The Helen Newberry Nurses Home is a multi-unit residential building located at 100 East Willis Avenue (at the corner of Willis and John R.) in
Midtown Detroit
Detroit ( , ; , ) is the largest city in the U.S. state of Michigan. It is also the largest U.S. city on the United States–Canada border, and the seat of government of Wayne County. The City of Detroit had a population of 639,111 at th ...
,
Michigan
Michigan () is a state in the Great Lakes region of the upper Midwestern United States. With a population of nearly 10.12 million and an area of nearly , Michigan is the 10th-largest state by population, the 11th-largest by area, and the ...
. It was listed on the
National Register of Historic Places
The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic v ...
in 2008,
and is now the Newberry Hall Apartments.
History
Detroit's Grace Hospital opened in 1888; the next year Grace Hospital Training School for Nurses was opened under the direction of Eugenie Hibbard.
[The Grace Hospital Collection](_blank)
, Walter P. Reuther Library of Labor and Urban Affairs, Wayne State University The first class had fourteen students. Grace Hospital Training School was one of the first training schools for nurses in the United States.
By 1898, it was recognized that student nurses needed nearby housing while attending the Training School. The Helen Newberry Nurses Home was built to house these nursing students.
press release, Michigan Department of History, Arts and Libraries (HAL), Aug. 7, 2008 Funds to construct the building were donated by
Helen Handy Newberry, wife of
John Stoughton Newberry
John Stoughton Newberry (November 18, 1826 – January 2, 1887) was an American industrialist and politician. He served as the first provost marshal for the State of Michigan and as a U.S. Representative from the state of Michigan.
Early life
N ...
and mother of
Truman Handy Newberry. Architect
Elijah E. Myers
Elijah E. Myers (December 29, 1832 – March 5, 1909) was a leading architect of government buildings in the latter half of the 19th century, and the only architect to design the capitol buildings of three U.S. states, the Michigan State Capito ...
designed the building.
The Helen Newberry Nurses Home housed nursing students from the time of its construction until Grace Hospital Training School closed its doors in 1968. It was afterward used in the 1980s as office space for the
Detroit Medical Center. A fire in 2006 severely damaged some of the building's interior on the first floor.
In 2011/2012 the building was renovated to house 28 apartments.
Description
The Helen Newberry Nurses Home is a large three-story, L-shaped, red-and-brown brick
Jacobean Revival
The Jacobethan or Jacobean Revival architectural style is the mixed national Renaissance revival style that was made popular in England from the late 1820s, which derived most of its inspiration and its repertory from the English Renaissance (15 ...
residential building. The basement level is partially raised, and the roof is gabled and covered with slate. A three-story limestone entry bay projects slightly from the center of the main facade. Within this bay on the first floor is an arched entryway flanked with Doric pilasters, while the second story has two windows flanked with Ionic pilasters, and the third floor has a triple window. A small terrace with perimeter walls surrounds the entryway.
On either side of the entry bay, the facade is divided into three bays: a narrow recessed bay beside the entryway, a wider projecting cross-gabled bay adjacent, and another recessed bay at the outer end of the building. The outer bay on each side is surmounted by a brick Flemish dormer with stone cap. Although the facade is not entirely symmetrical, the projecting and recessed bays give the sense of balance. Basement windows are small three-by-three lights. Windows on the upper floors are all double hung, with diamond-paned leaded glass upper sashes on the first floor and on the entry bay, nine-over-one lights on the second floor, and six-over-one lights on the third floor. The windows are paired in most sections, but tripled or quadrupled in the projecting bays, and with single windows on the sides of the projecting bays.
Two massive corbelled ornamental brick chimney stacks rise through the roof, one on the right side of the building and one near the center. The remaining facades are less detailed than the front, although the window patterns are similar.
The interior of the structure has a central corridor in both the main section and the ell with rooms to either side. Stairs leads from the entryway up to the main corridor level, and two more stairways are located at each end of the building. The original building plan had a group of more decorative public rooms on the first floor, having arched openings, wall paneling, and decorative trim. More modest dormitory rooms took up the rest of the first floor and the upper floors.
References
{{National Register of Historic Places in Michigan
Residential buildings in Detroit
Residential buildings completed in 1898
Residential buildings on the National Register of Historic Places in Michigan
National Register of Historic Places in Detroit
Jacobean architecture in the United States