

Cooley High School

A 1928 northwest Detroit high school that shaped S. Epatha Merkerson, Anita Darian, Black Milk, Boldy James and Peezy, demolished in 2026.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Downtown

David Whitney Building

A 19-story Neo-Renaissance tower built in 1915 for lumber baron David Whitney Jr., now a boutique hotel and apartments on Grand Circus Park.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Downtown

Closed – archive entry

Detroit Opera House (Campus Martius)

A 19th-century theater on Campus Martius, not the same building as today's Detroit Opera House, that hosted touring stars until its 1966 demolition.

Famous people's places / Bloomfield Hills

Detroit Skating Club

A private figure skating club founded in 1946 that trained Olympic champions, now based in Bloomfield Hills.

Famous people's places / Novi

Detroit Catholic Central High School

An all-boys Catholic high school founded in Detroit in 1928, later relocated to Redford and then Novi, that has produced a Detroit mayor and a US congressman.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Downtown

Closed – archive entry

Detroit College of Law

Detroit's first law school, founded in 1891, which trained generations of Michigan lawyers downtown before moving to East Lansing in 1997 as it became MSU's law school.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Belle Isle

Detroit River Race Course

The stretch of the Detroit River by Belle Isle that has hosted world-class hydroplane racing since 1916, once home turf to speedboat king Gar Wood.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Downtown

Detroit Athletic Club

The private club's grand 1915 Albert Kahn clubhouse downtown, social headquarters of the auto industry elite and, for two decades, Jean Goldkette's musical home base.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Midtown

Closed – archive entry

Detroit Community Music School

A Midtown Detroit music school formed in 1970, where a young Regina Carter began violin lessons at age four using the Suzuki method.

Famous people's places / Detroit – University District

Detroit Golf Club

A private club founded in 1899 with two Donald Ross-designed courses, home course of pro Horton Smith for 17 years and host of the PGA Tour's Rocket Classic since 2019.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Cass Corridor

Closed – archive entry

Detroit Institute of Technology

A private engineering and science college that grew out of a YMCA evening school, where future billionaire Eli Broad taught night classes in 1956; it closed in 1981.

Famous people's places / Redford Township

Detroit Memorial Park West

One of two linked Detroit Memorial Park cemeteries, historically serving Detroit's Black community since 1925, and the burial place of Contours singer Sylvester Potts.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Greektown

Closed – archive entry

Detroit Police Headquarters (1300 Beaubien)

The Albert Kahn-designed downtown building that served as Detroit police headquarters from 1923 to 2013, now vacant and awaiting redevelopment.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Downtown

Closed – archive entry

Dilla's Delights

A downtown Detroit donut shop opened in 2016 by J Dilla's uncle as a tribute to the late producer's album 'Donuts,' closed in 2020.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Northwest Detroit

DMC Sinai-Grace Hospital

A Detroit Medical Center hospital formed in 1999 from the merger of Sinai and Grace Hospitals, where actor and former Detroit police official Gil Hill died in 2016.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Midtown

First Unitarian Universalist Church of Detroit

A Neo-Gothic Midtown church built in 1916, home to Detroit's Unitarian and Universalist congregations since their 1934 merger, and the church that drew civil rights martyr Viola Liuzzo into activism.

Famous people's places / Detroit – North End / Milwaukee Junction

Closed – archive entry

Fisher Body Plant 21

A million-square-foot Fisher Body auto plant built in 1919 near the Ford Piquette plant, empty since 1993, now being turned into hundreds of apartments and shops.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Jefferson-Chalmers

Fisher Mansion

Lawrence P. Fisher's lavish 1928 riverfront mansion, bought for the Hare Krishna movement in 1975 and now the Bhaktivedanta Cultural Center, a Hindu temple open to visitors.

Famous people's places / Detroit – East Village

Closed – archive entry

Foch Intermediate School

A 1924 East Village school building where actress and singer Betty Hutton once studied before dropping out; closed in 2004 and demolished in 2024.

