10355 Hamilton Avenue
Detroit Savings Bank, The Detroit Bank and Trust Co., Jaye Dee’s Mart, Sevonty Restoration
If a bank is never in the news, business is probably going well. Unfortunately, that was never the case for the operation at 10355 Hamilton Avenue.
The structure was built for the Detroit Savings Bank and completed in 1920. Albert Kahn got the nod as the architect.
From early in its existence, the establishment was consistently robbed. I’m sure good business was done here between thefts, but as this piece started, you don’t get newspaper articles for good business.
In 1926, the Detroit Free Press reported that the bank was robbed of $6,000. Tellers in the building at the time said that it was the same man who had hit them six weeks earlier for $5,000, and police believed that it was the same man who had robbed the Peninsular State Bank several weeks before, making out with $14,000. Assuming they were correct and these were all jobs done by the same man, their keep was $25K, or roughly $420K today.
In 1961, the bank, then called The Detroit Bank and Trust Co., was robbed of $545.
Ironically, in 1967, the exterior of the building was used to shoot a commercial that depicted a bank robbery for a cigarette company. The Detroit Free Press reported that the agency in charge of the shoot was W.B. Doner & Co, now just Doner Company, who were later responsible for Mazda’s Zoom Zoom tagline. They had approval from the Detroit Bank and Trust Co. to use the exterior before it opened for the day.
The idea for the ad was that after robbing a bank, the getaway driver had been put into a trance by a cigarette advertisement, so they were caught by police. After everything, the thieves weren’t that disappointed because they could smoke cigarettes in jail.
The bank knew about the shoot planned for that morning, but an innocent passerby thought that the heist was the real deal and called the police. Seven cop cars arrived, and officers came out with guns ready to stop the robbery.
The three actors hired for the gig threw their toy machine guns on the ground and put their hands in the air—still wearing their 1920s gangster costumes. I’m not confident that this story tells the whole truth or whether it was a publicity stunt of sorts—but it made for some good photos in the paper.
Even more ironically yet, the bank was once again robbed in 1975.
At some point after that, the bank left the property. Jaye Dee’s Mart operated a liquor, grocery, lottery, and hot food establishment at the location for several years. I’m not sure when it opened, but I believe it was open until the late 2000s.
Although it’s a slightly different spelling, I’ve always thought about J Dilla when passing this building. Before the switch on his 2001 album Welcome 2 Detroit, he went by Jay Dee.
Around 2020, the building was purchased by Sevonty Restoration LLC, headed by Andrea Sevonty. They are working on converting it into a place for their business, which restores leaded and stained glass windows and creates new stained glass windows. I have yet to notice any major changes in passing the structure.
