5031 Grandy Street
Mazer-Cressman Cigar Company, Detroit Housing Commission, Detroit Welfare Department, WPA Office, Prince & Co., Sherman Laboratories, Neighborhood Services Department, Detroit Human Services Department, City of Detroit Storage
This manufacturing facility was home to one of Detroit's most important sit-down strikes. Before we discuss the building’s place in the labor movement, we need to understand the life of Jacob Mazer.
Who Was Jacob Mazer?
The Mazer family immigrated to the United States from Russia in the late 1870s or early 1880s. They found a home in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where Mazer grew up. Jacob became infatuated with cycling early in his life and became a leading racer in Pennsylvania. After basketball was invented by James Naismith in 1891 and spread across the country like wildfire, Mazer picked up the sport, preferring it to cycling.
Mazer then served in the Spanish-American War and relocated to Detroit afterward. According to the Michigan Sports Hall of Fame, in which he was inducted in 1967, Mazur put together one of the greatest amateur teams of the era, coaching and starring on the squad. “Over a ten-year period averaging over 30 games per year against the best college and club teams, they lost only seven games and won the state championship in 1918.” Decades later, the Detroit Free Press still called him one of the greatest players of all time.
Detroit Free Press, 1906
On Thursday, April 5, 1906, Mazer (29) married Miss Hazel Berger Blanke (18) at the home of his bride’s parents. Off the hardwood, Mazer and his brother got involved in the cigar business. Despite going big into the tobacco industry, Mazer was said not to enjoy smoking. He was quoted in the Detroit Free Press, “I suppose it’s my misfortune that I wasn’t born with a liking for tobacco. The fact that I don’t smoke except in self-defense is the reason my taste is quick, I suppose. A good cigar tastes as bitter to me as a poor one, but I can spot the trouble almost every time, and that is what I’m here for.”
In July 1911, the Mazer Cigar Manufacturing Company Plant near the intersection of Willis and St. Antoine was entirely destroyed by fire. Other homes nearby were taken out by the blaze, which started in a nearby barn. The Detroit Free Press reported, “As estimated by Henry Mazer, brother of Jacob, it was worth $25,000, about half covered by insurance.”
In 1916, Jacob Mazer commissioned a home for his family at 1256 Atkinson, which still stands today and is part of the Atkinson Avenue Historic District.
Cigars in Poletown East
Likely, after the fire or shortly thereafter, the Mazer Cigar Manufacturing Company, still led by Jacob and Henry Mazer, relocated to the east side into a neighborhood we today call Poletown East. The neighborhood was mostly Polish immigrants by this point, and numerous cigar factories were nearby. These facilities had been built to employ (as the companies would put it) or exploit (as we now look at it) the first and second-generation immigrants.
According to research from Wayne State University’s Ethnic Layers of Detroit Project, as the cigar manufacturing industry in Detroit grew into the second largest in the United States behind Tampa, Florida, it heavily relied on cheap labor. Polish women became the most common workers in these plants, and they were often paid extraordinarily poorly, faced excruciating working conditions, and were sexually harassed by their male superiors.
Polish women organized a strike at the cigar factories in June 1916, temporarily improving conditions.
By 1918, the Mazer Cigar Manufacturing Company was undoubtedly located at the present location of the structure pictured here, though it was a more primitive, four-story structure.
The Sanborn Fire Insurance Map, 1921
In September 1918, the Mazer Cigar Company was still expanding, forging a contract with a distributor in Kansas City that would enable them to produce at least 100,000,000 cigars per year, making it one of the largest manufacturers in the Midwest.
On October 22, 1918, Hazel Mazer, Jacob’s wife, died. She was a valiant supporter of the war effort, often working with the Red Cross. She contracted Spanish Influenza, got pneumonia, and passed.
Into the Great Depression, Polish women at the plants across Detroit continued to see harsh working conditions and little pay.