Famous people's places / Detroit – North End

Focus: HOPE

A 40-acre Oakman Boulevard campus founded in 1968 by Eleanor Josaitis and Father William Cunningham after the 1967 uprising, still running food, education and job-training programs today.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Elmwood Park

Closed – archive entry

Ford Mack Avenue Plant

The rented wagon shop where Henry Ford and Alexander Malcomson assembled the first Ford cars in 1903, burned down in 1941; a replica now stands at Greenfield Village.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Paradise Valley (site)

Closed – archive entry

Forest Club

A block-sized Paradise Valley entertainment complex with a bowling alley and roller rink, run by 'unofficial mayor' Sunnie Wilson from 1941 until the neighborhood was leveled for the I-375 freeway.

Famous people's places / Detroit – New Center

Closed – archive entry

Former Submerge / Underground Resistance Headquarters

The original Grand River Avenue base of Submerge and Underground Resistance, the techno label 'Mad' Mike Banks ran through the 1990s before moving to New Center in the early 2000s; today it's a vacant lot.

Famous people's places / Detroit – New Center

Closed – archive entry

Former Temple Beth El (Woodward and Gladstone)

Albert Kahn's grand 1922 domed synagogue at Woodward and Gladstone, Rabbi Leo M. Franklin's pulpit for two decades, now a community center after the congregation moved away in 1973.

Famous people's places / Detroit – East Riverfront

Closed – archive entry

Frederick Stearns Building

Frederick K. Stearns's 1899 pharmaceutical factory on East Jefferson, a National Register landmark converted into 177 loft condominiums in 1989.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Northwest Detroit

Closed – archive entry

Dr. Zina Pitcher Elementary School

A northwest Detroit elementary school named for physician and two-time Detroit mayor Zina Pitcher, open from 1928 to 2007 and demolished in 2019.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Brush Park

Closed – archive entry

Dunbar Hospital

Detroit's first hospital for Black patients and doctors, opened 1918 in a converted 1892 mansion, where Ossian Sweet worked after returning to Detroit in 1924.

Famous people's places / Detroit – North End

Evergreen Cemetery

A Detroit cemetery founded in 1905 on Woodward Avenue, once sprawling as far as today's Palmer Park, and the burial place of recalled Detroit mayor Charles Bowles.

Famous people's places / Detroit – East Side

Faygo Bottling Plant

The east-side Detroit plant where Faygo pop has been made since 1935, after brothers Ben and Perry Feigenson built the company from a horse-drawn cart into a Michigan soda pop icon.

Famous people's places / Detroit – New Center

First Independence Bank

Michigan's only Black-owned commercial bank, founded in Detroit in 1970 and later saved from collapse by music producer Don Davis, headquartered on Woodward Avenue.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Downtown

Closed – archive entry

First Sanders Shop

The Woodward and Gratiot storefront where Fred Sanders opened his first Detroit candy shop on June 17, 1875, launching what became a beloved Michigan chocolate brand.

Famous people's places / Detroit – University District

Gesu Catholic Church

A Jesuit parish founded in 1922 near the University of Detroit, whose Spanish Mission-style church became Mayor Dennis Archer's place of worship during his years in office.

Famous people's places / Royal Oak

Gilda's Club Metro Detroit

A Royal Oak Victorian house turned cancer-support clubhouse, opened in 1998 in memory of Detroit-born Saturday Night Live star Gilda Radner.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Davison

Closed – archive entry

Golden World Studio

A West Davison recording studio built for Ed Wingate's Golden World and Ric-Tic labels, sold to Motown in 1966 and run afterward as Motown's Studio B.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Downtown

Grand Circus Park

A half-circle downtown park at Woodward and Adams, the surviving centerpiece of Judge Augustus Woodward's 1807 radial city plan and still the heart of Detroit's theater district.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Midtown

Gretchen C. Valade Jazz Center

Wayne State University's jazz performance hall, opened in 2024 inside the former Hilberry Theatre and named for philanthropist Gretchen Valade, the 'Angel of Jazz' who saved the Detroit Jazz Festival.

