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Location
Our Home: David Mackenzie House
Preservation Wayne shares an office with the University Cultural Center Association in the restored home of David Mackenzie.
Mackenzie was a noted educator, scholar, and humanitarian who fostered higher education for Detroit students. While principal of Central High School, he established the Detroit Junior College in 1917. Six years later that institution expanded to become the College of the City of Detroit, the predecessor to Wayne State University.
Built in 1895, this two and one-half story Queen Anne style house was designed by Malcomson & Higginbotham, the same architects responsible for Wayne State’s Old Main (previously Central High School), one block north. The Mackenzie House is distinguished by its asymmetrical massing, intricately carved entry door, fine interior woodwork, cone-roofed tower, and fronted porch supported by a series of Ionic columns.
By the mid-1970’s, Mackenzie House was in a declining state of repair and was slated for demolition until a determined group of Wayne State students organized to advocate for the building’s renovation and reuse. From their successful campaign emerged a new organization, Preservation Wayne, which has been headquartered ever since in the house that they saved.
Mackenzie House was historically designated by the City of Detroit on June 9, 1978 and by the State of Michigan on March 5, 1979.
Our City: Detroit
Detroit is the oldest major city in the Midwest. Founded in 1701 by French settlers led by Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac, the city's over three centuries of European/American history— from frontiers to furs, manufacturing to music, shipbuilding to skyscrapers, and civil rights to civil strife—offer a story as compelling, as rich and as varied as that of any city in North America.
After growing steadily and progressively for two hundred years, the first half of the 20th Century saw Detroit boom in economy and population like no city before, creating a great middle class buoyed largely by the auto industry. Exporting a pattern of life that reverberated across the country and around the globe, Detroit shaped the last century.
Detroit would see its population peak at around two million people in the mid-1950’s, making it the fourth largest city in the United States. But just as it grew in staggering proportions in the years 1900-1950, between 1950 and 2000, over half of Detroit’s population and roughly two thirds of its business left the city, mostly to surrounding suburbs. Motown’s struggle with the myriad urban challenges that have also plagued other cities – including loss of population, disinvestment, racial divisiveness, and economic homogeneity – is especially poignant, and a continuing challenge to both leaders and citizens.
Easily the most visible victim of Detroit's great decline is the city’s built environment, sprawling over 140 square miles and distinguished by 8,000 vacant structures and 30,000 vacant lots that once contained thriving communities. Of particular concern is the city's greater urban core, generally following the length of its radial streets, most notably Woodward Avenue, coalescing in the area enclosed by Grand Boulevard, and specifically concentrated within its unique street grid of the historic downtown, now cut off from the rest of the city by freeways.
Despite the widespread loss through neglect and demolition, there remain numerous structures that speak eloquently to the city’s growing prominence on the world stage during the first part of the 20th Century. Detroit’s collection of pre-war skyscrapers rank third behind only Chicago and New York; the city’s theater district, once topping New York in number of seats, still rivals that of any U.S. city; and finely constructed and structurally sound residential, commercial and industrial buildings, though under-appreciated, abound.
While notable examples such as the grand Hudson’s department store, and the Madison-Lenox, Statler and Tuller hotels have fallen in recent years, many buildings throughout the city have been saved and are being renovated. Preservation Wayne and its partner organizations recognize that Detroit still contains enough urban fabric exists to concentrate and incubate a smart, strategic and sustainable planning initiative that begins in the city’s heart and organically grows out, as has proven effective in cities across the nation and around the globe.
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