How Detroit's Old Money Built a City of Mansions and Then Tore Them All Down: Brush Park

0:00 William Livingston House 5:15 Ransom Gillis House 6:12 David Whitney Jr. House 6:49 79 Alfred Street 7:24 234 Winders Street 7:46 59 Alfred Street 9:16 First Presbyterian 11:56 Temple Beth-El 12:32 John Harvey House 19:34 Brewster Homes 25:53 Henry Glover House How does a neighborhood built for Detroit’s wealth end up losing nearly everything it was designed to protect? I trace the rise, decline, and return of Brush Park, from grand Victorian mansions to vacant lots and redevelopment. I follow the land back to the Brush family farm, then visit the stories behind the William Livingston House, Ransom Gillis House, 79 Alfred Street, Temple Beth-El, and other surviving landmarks. Along the way, I explore the architects, merchants, churches, rooming houses, freeways, and changing communities that shaped the neighborhood. Most of all, I examine the mechanism behind the demolition: when the land became more valuable than the buildings, and later, how abandonment helped some of the remaining houses survive. Brush Park’s story is one of architecture, race, class, preservation, and a city rebuilding around its lost streets.