Lafayette Park, Detroit

Lafayette Park is an neighborhood located east of Downtown Detroit. It contains a residential area of some 4,900 people and covers 0.07 sq mi.

The northern section planned and partially built by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe is listed in the National Register of Historic Places.Vitullo-Martin, Julio, with photo by Mike Russell (December 22, 2007
The Biggest Mies Collection: His Lafayette Park residential development thrives in Detroit
''The Wall Street Journal''. Retrieved on January 1, 2009. In 2015 it was designated a National Historic Landmark District. Lafayette Park is located on the city's lower east side directly south of the Eastern Market Historic District.

Buildings and developments

Lafayette Park is principally composed of two superblocks, which combine low- and high-density housing, in the manner favored by the Federal Housing Administration after World War II.

The first phase, formerly known as the Gratiot Redevelopment, was bounded by Hastings Street (later the Chrysler Freeway and, ultimately, the I-375), Gratiot Avenue, Orleans Street, and Lafayette Street. The developments in this section include:
* The Pavilion Apartments (Mies van der Rohe, 1959)
* Mies Van der Rohe Townhouses (Mies, 1959)
* Walter Chrysler Elementary School (Gould, Moss and Joseph, 1963)
* Lafayette Towers (Mies, 1963)
* Towers Shopping Center (King and Lewis, 1963)
* Four Freedoms House (John Hans Graham, 1965)
* Cherboneau Place North and South (1962-1965)
* Chateaufort Cooperative (1965-1967)
* Regency Square Apartments (Joseph Savin, 1965)

The second phase, formerly known as the Lafayette Extension, is to the south, bounded by The I-375, Lafayette, Orleans Street, and Jefferson Avenue. The original developments in this portion include:
* 1300 Lafayette East (Gunnar Birkerts, 1964)
* Central Park Plaza Apartments (Originally known as Central Park Plaza, Giffels and Rossetti, 1963)
* Rochdale Court Apartments (1964-1967, demolished 2002)
* Navarre Place Townhouses (Hausner and Macsai, 1965 and 1969)
* Jean Rivard Apartments (Pastor-Fonsville, 1967)

In 1963, considerable confusion was eliminated when the two phases, along with prior contained (and overlapping) developments variously called the Gratiot-Orleans Development Area, Lafayette Plaisance, and Lafayette Park-University City, were consolidated by the Lafayette Park Development Association, under the name of "Lafayette Park."

A greenway runs through the center of the entire development, beginning at Gratiot and continuing to the two blocks to the South, and is known as Lafayette Plaisance (between Gratiot and Lafayette), Lafayette Central Park (between Lafayette and Larned), and Lafayette Entry Park (between Larned and Jefferson). From 1960 onward, both of the superblocks became known as simply Lafayette Park. The conventional city block between Larned and Jefferson also contained two of the indigenous buildings that survived the clearcutting (the University Club and the Somerset Apartments) and several pre-renewal commercial buildings and one church line Gratiot to the north.

The development also borders on the Dequindre Cut Greenway, a rail-to-trail redevelopment following below Orleans Street.

Although Lafayette Park is most commonly identified with van der Rohe, Gunnar Birkerts an
John Macsai
played significant roles in the south half of the neighborhood.

Urban renewal

Several factors came together to create the urban renewal zone that later became Lafayette Park. Firstly, FHA policies following World War II promoted aggressive "slum clearance," under the Housing Act of 1949, providing up to half of demolition costs on projects that often impacted African-American neighborhoods. Secondly, Detroit had been completely built out and lacked land that could be developed, which limited property tax revenue. thirdly, Walter Reuther, of the United Auto Workers, had made the development of mixed-income housing a priority.

Demise of Black Bottom

The selection of this site operated to the detriment of Detroit's Black Bottom, the center of Detroit's African-American population, which featured a vibrant commercial district on Hastings Avenue. The zone, long named for its rich black topsoil, had previously been inhabited by various immigrant groups over the ages. In addition to the practice of targeting African-American neighborhoods for urban renewal, the neighborhood was also deemed suitable for redevelopment because it had a very high proportion of renters and very low property tax revenue.

Beginning in 1948, the Citizens Redevelopment Corporation was formed and began to acquire and demolish property in the Gratiot Redevelopment. Many of the original residents were relocated to the north and west. By the end of the final acquisitions, in 1967, 78 acres had been cleared.

The success of the project in increasing tax revenue was such that the city engaged a similar program in Corktown, leveling much of a neighborhood of frame houses in favor of industrial property. The process also repeated in the areas now inhabited by Blue Cross and Blue Shield, DTE Energy and the MGM Casino, Wayne State University, and the Detroit Medical Center, all of which were urban renewal zones.

