14804 Grand River Avenue
Dick Chambers Chevrolet Dealership, Superior Motors, John R. Taylor Dealership, Banter Sales, Strathmoor Motor Company, Furniture Warehouse Stores, Great Lakes Furniture Company, Junior Achievement Center, Bread of Life Missionary Temple
This structure includes the addresses 14804-14812 Grand River Avenue.
In May 1930, this structure was complete. Built for Dick Chambers, Inc., a Chevrolet dealership, the building had a formal opening on May 10, 1930. The company’s old location was at Grand River and McGraw, and Chambers was the Vice President and former Secretary of the Detroit Automobile Dealer’s Association.
In addition to being home to a dealership, the structure sometimes housed community events. On September 3rd and 4th, 1931, the Northwestern Garden Club held a flower show here. There were numerous prizes available, including two hundred tulip bulbs.
I don’t think that Chambers’ dealership lasted long, as there were ads for Superior Motors in 1933, John R. Taylor’s dealership in 1934 and 1935, and Banter Sales and the Strathmoor Motor Company in 1937. There’s a chance the structure was divided into different sections; however, I’m not sure that’s the case.
In 1939, there were a few adverts for an A&P Super Market here. This may have been a misprint, or the store may have occupied the main floor. In 1940, there were adverts for Montgomery Ward & Co.’s Employment Office. There’s a chance the structure had been parted out into offices, but again, I’m not sure.
Late in 1941, the building was home to Furniture Warehouse Stores. According to their ads, the operation was the largest furniture center in northwest Detroit. The store’s grand opening was held on Friday, October 24th, and Saturday, October 25th. The company was run by Louis Please, who also ran the American Auction House at 4849 Grand River. The weekly auctions were popular for small hotel owners to purchase furniture sets. Please’s Furniture Warehouse Store, pictured here, was exclusively new furniture.
By May 1946, the Great Lakes Furniture Company had taken over the space. The name likely came from the warehouse’s neighbor two parcels up Grand River, the Great Lakes Theatre, an institution in the neighborhood. From the structure pictured here’s construction until the day the theatre was demolished in 1999, ads referenced it as close to the Great Lakes Theatre. Completed in 1929, the theatre showed movies until the 1960s and was home to a theatre troop through the 1970s when a church took over. Eventually, it fell on hard times and was subsequently demolished. At one time, there were smaller structures on either side of the Great Lakes Furniture Company, but both were demolished in the 2000s.
Luckily, the structure pictured here is still standing. However, things weren’t always a walk in the park. From March 23rd through the 26th in 1949, a public auction was to liquidate the $75,000 stock of the Great Lakes Furniture Company, which had gone bankrupt.
By 1953, the structure had found a new use, which is why many remember its existence today. The Junior Achievement program had been around for a while; however, it came to Michigan in 1949. Detroit had two JA Centers, one at 18030 Mt. Elliott and another at 14812 Grand River, pictured here, which was previously at Grand River and Forrer.
Essentially, the program aimed to teach young men and women about business and how to run a successful operation. Working with kids between 15 and 21, Detroit had the second largest programs in the county behind Chicago. In a piece in the Detroit Free Press, the program was described as “an aggressive effort on the part of American businessmen to give boys and girls from 15 to 21 a better understanding of the free enterprise system.” The article went on to call it “American capitalism’s answer to the socialistic philosophy of the welfare state.”
The program offered scholarships to students ranging between $90 and $5,000 and held a ‘Future Unlimited’ banquet at the Masonic Temple in the Fountain Ballroom every May.
In 1957, the structure went through a significant renovation. Thanks to donations from Frederick A. Vollbrecht, the structure was gifted to the organization and was completely redone, including adding an auditorium, offices, and work rooms. Vollbrecht, who had supported the program for years, said, “Nothing I have ever done before has given me greater satisfaction than to be able to purchase this building for JA.” He was the Chairman of the Junior Achievement of Southeastern Michigan and died in 1962 at 79.
I assume the metal paneling was added to the structure’s facade when the renovations were completed in 1957. You could still make out Junior Achievement Center on the bottom of the metal panels until recently when they fell.
Even with a state-of-the-art structure to call home, the Junior Achievement Center’s days were numbered. I’m not certain when the group vacated the structure, but the last mention I’ve found of their existence within the walls of the building pictured here came in 1971. Likely, similar to many groups and people, the program darted for the suburbs after the Long, hot summer of 1967.
Between the Junior Achievement moving out and it becoming a church, I’m not certain what happened here. In 1984, Bread of Life Missionary Temple was founded at the hands of Reverend Mel Simpson. By 1987, the congregation was utilizing the small structure up Grand River from the one pictured here, but they may have been using this one, too. Eventually, the operation would use both simultaneously. In 1998, the Bread of Life Community Development Corporation was incorporated, and it planned to work with children in Detroit. Both had gone belly up by 2011; however, I believe both structures were vacant well before that. The smaller, uptown structure was demolished sometime around 2020. Its other neighbor down Grand River has been gone since around 2014.
Today, this structure is in poor shape and stands mostly alone on this stretch of Grand River Avenue. At some point in the late winter/early spring of 2024, a large portion of the front faux facade fell off the building, leaving a small portion on the top, hanging on for dear life. The day I shot these photographs, the wind bashed it into the brick frontage, making a painful scratching noise.
It’s hard to imagine what this block once looked like on a busy day in the city. The Great Lakes Theatre would be bustling after a showing, with some 2,000 movie patrons on the street. With an updated structure, America’s future capitalists might have been seen through the windows of the structure pictured here, figuring out how to make their next dime. The corner store would sell beers to those who had just gotten off the assembly line and soda pop to kids after a long day of playing on the street. Today, the only people hanging out on this block are those waiting for the uptown #3 Grand River bus.
The Wayne County Treasurer currently owns this structure, making me fearful for its survival. A portion of the building’s facade has collapsed into the back alley, and the side door was wide open on my recent visit. I’d love to see what this building looks like with the rest of the metal framing removed; however, I’m not sure I’ll ever get that chance.
