Highland Park - Great Houses

Date: April 1st, 2001

Highland Park gems: This treasure trove of beautiful historic architecture is undergoing a revival

If you aren't familiar with Highland Park, you probably have a vague picture of an aging city with financial problems.

You would be right, but you'd be overlooking one of this area's special collections of vernacular or common-man architecture.

Highland Park has an exquisite mix of early 20th-Century houses -- Arts and Crafts or Craftsman style, Dutch colonial and Tudor revival. Especially sweet is the collection of small Craftsman bungalows -- fine examples from 1910-1920, when the movement was fresh and every house was hand-made and unique, before mass production homogenized the style.

This is not architecture for the elite. These are small houses built by working people who poured into Highland Park for Henry Ford's $5 a day -- twice the average wage at the time.

It's one of the first times average working folks could afford the luxury of architecture, and they embraced it with a zest that left a gift for today's classic-house lovers.

"Highland Park is one of the richest troves of Arts and Crafts houses in America," says architectural historian William Porter, retired head of design at General Motors. "If those houses were in southern California, people would kill for them."

Now good news is stirring this long-suffering city. Highland Park home owners have broken through the glass ceiling of low house appraisals, which helps to keep a neighborhood rundown. The banks are finally appraising houses at prices high enough to justify lending money to restore them.

The change is overdue. Fifteen years ago when Katherine Clarkson bought her Tudor-style house here, she had trouble getting a $25,000 mortgage. But this year there was no trouble when she went to Comerica Bank for a $35,000 second mortgage to do repairs.

"They took one look at the description of the house, and they said, 'Oh, no problem,' " she says. "They didn't even come out to look at it."

This new respect from the banks is supported by surprising numbers from Realcomp II, which tracks house sales. In the past five years, the median house price in an area that includes Highland Park and some of central Detroit rose from an abysmal $41,400 to $73,300, a 77-percent jump.

In fact, a real estate friend looked at comparable houses and told Clarkson her house ranked alongside some now for sale at $150,000 -- almost five times what she paid for it in 1986.

Bargain city

Most often, though, classic-home lovers find Highland Park to be one of metro Detroit's last bargains. Antoinette and Gerald Bostic moved to the city in October, after owning homes in the prestigious neighborhoods of East English Village and Boston-Edison. "My friends said, "What are you doing?' " says Antoinette Bostic, who is the personal assistant to Detroit attorney Bruce Holloway.

Her reply? Hoping to make a good profit, she says, while living in a big, beautiful house.

The Bostics' 3,000-square-foot house needed a lot of work but cost just $75,000. With a high down payment from their previous house profits, the family now has a mortgage payment so small, she says, "It's about like my Nordstrom's bill."

Dream home

Five years ago, English teacher Art Rizzo didn't buy his house because it was a bargain at $79,000. For years he'd been walking his Old English sheepdog, Gus, on Moss Street and loved a particular house.

Then, one day, that house had a "for sale" sign go up. It turned out to be the stunning one-of-a-kind Arts and Crafts home young Detroit architect Leonard Willike built in 1919 to be his first home and studio. Later Willike designed many homes in Indian Village and the Grosse Pointes.

Like most Arts and Crafts houses, it has big open spaces where rooms flow into each other through wide arches or doors framed by exquisite woodwork and windows. It also has fine finishing details like his Pewabic tile fireplace. The previous owner even had Willike's original diagram for the garden, which Rizzo is restoring along with the house.

When Rizzo recently went for a home improvement loan, his appraisal had gone up to $122,000.

Historic areas

About 700 of Highland Park's houses are inside two neighborhoods listed on the National Register of Historic Districts.

They show diverse architecture for houses built on moderate budgets at virtually the same time. Clarkson, president of Highland Park's Historic District Association, says the city's population was 400 in 1900, 4,000 in 1910 and 46,000 in 1920.

Even people who didn't work for Ford wanted to live Highland Park, she says. The city was famous for its schools, with free textbooks and a swimming pool in every school.

The majority who moved in chose Arts and Crafts style -- a powerful design movement after the turn of the last century -- and highly valued again today.

