Detroit’s North End: A Journey Into the Past, a Look at the Present, and the Hope for its Future  

Photo: Getty Images

Sponsored by the Knight Foundation    

Detroit’s North End, at least for the last six-plus decades, has been overwhelmingly comprised of African Americans, churches of multiple denominations, small-to-medium businesses, engaged community groups, and culturally affluent artists.  Nevertheless, like most communities in Detroit these days, the North End has been victimized by urban blight, flight, and poverty.  

To capture the true essence of the North End – past, present, and projected future – the Michigan Chronicle, with the support of a grant by the Knight Foundation, will publish a feature story about the North End on the second Wednesday of each month beginning on Oct. 12, 2022.        

According to the City of Detroit’s Planning and Development Department, the North End is a community bordered by East Grand Blvd. to the South, the City of Highland Park to the North,  I-75 and the City of Hamtramck to the East, and Woodward Ave. to the West. 

The North End was estimated to have more than 40,000 residents at one time.  Today, that number hovers around 8,000.   

The North End’s name is derived from its location, meaning it was at the “north end” of Paradise Valley, the historic Black business and entertainment area for the historic Black residential community called Black Bottom.  Both storied communities existed from around 1920 through the ‘50s.    

However, in the late 1930s through the ‘40s, Black people moved into other sectors of the city, including the North End.  At the time, the community was primarily Jewish and European immigrants who like many African Americans, migrated to Detroit to work in the booming automobile manufacturing industry. As more Black people moved into North End, Whites in large numbers found other communities in Detroit to live where Blacks hadn’t moved – yet.   

However, the North End suited many African Americans just fine.  The community placed them closer to the jobs at area automobile plants, including the Historic Highland Park Ford Plant and the mammoth Hamtramck Dodge Main Plant.  In addition to the close proximity of the auto plants, African Americans found numerous places to worship.  

“The churches in the North End have played vital roles in the North End prospering, regardless of their denomination,” said Rev. Jim Holley, who, in 2021 retired from the North End’s Historic Little Rock Baptist Church on Woodward Ave. after 50 years as senior pastor.  “The churches always had respect for each other.  We never allowed our denominations to distract us from working together to build a better community.”  

While Woodward Ave. has been a bustling thoroughfare bordering the North End on its west sector, decades ago, Oakland Ave. was a major street that boasted entertainment venues, stores, and other businesses.  One venue on Oakland noted for bringing National R&B acts to the North End was Phelps Cocktail Lounge. Owned by Eddie Phelps from 1960 to the early 1980s, his club  booked acts like James Brown, “The Temptations,” “The Main Ingredient,” B.B. King, “Gladys Knight & The Pips,” and more.  Several blocks south of Phelps was the legendary Apex Bar, a blues haven where the likes of John Lee Hooker, Little Sonny, and others performed.  

While most of the businesses of yesteryear along North End’s Oakland Ave. are no longer open, it’s a different story on Woodward Ave.  The corporate headquarters of First Independence Bank, one of the nation’s largest Black-owned and operated banks, stands on Woodward at East Grand Blvd.  South of First Independence is Black-owned Liberty Bank.  And there are many new commercial construction projects taking place on Woodward, anchoring the west border of the North End.   

And, on residential streets in the North End, new affordable residential homes have either been recently built or are in construction mode, especially on Marston, Brush, and Mt. Vernon Streets. 

The work of Develop Detroit led by the organization’s President & CEO Sonya Mays best demonstrates what a vision and strong development plans can do to change the look of streets once lined with blight caused by abandoned homes and vacant lots. 

“Sonya is doing an incredible job of development in that section of the North End,” said longtime urban developer Emmett Moten.  “She is giving new hope to a community that needs  better and more affordable housing.”  

Moten once worked for Mayor Coleman A. Young in the late 1970s into the 1980s, earning the title “the development czar” because of his commercial development success in Detroit.  More than three decades ago, Moten helped broker a deal that allowed former Detroit Pistons great,  former Detroit Mayor, and businessman Dave Bing, to build his corporation’s first super commercial complex in the North End.  It was located on the corner of Caniff and Oakland Ave.    

“It was a big deal for Dave, and a real big deal for the North End,” said Moten, who also revealed the complex for Bing’s company’s complex was built on 54 acres of land that had been sitting undeveloped in the North End since 1954.  “It was the first and the biggest development in the North End in many decades.” 

In the early 2000s, Bing and Moten partnered to build 40 units of “infill” single-family affordable houses in the North End.  The homes infilled on Delmar St. are believed to represent the first residential project of its kind in the city, perhaps Urban America.  Moten explained that “building ‘infill’ single family affordable homes meant constructing on vacant lots between occupied homes.”     

“It was a gamble on Dave and my part to build the infill residential housing almost two decades ago,” Moten said.  “Some lending institutions thought we were crazy to do this type of  development in the North End at that time.” 

One of the growing initiatives in the North End today is Urban Farming, giving renewed hope to the people and community.  While there are several farming and garden initiatives working in  the community, the leader of the pack – by far – is Oakland Avenue Urban Farm, under the executive directorship of Jerry Ann Hebron.  Her work has garnered national and international attention for branding the North End as “America’s first sustainable Urban Agri-hood.” 

According to Hebron, Oakland Avenue Urban Farm, under the umbrella of North End Christian Community Development Corporation, is a 501 c (3).  The mission is to grow healthy food, host educational programs, create cultural gathering spaces, operate a Farmers Market, and generate jobs for community residents.  Hebron, who grew up in the North End, also sits on the powerful Agriculture Federal Advisory Committee on Urban Agriculture and is a Farm Service Agency Committee Member.  

“Having a voice at the national level, as well as the state level, is very important to advancing what we are doing in the North End,” said Hebron, whose organization owns seven acres of land in the North End, half of which is allotted for food production.  “For the work that involves Urban Agriculture, it’s important for Detroit because we are the leaders in the industry when it comes to Urban Agriculture and activism work around food justice.” 

In future monthly feature stories published by the Michigan Chronicle, readers will learn more about the people, places, community and block club leaders and organizations, educators, elected officials, businesses and entrepreneurs, churches, muralists, other cultural ambassadors of the arts, events and issues – past and present – connected to North End’s history and evolution.     

“I believe our job is to help provide resources to people and communities like the North End and get out of the way when the government is in the way,” U.S. Senator Debbie Stabenow said at the Michigan Chronicle-sponsored forum ‘Pancakes and Politics,” held several months ago at North End’s Greater New Mount Moriah Missionary Baptist Church.  “There must be strong partnerships formed with federal, state, and local governments, neighborhoods, businesses, churches, and communities. It’s all of us partnering together that will make a positive difference.”