4200 Chene Street
Edward Hildebrandt’s Saloon, Barber Shop, Louis Lachajewsk’s Bar, O’Dell’s Lounge
This structure contains 4200-04 Chene and 2601-07 East Willis.
Trigger warning: this piece includes descriptions of domestic violence.
On January 12, 1903, Edward Hildebrandt married Anna Kopitzke in Detroit. Edward was a salesman for the C. H. Ritter Company, and the couple lived on Chene Street, a short distance from the structure pictured here. At times in the paper, Edward’s last name was spelled Hilderbrandt and Anna’s Kopitzski.
On November 29, 1907, their marriage ended. According to Hildebrandt, his wife told him she had been intimate with Joe Lok, a former bartender at Hildebrandt’s saloon. As he worked, Anna often looked after the bar, sometimes tending to it herself when there wasn’t anyone else to work. Joe Lok said that Hildebrandt was never home, and when he was, “he was always accusing his wife…as far as I know, he had no reason to.”
After the admission, Hildebrandt said he would ask for a warrant for her arrest. He said that, because of this, Anna swallowed carbolic acid, a highly toxic chemical that was once somewhat common in suicides. Hildebrandt called Doctor R. L Pfeiffer and, still determined, left for Chene Street Station after he and a policeman arrived to tend to his wife. She died while he was off at the police station. She was 26. The couple had two children.
According to Anna’s mother, Mrs. August Kopitzke, Hildebrandt laughed as he looked at the corpse and said, “Don’t you cry around here, now. She’s dead, and it’s all right. We had a fight, that’s all.” Mrs. Kopitzke said that her daughter had told her she was afraid for her life and that Hildebrandt had beaten her until she was black and blue on multiple occasions.
Anna was buried on November 30, just a day after her death, but it almost didn’t happen. The Detroit Free Press reported that there was a ‘Near-Riot At Burial’ when neighborhood residents took to the streets to protest. A crowd gathered outside Hildebrandt’s home, where the family was mourning. Mrs. Kopitzke had begged her son-in-law to postpone the funeral so that the police could make an investigation, but he refused. According to the Detroit Free Press, “the incipient riot was stopped by Police from Chene Street Station,” and the body was taken to Mt. Olivet Cemetery.
The Sunday after the funeral, Hildebrandt brought in the bottle that his late wife allegedly drank from to end her life, stating that he had found it under the mattress in her room. However, Patrolman Doemer said that he and Dr. Pfeiffer searched the entire house, including the woman’s bed, looking under the mattress and in the pillowcases for the bottle to determine the cause of her sickness and found nothing. This, paired with how hasty her burial was and Hildebrandt’s alleged past abuse, informed Mrs. Kopitzke’s battle to investigate further and was the talk of the neighborhood.
I’m not sure what happened to her case; however, Hildebrandt’s trouble with marriage wasn’t over yet.
In November 1908, Hilderbrandt, 26, married Margaret Lange, 24, less than a year after his previous wife’s death. At the time, he was listed as a real estate agent and builder.
I believe the structure pictured here was built for or by Hildebrandt around 1910 to house his saloon in Poletown East.
In September 1911, George Hildebrandt, Anna’s son, died at eight.
The saloon at the structure pictured here ran somewhat smoothly until prohibition took effect in Michigan in 1918, and in 1921, the couple was having marital issues. The court proceedings ran into 1922 when they were settled. Hildebrandt wanted a divorce from his wife, Margaret, as he said that she drank excessively and refused to keep house. She contested the suit and said he forced her to tend the bar and get a job at a cigar factory when the bar closed during prohibition. The suit claimed that the couple co-owned $64,000 in real estate.
In June 1922, the courts gave Hildebrandt a divorce from his wife. Margaret received $35 a week in alimony, a sum of cash, and the deed to 4200 Chene Street, pictured here, which was valued at $15,000 at the time. Hildebrandt received a two-family dwelling on Newport Street and their cottage on Erbie Street. The Michigan Supreme Court docket in March 1923 listed Edward A. Hildebrandt vs. Margaret Hildebrandt, but I’ve never found anything else about that in the paper. In September 1923, Hildebrandt married his third wife, Evelyn.
At some point, the structure pictured here may have had two storefronts: one on Chene and another on Willis. The living space upstairs appears only to have been one unit.
In 1925, there was a barbershop here, and the last mention that I’ve found of it came in 1929 when it was for sale. Just the business was available, not the structure.
In 1927, someone who lived here was trying to find a lost dog and was offering a reward for it. The dog was a large brown hound, and it was lost in September. The ads ended in October.
In September 1930, a real estate advert in the Detroit Free Press listed Edward Hildebrandt at the address as a ‘builder of fine homes.’ There was only one listing, so it may have been a misprint. On November 27, 1931, Edward Hildebrandt died at 49 from pulmonary tuberculosis.
In April 1939, the structure was robbed. Richard Thomas, alias James Dubois, was identified by Martin Mielke, and the 19-year-old pointed out at least 19 places he had robbed, including 4200 Chene Street, pictured here. He had already spent time in Jackson, and police said that he admitted preferring “to break into homes above beer gardens in the hope that the beer-garden proprietors lived there and had cash on the premises.” At the structure pictured here, Thomas robbed Louis Lachajewski of $800 and a revolver.