Famous people's places / Hazel Park

Closed – archive entry

Hazel Park Raceway

Suburban horse track north of Detroit that ran thoroughbred and harness racing for almost seventy years, partly owned by mob boss Joseph Zerilli, until it closed in 2018.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Downtown

Hazen S. Pingree Statue, Grand Circus Park

Bronze statue of reform mayor and governor Hazen S. Pingree in downtown Detroit's Grand Circus Park, paid for by thousands of small public donations and unveiled in 1904.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Old Redford

Henry Ford High School

Detroit public high school on the city's northwest side, opened in 1957, where future Detroit city council president Monica Conyers graduated in 1982.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Black Bottom

Closed – archive entry

Henry's Swing Club

Hastings Street nightclub in Detroit's Black Bottom, immortalized by John Lee Hooker's 1948 hit "Boogie Chillen'," torn down with the rest of the street around 1960.

Famous people's places / Detroit – West Side

Closed – archive entry

Herman Gardens

Sprawling west-side Detroit public housing project, once the nation's largest, where future TV judge Greg Mathis grew up in the 1960s before it was demolished in the 2000s.

Famous people's places / Detroit – North End

Closed – archive entry

Herman Kiefer Hospital

Detroit's public health hospital complex, named for physician Herman Kiefer, that fought the city's tuberculosis and infectious-disease epidemics for a century before closing in 2013.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Midtown

Closed – archive entry

Hilberry Theatre

Wayne State University's graduate repertory theater in a converted 1917 church, where actor Jeffrey Tambor trained in the 1960s, closed in 2022 and reopened in 2024 as the Gretchen C. Valade Jazz Center.

Famous people's places / Walkerville

Hiram Walker & Sons Distillery

The riverside distillery Hiram Walker founded in 1858 directly across the Detroit River from downtown Detroit, whose company town, Walkerville, and Prohibition-era whisky trade were deeply tied to the city.

Famous people's places / Detroit – East Side

House of Dank Gratiot

East-side Detroit cannabis dispensary that Detroit rappers Icewear Vezzo and Peezy opened in December 2025 as House of Dank's first artist-owned franchise, in the neighborhood where both grew up.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Jefferson-Chalmers

Closed – archive entry

Hudson Motor Car Company Jefferson Avenue Plant

The original Detroit factory of the Hudson Motor Car Company, built by Albert Kahn in 1910 and run for decades by Roy D. Chapin, torn down in the late 1950s after Hudson's merger into American Motors.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Downtown

Hudson's Detroit

Dan Gilbert's Bedrock mixed-use development on the site of the old J.L. Hudson's department store, whose low-rise building became General Motors' new global headquarters in January 2026, with a 681-foot tower due in 2027.

Famous people's places / Detroit – North End

Closed – archive entry

Hutchins Intermediate School

Detroit middle school near Herman Kiefer Hospital where Barrett Strong began singing alongside classmates Aretha Franklin and Lamont Dozier; closed in 2009 and now part of a stalled historic redevelopment.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Northwest Side

Closed – archive entry

Immaculate Heart of Mary Catholic Church

Northwest Detroit Catholic church where Viola Liuzzo's funeral drew Martin Luther King Jr. and national civil rights and labor leaders in March 1965; the parish merged into Corpus Christi in 2006.

Famous people's places / Detroit – West Side

Closed – archive entry

Islamic Center of Detroit (Joy Road Mosque)

Michigan's first purpose-built mosque, opened on Detroit's Joy Road in 1963 by Imam Mohamad Jawad Chirri; the congregation moved to Dearborn in 2005, and the building today houses the Az-Zahra Center.

Famous people's places / Detroit – New Center

The Jam Handy

A Gothic Revival building on East Grand Boulevard that served as Jam Handy's film and sound studio from the 1930s through the 1960s, now reopened as a performing-arts and event venue.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Black Bottom / 12th Street

Closed – archive entry

Joe's Record Shop

Joe Von Battle's Hastings Street and later 12th Street record shop and back-room studio, where he recorded John Lee Hooker, a teenage Aretha Franklin, and dozens of Detroit blues and gospel artists before the 1967 uprising destroyed it.

Famous people's places / Detroit – East Side

John's Carpet House

A free open-air blues jam on vacant east-side lots every Sunday afternoon, running for decades and still drawing hundreds of fans and musicians.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Midtown

Josephine Harreld Love and Dell Pryor mural

A 2022 Midtown mural by artist Ijania Cortez that honors pianist and arts advocate Josephine Harreld Love alongside gallery founder Dell Pryor as matriarchs of Detroit's Black art scene.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Indian Village

Closed – archive entry

Julius T. Melchers House

A 1897 Indian Village house built for Detroit's first professional sculptor, Julius Melchers, with a carved gable he made himself; still a private home.