On February 6, 1924, the Mazer Cigar Company Manufacturing Plant at the corner of Grandy and Theodore went up in flames. The fire started in the facility's basement and engulfed the whole structure, and numerous neighbors had to flee their homes. The five-alarm fire caused the factory floors to cave in, sending firefighters scurrying away from the blaze as timbers scattered into the streets below. According to officials, the structure was covered by insurance.
Despite losing their primary manufacturing facility, the business continued to grow. In February 1924, it was announced that the Mazer Cigar Manufacturing Company of Detroit would amalgamate with the Allen R. Cressman’s Sons Company from Philadelphia to create one of the largest cigar companies in the country.
Lancaster New Era, 1924
According to the News Herald in Perkasie, Pennsylvania, “Henry Mazer becomes president of the new company…Joseph F. Callagher and Charles N. Cressman of Allen R. Cressman’s Sons are vice presidents of the merged companies; Jacob Mazer is secretary and treasurer, and B. Frank Cressman is assistant secretary and treasurer.”
A Modern Cigar Plant
In Detroit, a new manufacturing facility would soon rise from the ashes. On Saturday, October 12, 1924, fifteen hundred employees of the newly formed Mazer-Cressman Cigar Company congregated to celebrate the formal opening of the new plant at 5031 Grandy Street. The structure, designed by Albert Kahn, towered over the neighborhood, mainly consisting of frame houses built in the late 1890s and early 1900s.
The Sanborn Fire Insurance Map, 1950
By the early 1930s, it appears that Jacob Mazer had moved on from the company. According to the Detroit Free Press, “Jacob Mazer, who formerly was associated with the Mazer-Cressman Co., organized the J. Mazer Sons Co. early in 1933, with his two sons, William M. and Robert N., president and vice president, respectively.” Jacob Mazer stayed in Detroit for the rest of his life, remarried, and died on July 26, 1958.
Even without the greatest basketball player of all time on the payroll, Mazer-Cressman Cigar Company chugged on. However, management would soon have a huge problem on their hands.
The Polish Sit-Down Strikes
On February 18, 1937, a sit-down strike was orchestrated at the Mazer-Cressman Cigar Company Plant on Grandy Street. According to the Detroit Free Press, about 400 women and girls “refused to give up their benches.” Multiple plants began striking the same week, and strikes would soon idle all the plants in the area.
Unlike most of the sit-down strikes of the era, no union was responsible for the action. This group of primarily Polish women rallied together to start the protest, and almost all of the major cigar manufacturing facilities in Detroit saw some sort of slump in production. By Sunday, February 21, the CIO, or Congress of Industrial Organizations, backed and represented the strikers. Eventually, the group was represented by the United Cigar Workers of America, chartered by the CIO.
Some of the strike organizers and CIO affiliates were set to meet with Mazer-Cressman Cigar Company officials on Monday, February 22. The striking women remained in the plant.
Unable to come to an agreement, the strikers continued to occupy the plant into the week. According to the Detroit Free Press, the affected plants were “the Essex Cigar Co., 5247 Grandy Ave.; Tegge-Jackman Cigar Co., 4771 Dubois St.; Mazer-Cressman Cigar Co., 5013 Grandy Ave.; General Cigar Co., 2682 E. Forest Ave.; Bernard Schwartz Cigar Corp., 2180 E. Milwaukee Ave., and Webster-Eisenlohr, Inc., 5535 Grandy Ave.”
Today, the only plant listed that still stands is 5013 Grandy, pictured here.
Tensions rose by the following weekend, as the Detroit Free Press reported that the Vice President of the Mazer-Cressman Cigar Company told the City of Detroit that they would sue the city “for any damage to property or injury to persons which might result from the sit-down strike in the company’s factory at 5031 Grandy Ave.”
The strikers and management reached a tentative agreement on March 3 that promised union recognition and a two percent raise. However, the sit-down strike continued on Monday, April 5, 1937, when the strikers felt management had refused to honor the terms of that agreement.
The plant remained closed, and 150 employees demonstrated in front of it on Thursday.