In September 1960, Mary Lachajewski witnessed a murder. Joseph Anthony Koss, 68, a chronically ill unemployed bachelor, was waiting at the bus stop at Chene and Willis for his sister, as he did every day. 12 years prior, his sister had had her purse snatched, so he walked her home from her job as a cleaner at the Detroit Board of Education Building. Mary Lachajewski saw Koss sitting on the steps of the barbershop at the corner when a tall young man approached him. Koss gave him a cigarette, and then there was a flash of light, and Koss fell to the floor. Koss had just 30 cents on him when he was murdered.
A few minutes later, a kid was picked up nearby who matched the description, had traces of nitrate on his hand, and had the same kind of cigarettes that Koss smoked. The youth was later released, as police substantiated his alibi.
By the 1960s, Chene Street had already started to see noticeable change. Residents had started heading for the suburbs in the 1940s, and the trickle had become a fast-flowing river by the 1960s as former Detroiters left the city chasing lower taxes and picket fences with some longing to live in all-white communities. Additionally, the construction of the highways made it easier for people to live in the suburbs and commute into the city for work. The same construction that allowed affluent Detroiters to leave the city but still work there had displaced many others, including a large portion of the Motor City’s black population. Detroit’s Black Bottom neighborhood was dispersed around Detroit, and many relocated to the neighborhoods flanking Chene Street.
O’Dell’s Lounge opened in the early 1970s at the structure pictured here. I was able to talk with Odell Rowan, the founders’ son, about the history of the establishment, and the overriding theme of our conversation was family and community.
Prior to opening O’Dell’s Lounge, the family had a small restaurant on Riopelle Street near Eastern Market. O’Dell Rowan was a meat packer at Thorne Apple Valley, located in Eastern Market, near the Dequindre Cut. His wife, Sarah, was a homemaker but was involved with the establishments.
A flyer for the 4th-anniversary celebration of Odell’s Lounge indicates that the business opened in 1973. The party was three nights long, from August 25-27, 1977. “3 big nights of fun, food, & live entertainment…Disco music by ‘Tempin Tim’…2 nights of entertainment with ‘Grady Solomon,’ female impersonator.” The hostesses were Sarah (Rowan), Jean, Connie, Gwen, and Bumpsie. The hosts were Odell (Rowan), Charles, Jimmy, Ben, Lewis, and Tim. Tempin Tim Dinkins spun music there in 1976, 1977, and 1980. He said that “we all loved the club and enjoyed ourselves, especially Odell’s famous chicken wings.”
Odell said that it was still a strong community when his parents moved to Chene Street in 1967. The family lived upstairs until around 1989, and the Rowans operated the bar downstairs. After the Rowan family moved elsewhere in the city, they rented the upstairs unit out.
In talking with Odell, I gathered that, though this was a neighborhood establishment, people from around the city stopped in for a drink or food, from Anita Baker to kids from the street. Though the family was operating a business, they often made sure that people without money could eat and let people run up tabs before payday. O’Dell’s Lounge was for the community, and that extended out past Chene Street.
During the crack epidemic of the 1980s and 1990s, O’Dell’s Lounge was a place for Detroiters to feel secure and have a good time. The family often hired people from the neighborhood to work at the bar who might not have been able to find employment otherwise. Around 1998, Odell took over from his parents. His father had diabetes and had a stroke, so he wasn’t as involved, but his mother, Sarah, was still involved at the bar.
When I asked Odell if there were any changes when he took over the bar, he said the only significant difference was the music. His parents were big on rhythm and blues, and, having been raised on hip-hop and rap, he played more of that music at O’Dell’s Lounge. It was still a place for the community to go, even as Chene Street changed. Additionally, this era of O’Dell’s was known for $1 Long Island iced teas, which was something Odell brought to the table.
Around 2010, the structure suffered a fire. Odell remodeled the interior and got the business up and running again; however, he said it didn’t feel the same after the fire. Additionally, O’Dell’s Lounge was his parents’ dream, not his, so he left the business and the property.
After O’Dell’s Lounge closed, the establishment’s legacy lives on through the memories made by people who frequented it and through the original owners’ children. Odell is a part of the Ninth Precinct Community Relation Council and is running for City Council in Detroit’s Third District. Additionally, he hopes to get the O’Dell’s Lounge property back from the city and save it for future generations with the help of people who loved the bar.
Since O’Dell’s closed, the structure has fallen into disrepair. With the City’s ownership of the structure, the fact that it’s still standing is shocking. The amount of money that would have to be spent on the building ensures that the savior would have to be looking for a passion project, which is precisely what Odell described to me.
The corner is more intact than most in this part of Detroit. Sweet Kingdom Baptist Church owns the brick structure across the street and is currently used by local nonprofit groups. The home kitty corner appears to be in use in one form or another and is in good shape. Salvaging O’Dell’s Lounge would be immense, but it’ll take a lot of work. Still, in my humble opinion, that work is worth doing.
