Lee Plaza: Ruins and Resurrection
Near Detroit, Michigan
Rising sixteen stories above West Grand Boulevard, Lee Plaza was Detroit's Art Deco vision of the good life in nineteen twenty-eight. Developer Ralph Lee hired architect Charles Noble to build it for two and a half million dollars, targeting a wealthy and sophisticated clientele. The Depression took Lee's fortune.
The building cycled from hotel to apartments to senior housing operated by the Detroit Housing Commission. It closed in nineteen ninety-seven and stood empty for nearly three decades, its ornate terra-cotta facade slowly crumbling while urban explorers documented the wreckage inside. Now, finally, it is coming back.
A restoration project beginning in twenty twenty-five will convert Lee Plaza into one hundred seventeen affordable senior apartments, with market-rate units on the upper floors. One of Detroit's most haunting ruins is about to become a home again.