Famous people's places / Detroit – East Side

Closed – archive entry

Charles F. Kettering High School

An east-side Detroit high school that opened in the 1960s, graduated techno pioneer James Stinson, closed in 2012 for low enrollment, and was demolished in 2024.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Northwest Goldberg

King Solomon Baptist Church

A Northwest Goldberg church, built in stages from 1917, where Malcolm X delivered his landmark Message to the Grass Roots speech in 1963.

Famous people's places / Troy

The Kresge Foundation

The Detroit-founded philanthropic foundation started by five-and-dime retailer S. S. Kresge in 1924, now headquartered in Troy and a major funder behind the Detroit RiverWalk.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Core City

Closed – archive entry

Kronk Gym (original McGraw Avenue building)

The basement boxing gym inside a city recreation center where Emanuel Steward built one of the greatest training operations in boxing history, closed in 2006 and demolished in 2018.

Famous people's places / St. Clair Shores

Lake Shore High School

A public high school in St. Clair Shores, on Lake St. Clair northeast of Detroit, where hockey player Mark Wells was a student in the early 1970s.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Downtown

Closed – archive entry

Hotel La Salle (WMBC studios)

A downtown Woodward Avenue hotel whose top floor housed radio station WMBC, where crusading broadcaster Jerry Buckley was shot dead in the lobby in 1930; demolished in 1996.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Grandmont

Leland Missionary Baptist Church

The Detroit Baptist congregation, chartered in 1923, where blues singer Sippie Wallace worked as choir singer and organist for around forty years.

Famous people's places / Clinton Township

Lincoln Memorial Park Cemetery

A Macomb County cemetery north of Detroit, the resting place of Negro Leagues great Turkey Stearnes and original Temptations singer Paul Williams.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Downtown

Closed – archive entry

Lindell AC

Widely credited as America's first sports bar, opened by the Butsicaris family in 1949 and a hangout for Detroit athletes and celebrities until it closed in 2002.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Downtown

Closed – archive entry

Lisette Denison Forth home site

The downtown Detroit lot where Lisette Denison Forth, a formerly enslaved woman who became Michigan's first Black female landowner, owned her own home from 1854 until her death in 1866.

Famous people's places / Hamtramck

Closed – archive entry

Lush Lounge

A Hamtramck bar whose Wednesday open mics carried on Detroit's hip-hop open-mic tradition after the closing of the Hip Hop Shop, with MC Marv Won among the regulars.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Midtown

Maccabees Building

A 1927 Albert Kahn tower on Woodward Avenue that housed WXYZ-TV's studios into the 1950s, where Soupy Sales launched his Detroit television career; now Wayne State University offices.

Famous people's places / Bloomfield Township

Closed – archive entry

Machus Red Fox

A suburban Detroit restaurant on Telegraph Road, best known as the spot where Teamsters boss Jimmy Hoffa was last seen alive on July 30, 1975.

Famous people's places / Detroit – East Side

Closed – archive entry

Mack Park

The east-side Detroit ballpark, home of the Negro Leagues' Detroit Stars in the 1910s and 1920s, until a 1929 grandstand fire ended its life as a ballpark.

Famous people's places / Detroit – East Riverfront

Manoogian Mansion

Detroit's official mayoral residence on the riverfront, donated to the city in 1966 by industrialist Alex Manoogian and home to Mayor Jerome Cavanagh and, later, Coleman Young.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Midtown

Manoogian Hall

A Wayne State University building in Midtown Detroit, named for industrialist and philanthropist Alex Manoogian and home to the university's language and linguistics programs.

Famous people's places / Detroit – East Side

Marvin L. Winans Academy of Performing Arts

A Detroit public charter school founded in 1997 by gospel singer Marvin Winans, combining a standard academic curriculum with music, dance, drama and art training.

Famous people's places / Eastpointe

Melodies & Memories

A record store on Gratiot Avenue in Eastpointe where three generations of Detroit DJs got their start, now home to the historic Golden World Records clock.

