Palmer Park - Abandoned

The Palmer Park Apartment Building Historic District is located in the Palmer Park neighborhood of Detroit, Michigan, and is well regarded for its ornate and varied examples of apartment buildings. The district was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1983 with a boundary increase in 2005.

Palmer Park and the nearby Palmer Woods Historic District were once part of the estate of Thomas W. Palmer, a wealthy Detroiter, one-time U.S. Senator, and President of the Chicago World’s Fair of 1893. ¹ Palmer had intended to develop the area into a subdivision but died in 1913 before the idea came to fruition. After Palmer’s death, part of the estate was acquired by Walter Briggs.

Briggs hired Albert Kahn in 1925 to design the Walbri Court Apartments at 1001 Covington Drive. ¹ The majority of the 40 buildings in the district were built between 1925 and 1965 by multiple architects, such as Weidmaier & Gay, Robert West, and William Kapp, with the majority built in the 1920s and 1930s. The mostly five- and six-story structures featured Egyptian, Mediterranean, Moorish Revival, Spanish Colonial Revival, Tudor, and Venetian architectural styles, along with severely plain Art Moderne and International styles.