Evolving design

Yamasaki/Gruen/Stonorov plan

Following World War II, the FHA favored mixed site plans including both high-rises and garden-style apartments or townhouses. That was a feature of redevelopment projects in many cities, including San Francisco, with it
Gateway Center
In general, garden apartments, which had been constructed since the 1930s, have superblocks, generally with off-street entrances, are generally a maximum of two stories tall, repeat with identical buildings throughout a development, feature minimal ornamentation, and use landscaping to increase visual interest.

Initially, Minoru Yamasaki, Victor Gruen, and Oscar Stonorov were commissioned to create a site plan and design the residential buildings. Their initial design, in the Gratiot Redevelopment (the north half) involved 20 high-rise towers, some of square proportion and some rectangular, along with several dozen townhouses. The latter were notable for being clustered in a checkerboard pattern, with four two-story buildings surrounding a central courtyard.

Ultimately, the project could not find funding as mixed-income housing, and the original plan was not realized.

Mies, Hilberseimer, and Caldwell

In 1956, when the project had been an open field for several years, Herbert Greenwald, a young Chicago developer, proposed to take on the project as a middle-income development. He conditioned his participation on using Ludwig Mies van der Rohe as the principal architect. At the time, Mies was an architecture professor at and the principal designer of buildings for the Illinois Institute of Technology. Mies had taken on sporadic projects outside of academic life, such as the Seagram's Building in Manhattan and 860-880 Lakeshore Drive in Chicago. Mies brought in Ludwig Hilberseimer and Alfred Caldwell, two of his associates at IIT, to serve as site planner and landscape architect, respectively
Joseph Fujikawa
who had received a master's degree studying under Mies and ultimately would become the successor to Mies's practice, was the chief designer for all of Mies's residential projects.

As reflected by promotional photos, the original site plan for the Gratiot Redevelopment featured five 22-story slab-shaped high-rises and four 22-story smaller and more square ones, as follows:
* West of Lafayette Plaisance, a slab in the northwest corner (north of Lafayette) and a similar slab-shaped building offset by a square tower at the corner of Lafayette and Rivard.
* East of Lafayette Plaisance, three equally spaced slabs. The south one was on Larned, the central one was midway up the length of the east parcel, and the northern one was offset with a square tower in a mirror image of the one at Lafayette and Rivard. The east section included a square shopping center with access from Orleans.
* Numerous townhouses were concealed by tree cover.

The plan was repeatedly changed throughout Mies's involvement. The first phase of the project proceeded substantially according to the final plan, with the construction of the Pavilion Apartment, originally conceived as part of a predecessor development that included the Wayne State School of Pharmacy. The Pavilion is a 22-story structure that resembles 860-880 Lakeshore in its use of 21-foot column bays with two nine-foot-wide windows. Heating and cooling is via hassock-like heat exchange units near the windows. The lobby, set inward from the perimeter, featured two stories and three elevators. An identical structure would be used in Lafayette Towers, below, though with a larger number of narrower windows on the same bays. Because American fire codes required the steel columns to be encased in concrete, the exposed "frame" of all three buildings is actually an ornamental I-beam.

The team proceeded to construct the Mies townhomes, which ultimately would be 186 units in four designs: there were a small number of two, three, and four-bedroom ranch-style townhomes with courtyards, with the balance being three-bedroom, two-story townhouses. The low-rise housing was set several feet above grade to minimize views of automobiles and generally featured central parking lots serving multiple buildings, but the courtyard homes had driveways that led to the front door. The general construction of the low-rise houses was a lightweight steel space frame from which 3-inch concrete slabs were hung for floors and glass panels for front and rear walls. The units are separated by fire brick walls and topped with flat roofs. The ends are capped by a grey-beige slip-coated brick common to the era. Two-story units are essentially glass on both ends, bisected on the first floor by a mechanical core, containing the kitchen.

The townhouses would be operated as apartments until 1961–1962, when they were converted into four co-operatives. Two vacant units had served as the first school for the neighborhood, with Chrysler Elementary being built shortly thereafter.

Post-Greenwald developments

Lafayette Towers

In 1959, Greenwald was killed when his plane crashed on approach to New York's LaGuardia Airport. Greenwald had been planning and executing residential projects all over the United States and was on his way to shop a site in Lower Manhattan. His death dealt a significant blow to all developments he sponsored, and it resulted in the firing of half of Mies's staff.

The recession of 1958 had already resulted in a 20% unemployment rate in Detroit, and it was left to the Habitat Companies, headed by Daniel Levin, to finish the project. The final Mies-designed project was Lafayette Towers (1961-1964), two towers perpendicular to the original site plan that were connected by a central garage, and serviced by a central mechanical plant. The whole project would later be replicated in Newark, New Jersey

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