detroit's old and crumbling city airport

James Smith was a pioneer, one of the first settlers to buy land in what was then known as Greenfield Township, a rural area far outside the city limits at the time.Īccording to the records of the State Historic Preservation Office, Smith first appeared in the area in 1829, bought a plot of land outside the city, cleared it and built his cabin soon after, leading some to speculate it was built as early as 1830. There’s not a lot known about its history.

The only hint that the house is really old is the irregular brick chimney that pokes crookedly out of the roof. He probably didn’t realize it’s a cabin either, because it’s wrapped in a layer of vinyl siding, which covers a layer of Styrofoam insulation, which lies over a wall of thin boards, which prevent the cabin’s old original logs from revealing themselves. If he did, he might not have spray-painted his street name in bright red letters on the house’s white walls, nor would he have vandalized it with other graffiti idiocies. Mack-I-Lot probably doesn’t know its story.

“It’s been hiding for however long, and once people know how old this house is and what a great story it tells about the history of Detroit, it’s got a much better chance of survival.” A canvas for a vandal “The best thing that can happen to the future of the house is for people to know its story,” Bragg said. Now it waits for someone other than a squatter to make something out of it. It fell into foreclosure and abandonment, then into the city’s hands a couple of years ago. In fact, until just recently, the cabin had always just been the home for a string of people over its lifetime, disguised under layers of renovations, until its history was mostly forgotten. Unlike Detroit’s officially oldest home, the well-preserved, 1826-built Trowbridge House on Jefferson, the James Smith farmhouse never passed through a succession of careful owners who made efforts to preserve it, never drew praise for its architecture, and didn’t enjoy a highly visible location near downtown that kept people’s attention focused on its historic significance. So, for now, it’s just another abandoned house in a city full of them. And though it’s on the city’s list to protect it from demolition, so far nobody’s been able to figure out what to do with it. The cabin is empty and abandoned, marred by graffiti and open to trespass by a number of species. “It’s one of those buildings that people who love buildings in Detroit know about through the grapevine,” said Amy Elliott Bragg, president of Preservation Wayne.

Detroit's old and crumbling city airport