Famous people's places / Detroit – East Side

Mount Olivet Cemetery

Detroit's largest Catholic cemetery on the city's east side, the resting place of mob boss Joseph Zerilli, four Michigan congressmen and Motown bandleader Joe Hunter.

Famous people's places / Detroit – East Side

Mount Elliott Cemetery

Detroit's oldest Catholic cemetery, opened in 1841, and the burial place of former mayor Jerome Cavanagh.

Famous people's places / Novi

Oakland Hills Memorial Gardens

A cemetery in Novi where Detroit Tigers pitching great Hal Newhouser is buried in the Masonic Garden section.

Famous people's places / Detroit – East Side

Closed – archive entry

Olds Motor Works Detroit factory

Ransom E. Olds's first Detroit auto factory near the Belle Isle bridge, destroyed by fire in 1901 after just two years in operation.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Downtown

One Campus Martius

A downtown Detroit office tower built as Compuware's headquarters in 2003, now home to Dan Gilbert's Rocket Mortgage and Bedrock companies.

Famous people's places / Detroit – East Side

Ossian H. Sweet House

A modest brick bungalow on Garland Street where Black physician Ossian Sweet and his family faced down a violent mob in 1925, a landmark civil rights case defended by Clarence Darrow.

Famous people's places / Grosse Ile

Pagoda House

An eccentric Japanese-style boathouse mansion Henry Ford built on the Detroit River for his controversial enforcer Harry Bennett, complete with escape tunnels and hidden rooms.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Downtown

Patrick V. McNamara Federal Building

A downtown Detroit federal office tower named for Patrick V. McNamara, the pipefitters' union leader who became a U.S. senator.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Downtown

Penobscot Building

A 1928 Art Deco skyscraper on Griswold Street, once the tallest building in Michigan, decorated with Corrado Parducci's Native American-themed ornament.

Famous people's places / Detroit – East Side

Perfecting Church

A Detroit megachurch on East Nevada Street founded and led since 1989 by gospel singer Marvin Winans of the Grammy-winning Winans family.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Midtown

Closed – archive entry

C-Pop Gallery

A pop-surrealist and lowbrow art gallery on Woodward Avenue that gave singer and painter Niagara a string of solo shows before closing in 2009.

Famous people's places / Detroit – East Ferry Avenue Historic District

Prophet Jones parsonage, East Ferry Avenue

A three-story mansion on East Ferry Avenue that served as the first Detroit home of Prophet James F. Jones, the flamboyant faith healer known for his fur coats and Cadillacs.

Famous people's places / Huntington Woods

Rackham Golf Course

A public Donald Ross golf course next to the Detroit Zoo, built on land Horace and Mary Rackham gave the city in the 1920s.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Midtown

Closed – archive entry

Recreation Park

The wooden ballpark where Detroit's first major-league baseball team, the Wolverines, played through the 1880s, now marked by a plaque on the Detroit Medical Center campus.

Famous people's places / Detroit – West Village

Frederick K. Stearns House (Red Gables)

The Tudor Revival mansion pharmaceutical magnate Frederick K. Stearns built on East Jefferson in 1902, nicknamed Red Gables for its steep, dark rooflines, now a boutique inn.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Grand River Avenue

Closed – archive entry

Grand Riviera Theatre

A 3,000-seat atmospheric movie palace on Grand River Avenue that Joseph Z. Nederlander's family later ran, demolished in 1996 after decades of decline.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Grand Circus Park

Russell A. Alger Memorial Fountain

A 1921 bronze fountain in Grand Circus Park honoring Michigan governor and U.S. Secretary of War Russell A. Alger, made by the sculptor and architect behind the Lincoln Memorial.

Famous people's places / Detroit

Closed – archive entry

Saint Martin de Porres High School

A Catholic high school on Detroit's west side that closed in 2005, where Olympic basketball star Daedra Charles was a Parade All-American in the 1980s.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Downtown

Saints Peter and Paul Church

Detroit's oldest surviving church building, built in 1848 as Bishop Peter Paul Lefevere's cathedral, now a Jesuit parish on East Jefferson Avenue.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Capitol Park

Closed – archive entry

Save the Vinyl

Detroit techno pioneer Blake Baxter's downtown record store, open from 1992 to 1999 at the corner of Grand River and Griswold in Capitol Park.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Linwood

