But as the Lee Plaza was tied up in legal battles, metro Detroit had been growing -- and with it the number of homes. The Lee is still under control of the City Housing Commission, which said in December 2008 that it was looking to work with a developer to bring the building back to life. The shelf angle supports and transfers the dead load of the brick back to the building frame. Another devastating blow would come in late 2005, when the Lee's copper roof was somehow stripped, despite it being 17 stories up and Northwestern High School being next door. Among his roster: the Lee Crest; the Wager Terrace; the Orpha Mae Apartments -- named after his wife -- on West Chicago Boulevard; the Bohr Apartments in Highland Park; the Lee Manor; and the Margaret Lee, Elmhurst, Glen, Doherty, Burlingame and Tanton apartments. Architectural Artifacts helped the Wayne County Prosecutor's Office track down some of the stolen reliefs. that hotels would be built specially for residents. The Lee Plaza sadly sits in a state of half-repair. At one end of the room was a balcony with wrought iron railing that overlooked the blue-and-gold-painted room. The Art Deco giant built for the wealthy would now be used for housing low-income senior citizens. He was finished. Its entrances and ground-floor windows were barricaded with cinder blocks, but they couldn't keep the scavengers at bay. [2], The Lee Plaza Hotel was built in 1928 for Ralph T. Lee, a Detroit developer. In the summer of 1969, the city also turned the Hotel Wolverine near the Fox Theatre into another senior-living facility, as well as the Temple Towers near the Masonic Temple. The Lee would continue to barely keep its head above the water until it was sold in the 1960s to a turnkey developer who spruced it up and sold the building to the city in January 1969. Two weeks later, bondholders went after him in court over some of his other properties. Tenants could use the room for balls or parties whenever they liked, and concerts were sometimes held there. Without it, the brick could collapse. For at least four years, Equitable paid Lee $450 a month (about $7,000 today); let him take food from the hotel's storeroom to his summer home; and gave him unlimited room and maid service, nurses for his children, and five apartments on the 16th floor -- rent-free. The Lee opened on Dec. 1, 1927. Such was the case with the Lee Plaza. The Lee Plaza (also the Lee Plaza Apartments) was built in 1929 by Charles Noble. Strange Abandoned Places features thousands of the best pictures of the worlds most mysterious and fascinating places. New proposals for the building, which has undergone a $400,000, two-phase stabilization project, are now being accepted on a rolling basis. Later, it served low-income seniors before being vacated in 1997. Subscribe to MLive.com. … The residents wanted it listed and were very proud of it.". "If the wonderful ground floor public spaces were to be restored, the cost to fix Lee Plaza could only be justified with very high rents," explained Worden, a dedicated preservationist. At the same time, the city's coffers were running dry and budget cutbacks would hit hard. The Lee Plaza would help bring down one of Detroit's biggest real estate barons. "As long as there have been graves, there have been grave robbers, and a lot of people consider Detroit a large, unguarded graveyard," Katherine Clarkson, the then-executive director of Preservation Wayne, told the Free Press in February 2002. On May 1, ground was broken on the Art Deco masterpiece that would rise above the stately elms of West Grand Boulevard at Lawton Avenue. The commission "believes he has strong support for this project.". "Lee Plaza has been reduced to a bricked-up and orphaned ward of the City of Detroit Housing Commission, which has neither the funds nor the initiative to restore the building, leaving it instead to scavengers who literally gouged gaping holes in it while ripping elaborate ornaments from its exterior," MetroTimes wrote in April 2003. It also was used for badminton matches and to show a movie one night a week for residents and their guests. After nearly a decade of courtroom showdowns, the other bondholders finally gave up and sold the Lee Plaza to Owen for $475,585 (about $5.86 million today) on Aug. 26, 1943. By the end of July, Duggan said, 1,000 houses on the east side will be boarded up. A man described as a person of interest was taken into custody Friday, police said. Built in 1927 on West Grand Boulevard, just west of Detroit’s New Center neighborhood, the Lee Plaza was described on postcards as “Detroit’s finest apartment hotel,” with 220 rooms. [9], The Lee Plaza Hotel is a 15-story, "I" plan, steel and reinforced concrete structure, faced with orange glazed brick, with a steeply pitched roof originally covered in red tile (later replaced with copper, which has been since stripped). And build better he did. Most pictures are republished with the photographers approval. Urban landscapes, haunted buildings, disused military buildings and more are all featured. But the Circuit Court didn't sign off on such extraordinary compensation, and in June 1935, the bondholders took Equitable to court, saying they had not received a cent on their investment since 1930 and that the management was lax and wasteful. Much of the city of Detroit is a dystopian wasteland of abandoned structures. None of the windows have glass or frames in them. No longer the abode of the damned, buy and restore the building since May 2017. described on postcards as “Detroit’s finest apartment hotel,”. But, he acknowledged, many would likely be apprehensive to speak with police. Then on May 24, they found Ellis. The Public Trust Commission accused him of "milking" the Lee Crest, for which he was a co-receiver. The agency offered to sell the building for $1 if a deal could be made to work, but so far no one with the financial means has taken the commission up on its offer. Replacing the shelf angles would add major, if not project-killing, costs to any restoration of the Lee. The ownership of the building was tied up in court until 1943. Then, in July 1935, Ralph Lee admitted in court that he, his wife and a third person operated a hardware company for almost the sole purpose of selling supplies to the Lee Plaza and his other buildings at retail prices instead of at wholesale. The developer gave the Lee new kitchens and modern elevators and spruced up the community rooms. An 84-year-old resident was found murdered in her room in February 1987, suffocated with a pillow.
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