Arts and Crafts style rejected Victorian decorations as tacked-on, rather than an honest reflection of the structure. It valued strong building components like exposed beams and sturdy window frames and hand-made materials like Pewabic tile.

It was a movement to put city folks in harmony with nature, says Clarkson, and places like Highland Park were referred to as garden suburbs. "You had a little garden space and sleeping porches where you could get fresh air."

"Each house is an individual expression of the person who had it built and the craftsmen who worked on it," Porter says. "In today's world that's a pretty precious commodity."

People who want to see Highland Park's finest can look at the two historic districts, on opposite sides of the little city.

East of Woodward, on the south end of town, Farrand Park, McLean Street and Rhode Island Street have many fine midsize houses in Arts and Crafts style as well as the slightly later Dutch colonial and Tudor revival styles. These were what today we'd consider the area's move-up houses.

West of Woodward, on the north end of town, Moss Street and Eason Street have some of the nation's finest Arts and Crafts small cottages and bungalows -- smaller, older and quirkier than most east-side houses.

Two houses are for sale now on Moss Street at prices that would be an all-time high for Highland Park -- $154,900 and $157,000.

That's a bargain $65 and $74 per square foot, compared with Royal Oak, where an Arts and crafts home might cost $200 a square foot, or Birmingham at $300. And houses in those suburbs rarely have the interior embellishments poured into these -- Pewabic tile, lavish woodwork, French doors between rooms and extras like a solarium and screened porch. One of the houses for sale is the former home of Wayne State University President Gordon Scott.

Waiting for rebound

"Man, it's just a made-to-order situation for young people," says Porter, who teaches at the Center for Creative Studies. "It's a fabulous neighborhood waiting to make a comeback."

This is not to paste a smiley face over Highland Park's serious problems, typical of older, industrial cities. On some streets outside the historic districts the once-proud housing stock is now strictly rent-a-wreck.

The population is down to 16,746 in the 2000 Census, and city government is in a financial mess, fighting off an effort by the state to put it into receivership.

The schools' MEAP scores rank in the state's bottom 20 percent. People who move here to restore houses often have no children, like Clarkson and Rizzo, or enroll their children at private and charter schools, like the Bostics.

Even though house prices are rising fast in Highland Park, houses sometimes stay on the market a long time, says Realtor Don Bailey.

For the past century, Highland Park has had the same boom-or-bust history as Detroit, Clarkson says, only more so.

"Highland Park was the most rapidly growing city of its size in the country," she says. "It grew faster than Detroit, which was the fastest growing city of its size.

"Everything that happened to Detroit happened bigger, harder, faster, worse in Highland Park."

Now rising house prices and the new esteem from lenders could open a door for Highland Park. Owners of the Victorian cottages of Corktown and the mansions of Boston-Edison all struggled through the '60s, '70s and '80s until banks began appraising the houses higher and lending rehab money in the '90s.

Comeback cities usually try to develop housing first and let retail stores follow. But Highland Park just got two large new shopping centers on Woodward -- Model T Plaza and Highland Park Place. Between them they have about two dozen businesses, including a new Farmer Jack supermarket, three large drug stores, two video stores and five clothing stores.

Porter recalls the 1970s when he bought his Craftsman bungalow in Birmingham. At that time seven houses on his street were boarded up, and the city was considered depressed. His house cost $13,000 then; now it's deeply into six figures. Similar comebacks have occurred to once-depressed Royal Oak, as well as many Detroit neighborhoods.

"Neighborhoods do spontaneously come back," Porter says. "A number of factors have to be in place," including access to loans. "Once a renaissance begins, it will usually build up momentum."

The houses for sale at 65 Moss and 74 Moss are both holding open houses today, 1-4 p.m. The agent is Chris Cetlinski, Century 21 Curran & Johnson, Dearborn Heights, 313-865-2051, 9-9 daily

Don Bailey is at Century 21 Associates, Grosse Pointe Woods, 313-522-8067, 9-9 daily or www.detroitoldhouse.com.

Contact JUDY ROSE at 313-222-6614 or rose@freepress.com.