Shrine of the Black Madonna

The Linwood Street church where Reverend Albert Cleage Jr. unveiled a mural of a Black Madonna in 1967, founding what became the Pan African Orthodox Christian Church.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Downtown

Closed – archive entry

Shubert-Lafayette Theatre

A vaudeville-turned-Broadway house on West Lafayette that Joseph Z. Nederlander helped run in its final decades, demolished in 1964 for a parking structure.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Jefferson Avenue

Sibley House

A Greek Revival house built in 1848 on East Jefferson Avenue for the family of Solomon Sibley, Detroit's first mayor under Michigan statehood, now Christ Church Detroit's offices.

Famous people's places / Detroit – East Side

Sojourner Truth Homes

A federal public housing project on Detroit's east side whose 1942 opening to Black families sparked a violent riot, now a National Register-listed apartment complex.

Famous people's places / Detroit – East Riverfront

Solidarity House

The United Auto Workers' riverfront headquarters since 1951, where Walter Reuther led the union and once lent Martin Luther King Jr. office space to draft an early I Have a Dream speech.

Famous people's places / Detroit – near Poletown

Closed – archive entry

SS. Cyril and Methodius Seminary (Detroit site)

The original Detroit home of a seminary training Polish-American priests, founded by Father Józef Dąbrowski in 1885 near St. Aubin and Forest before it moved to Orchard Lake in 1909.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Poletown

Closed – archive entry

St. Albertus Church

Detroit's first Polish Catholic parish church, dedicated in 1885 near St. Aubin and Canfield, closed as an active parish in 1990 but still standing and open for tours and occasional Mass.

Famous people's places / Detroit – East Side

St. Augustine and St. Monica Catholic Church

An east-side Detroit parish, housed in the former St. Catherine of Siena church, where jazz musician Charlie Gabriel helped start the Jazz on the Lawn concert series.

Famous people's places / Detroit – East Side

St. Bonaventure Monastery and Solanus Casey Center

A Capuchin friary on Detroit's east side founded in 1882, home to the tomb and museum of Solanus Casey, the friar and soup kitchen founder later declared Blessed by the Catholic Church.

Famous people's places / Grosse Ile

St. James Episcopal Church

A small stone church on Grosse Ile built with the bequest of Lisette Denison Forth, a formerly enslaved Detroit woman who became one of Michigan's first Black property owners.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Downtown

St. John's Episcopal Church

A Gothic Revival Episcopal church on Woodward Avenue near the Fox Theatre, founded and financed by future Michigan governor Henry P. Baldwin.

Famous people's places / Detroit – East Side

St. Paul Church of God in Christ

An east-side Detroit Pentecostal church where gospel choir director Thomas Whitfield recorded his first live album in the early 1980s.

Famous people's places / West Bloomfield

St. Thomas Chaldean Catholic Church

A suburban Chaldean Catholic parish in West Bloomfield led for over a decade by Francis Kalabat before he became bishop of Detroit's Chaldean eparchy.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Midtown

Statues of Detroit's French Pioneers

Four sandstone statues of Detroit's French-era founders, carved for the old City Hall and now standing on Wayne State University's campus.

Famous people's places / Detroit – West Side

Straightgate Church

A Detroit gospel congregation where the reunion of pioneering gospel group Commissioned was captured live on album in 2001.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Eastern Market

Closed – archive entry

Stroh's Brewery

The east-side Detroit brewery complex where the Stroh family built a beer empire from 1850 until it closed in 1985 and was demolished the next year.

Famous people's places / Detroit – New Center

Submerge / Exhibit 3000

The unmarked headquarters of Underground Resistance and Submerge Records, home to Exhibit 3000, the world's first techno museum.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Corktown

Teamsters Local 299

The Detroit Teamsters union hall on Trumbull Avenue that served as Jimmy Hoffa's power base for decades.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Downtown

Theodore Levin United States Courthouse

Detroit's Art Deco federal courthouse, home to the Eastern District of Michigan and named for judge Theodore Levin, who presided here for 24 years.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Eastern Market

Transmat Records

Derrick May's techno label headquarters on Gratiot Avenue, on the strip of Eastern Market musicians nicknamed Techno Alley.

