(By Paula Gardner, Michigan Live). Detroit’s changes over decades played out along Woodward Avenue, the corridor that connects Downtown and the riverfront to Midtown and beyond.
The contrast has been acute in Brush Park, just north of today’s sports and entertainment hub, where elaborate mansions rose in the late 1800s, then many fell as the city waned a century later.
Yet one iconic church building withstood it all. And today, it’s listed for sale.
The timing comes as real estate activity along the corridor is heated, fueled by housing demand, new commercial activity and billions in major investments Detroit is rediscovered.
Murray is president of the Ecumenical Theological Seminary, a religious educational facility that serves 30 different denominations in Metro Detroit as an accredited, degree-granting school of theology.
The seminary moved into the property in 1992, leasing the church and office building from the Presbyterian Church, which — in 2002 — [the Presbytery of Detriot, PCUSA] donated them to the seminary.
The gift was substantial, allowing the seminary to remain in the property that it had called home and maintaining its presence in Detroit along Woodward Avenue.
(Photo posted above by By Andrew Jameson (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0) or GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)], via Wikimedia Commons).