8643 Van Dyke Avenue
Peoples Wayne County Bank, Van Dyke Machine Products, Bank of the Commonwealth, Brewster Old Timers
In the 1920s, a bank building was constructed at the corner of Van Dyke and Genoa. I’m not certain who built it, but I assume it may have been the Peoples Wayne County Bank, which resided there by 1928.
By the late 1930s, the property was for sale or lease. The adverts state that it’s 2,500 square feet with a balcony, full basement, steam heat, and fireproof construction. The price to purchase it was $12,000, or roughly $250,000 today.
By March 1943, a company called Van Dyke Machine Products was utilizing the space. I’m unsure in what capacity they used the bank building, but their advertisements for hiring workers were frequent. Many read ‘Inexperienced Help For War Work,’ which indicates how mobilized Detroit was for the war effort—even unused bank buildings were helping the cause.
By the 1960s, the structure was used as a bank again. This time, it was a branch of the Bank of the Commonwealth. In 1963, Mrs. Lillian Jacques, who had been with the bank since 1941, was made the bank’s first female branch manager.
In April 1970, it was robbed. Shortly after, a police officer saw a man hide a pistol behind a tree at St. Cyril and Genoa, a block east of the bank. The man, John Green, was arrested and identified as the thief by Patricia Gray, the teller at the branch. He was only 20 years old.
I’m not certain when the branch closed for good, but Comerica acquired the Bank of the Commonwealth in 1983, so they came into ownership of the structure at that time.
A few years later (before 1987), Comerica gave the building to a non-profit called the Brewster Old Timers. To understand this group, we will have to go back in time a few decades.
Originally built as a library, the Central Community Center opened with a brand new addition in 1929. Its first caretaker was Leon ‘Toy’ Wheeler, Detroit’s first non-white recreation manager. The building would later be named after him, but for most of its life, it was known as the Brewster Recreation Center—named after the street corner it sits on and the housing projects that once surrounded it.
The center was a popular place for kids, who were primarily black, to swim, play basketball and baseball, and, most desirably, learn to box. The most famous kid to come out of Brewster Rec would later earn the nickname the Brown Bomber—Joe Louis. His story has been told thousands of times—but he wasn’t the only one training at Brewster. Thanks to role models like Leon ‘Toy’ Wheeler, the recreation center was a place for kids to forget about the world around them and become adults in the process.
If Wheeler’s goal was to turn boys into men, he succeeded. By 1958/59, enough Brewster alumni had grown up and had the wherewithal, both financially and morally, to try and make a difference in the world—and the Brewster Old Timers were born.
Initially, the group had a space in the recreation center they grew up going to. The non-profit organized a scholarship for students who might not typically be able to go to or afford college, eventually giving away over a million dollars in scholarships.
The Brewster Old Timers hosted sporting events for Detroit athletes, held award ceremonies to recognize Detroiters who had gone above and beyond in their field, sent kids to camps in the summertime when school wasn’t in session, and held events in the wintertime to ensure people had hats, gloves, and coats.
In 1986, Gilbert Frank Webb, president of the organization for 17 years, passed away. His obituary said that “the culmination of his most recent efforts—acquisition of a bank building on Van Dyke to serve as the Brewster Old Timers’ clubhouse—was to be in May, when it would be ready for use.”
At the time, the Brewster Old Timers numbered nearly 200 strong, and the group continued to focus on community service. However, most of those who once attended the now Brewster-Wheeler Recreation Center no longer lived near it. By the 1980s, Detroit’s downtown core was suffering.
The location on Van Dyke was more convenient for members and offered no time restrictions. The group liked to play cards together at the clubhouse, and they’d have to leave when the Recreation Center closed—at their new space, this wasn’t an issue.
To be a club member, you must have attended the Brewster Recreation Center. When it opened in 1929, the neighborhood surrounding it was poor but dense. Thousands of kids lived within walking distance of its doors—which meant that the number of eligible club members was at its highest. As Detroit’s population decreased, so did the number of children walking through Brewster’s doors. The recreation center closed for good around 2006.
Although hundreds—maybe even thousands of eligible members still reside in Detroit—the rallying cry for the non-profit eventually lost its gusto. The members continued to age and eventually passed away. The most recent annual report for the non-profit was in 2001 and was marked dissolved on official documents in 2004.
Over the years, numerous obituaries in the Detroit Free Press have requested that donations be made to the Brewster Old Timers Scholarship Fund. This is a testament to what the group and causes meant to members—and their families.
8643 Van Dyke Avenue has seen better days. Around the end of the new millennium’s first decade, the building was continuously broken into to be scrapped and vandalized. Although secure today—a peek through the window shows what burglars took, and the havoc nature can wreak if you give it time.
Don’t get me wrong; these bank buildings were constructed like tanks—if someone with the money came along, it’s a salvageable property. Hopefully, it can hold out until that person arrives.
June 2024 Update
In the last week of June 2024, a demolition fence was constructed around the former bank structure.
After a few weeks of it sitting there, the demolition has been canceled, and this structure will live to see another day. This information was supplied by someone from Detroit’s BSEED office.