Famous people's places / Detroit – East Side

Trinity Cemetery

An east-side Detroit cemetery, also known historically as the German Lutheran Cemetery, where blues singer Sippie Wallace was laid to rest in 1986.

Famous people's places / Detroit – New Center

United Sound Systems

Detroit's oldest recording studio, where John Lee Hooker cut 'Boogie Chillen'' in 1948 and Parliament-Funkadelic, Motown artists and the proto-punk band Death all recorded.

Famous people's places / Plymouth

United Memorial Gardens

A cemetery west of Detroit where jazz trumpeter and mentor Marcus Belgrave, a central figure of the city's jazz scene, was buried in 2015.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Downtown

University of Detroit Mercy School of Law

Detroit's oldest law school, on the university's original downtown riverfront campus, where Judge Greg Mathis earned his law degree in 1987.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Downtown

Closed – archive entry

Vernor's Drugstore

The downtown Detroit pharmacy where James Vernor developed and first sold Vernors ginger ale from his soda fountain.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Downtown Riverfront

Closed – archive entry

Vernors Riverfront Plant

The riverfront Vernors bottling plant, its neon sign a fixture of the Detroit skyline for over five decades, cleared away in the early 1950s for the redevelopment that became Hart Plaza.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Northwest Side

Viola Liuzzo Park

A northwest Detroit park named for civil rights activist Viola Liuzzo, murdered in Alabama in 1965, with statues and monuments added decades later.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Midtown

Walter P. Reuther Library

Wayne State University's archive building, home to the largest labor archive in North America and named for UAW leader Walter Reuther.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Black Bottom

Closed – archive entry

Warfield Theatre

A Hastings Street movie and stage theater in Detroit's Black Bottom, rebuilt in the 1930s for Black audiences, that lost its home when the Chrysler Freeway plowed through the neighborhood.

Famous people's places / Waterford Township

Waterford Kettering High School

A public high school in Waterford Township, Oakland County, that produced two Detroit sports legends: outfielder Kirk Gibson and hockey Hall of Famer Pat LaFontaine.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Midtown

Wayne State University Law School

Detroit's law school since 1927, whose graduates and faculty include Cora Brown, Bill Davidson, Dan Gilbert and Jocelyn Benson.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Midtown

Wayne State University School of Social Work

Wayne State's social work school, teaching in Detroit since 1935, where longtime Detroit City Council president Maryann Mahaffey taught for decades.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Downtown

William C. Maybury Monument

A 1912 bronze statue in Grand Circus Park honoring William C. Maybury, Detroit's mayor from 1897 to 1904, sculpted by Adolph Alexander Weinman.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Woodbridge

Woodbridge Historic District

A Victorian streetcar-era neighborhood just west of Midtown Detroit, named for Michigan governor William Woodbridge, whose farmland it was built on.

Famous people's places / Detroit – East Ferry Historic District

Closed – archive entry

Your Heritage House

A hands-on children's museum in a historic East Ferry Street house, founded in 1969 by pianist Josephine Harreld Love to teach Detroit kids Black art, music and history.

Famous people's places / Detroit – Capitol Park

Closed – archive entry

White Room Studios

A downtown Detroit recording studio in the old Capitol Park Building where Kid Rock, Bob Seger and Aretha Franklin all recorded before it relocated to Ferndale.

Famous people's places / Southfield

Westbound Records

The Detroit funk and soul label Armen Boladian founded in 1968, home to Funkadelic, the Ohio Players and the Detroit Emeralds, now run from a Southfield office.

Architecture & icons

QLINE

Everything about the QLINE: 12 stops on Woodward Avenue, a live line map on an aerial photo, a virtual ride, a timeline from 1805, battery technology, ridership, free rides, contacts and social media.

An independently written bilingual guide. This collection is not an attendance-based ranking.

Save the plan. Share the moment.

quarterdetroit.comPlaces. A thousand stories.Here’s what your friends will see
More ways to shareDiscord · Viber · Instagram · Microsoft Teams · Slack · LINE · Pinterest · Tumblr · Mastodon · Nextdoor · Flipboard · Gmail · Outlook · Yahoo Mail · With a QR code

In a message

On social media

By email

With a QR code

Scan it with another phone, or hold it up to a friend’s camera.