Anyone know of a good, reasonably-priced tailor in the area? My wife has a few summer outfits she needs taken in & we were looking for recommendations.
Back before Berkley was Berkley, it was a collection of developed cow pastures in Royal Oak Township. In the 19-teens the first wave of suburbanization crept up Woodward, spurred by Ford's Highland Park plant. Developers began buying up the pastures, piecemeal at first. It was uncommon for developers to build housing on the properties, they did the work of building out basic infrastructure, streets, sidewalks, sewers and water (though not in Berkley early on). Individual lots were then sold to the general public. This was before zoning codes, but developers could also place certain restrictions on the lots. The Huntington Woods subdivision for example set specific guidelines for types of materials property owners could use in building and forbade owners from building temporary structures while the primary house was built. Many of the developers, looking to attract the influx of lower wage autoworkers took a more libertarian approach, even advertising the fact that you could build a garage first and live out of it while working on the rest! Others lived in tent houses, with temporary ersatz walls and canvas roofs. But not B.H. Stephenson (of the highway fame)! He owned the Oakland Manor development. It was located adjacent to the recently opened Roseland Park cemetery, which had a certain prestige with wealthy Detroiters at the time. Plus it was just across Woodward from Vinson and Bassett's new high end development along the Red Run. With Palmer Park, north Ferndale and Huntington Woods taking a similar approach, it seemed sensible to Stephenson to place restrictions on his development. To really showcase his vision for the properties he purchased 5 higher end kit homes from Sears and had them built in the neighborhood.
https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/1755-Beverly-Blvd-Berkley-MI-48072/24638508\_zpid/
This one here just went on the market. Adjusted for inflation, the Preston would run a little over $80,000 today. Times 5 and you're at $400,000 for materials, plus shipping and permits, then you have to pay contractors to put them all together. This wasn't an insignificant investment on Stephenson's part. When Berkley became a village in 1923, owing to the freer developments throughout the town, the Detroit News compared it to the ramshackle towns the had sprung up in Wyoming oil territories. The higher end buyers that Stephenson hoped to attract failed to materialize. But his restrictions remained, so nearly every parcel sat vacant until after world war 2. It was empty for so long that some of the existing sidewalk slabs date back to 1916.