The strike continued into the following week; however, the courts issued a blow to the strikers. Circuit Judge Arthur Webster signed a show-cause order that ordered the removal of the 123 strikers as petitioned by the Mazer-Cressman Cigar Company because “the strikers, the U.A.W., the United Cigar Workers Union, Local No. 1, and the officers of these unions had failed to live up to the agreement they had made with the company following the strike Feb. 18, after which they agreed to negotiate.”
Strikers returned to work Friday, April 16th, after a three percent wage increase was instituted. According to the Detroit Free Press, the increase would stand until “a general wage scale can be established in the Detrot cigar industry."
Numerous strikes were ongoing in the area, causing Governor Frank Murphy to get involved. Murphy said, "Conditions in the industry are unsatisfactory. We hope by getting all the parties together that they can be corrected.” Generally sympathetic towards unions and labor, Murphy would later serve as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States and is most known for his strong dissent in the Korematsu v. United States case, criticizing the upholding of internment camps for Japanese Americans as the “legalization of racism.”
The meeting with Governor Murphy went well, and most of the cigar factories had contracts in place to resume working in Poletown.
On May 22, 1937, the United Automobile Worker Newspaper printed an article that stated that “there is only one company which is operating under an agreement with the [United Cigar Workers of America] union. This is Mazer-Cressman Cigar Manufacturing Company, which manufactures Humo, Dime Bank, Manuel, and Counselor cigars.”
Despite the hard-earned victory for Detroit’s Polish immigrants, the jobs wouldn’t last long. According to the Grand Rapids Press, by the summer of 1937, the E. Rosenwald & Bros. Company of New York owned the plant. They planned to close the entire facility because of “exorbitant union wage demands and chaotic labor conditions” and would sell the factory.
Many of Detroit’s cigar manufacturers couldn’t remain profitable if they didn’t take advantage of their workforce. Additionally, as the twentieth century continued, cigars fell out of fashion for everyday use, and cigarettes became popular. This led to the closure of Detroit’s cigar factories, leading to many of the structures transitioning to other uses or being demolished.
Today, the only large-scale cigar manufacturing facilities still standing in Detroit are the San Telmo Cigar Manufacturing Company #2 Building at 5716 Michigan Avenue, Brown Brothers Cigar Factory at 119 State Street, Globe Tobacco Building at 407 East Fort, Banner Cigar Company at 2941 East Warren, Hemmeter Cigar Factory at 230-242 E. Grand River, and the Mazer-Cressman Cigar Company at 5031 Grandy, pictured here.
City Ownership - Part 1
By April 1938, the City of Detroit occupied at least a portion of the structure for use as the WPA Survey Headquarters. The organization paid $600 a month, roughly $13,500 in February 2025, for the lease. By 1939, the Housing Commission Offices, which were associated with the WPA, were located here.
In 1939, Detroit’s white-collar WPA projects were housed at 5031 Grandy, pictured here. Max R. Barton, the Welfare Department Secretary and WPA Coordinator, hoped Detroit Common Council would approve moving to a larger space. At Grandy and Theodore, the office employed 870, but he felt they could hire up to 1,800 if the space allowed.
By 1943, a portion of the structure was in use by Prince & Co., Inc. as a printing plant for mail advertising. The company was constantly hiring and advertised pleasant working conditions. The plant was active until at least 1952.
In October 1952, the Detroit Welfare Department was considering purchasing the structure. They estimated the cost to outfit it for their needs was $130,000, and the building would have cost them $160,000, for a total of $290,000. Estimates for a new building to house the department were $1,000,000, significantly higher than the all-in price for the former Mazer-Cressman Cigar Company Plant. Still, City of Detroit officials didn’t want to move into an old building. The plan was to put the entire department under one roof, which was currently spread around the city.
In November, the structure was still for sale or lease and would remain so at least through October 1953. The advertisements listed it as a “Beautiful solid brick, reinforced concrete building with freight and passenger elevators.”
Sherman Laboratories
By February 1960, the structure was home to Sherman Laboratories, a company Dr. George H. Sherman founded in 1907. Arthur Sherman, Sr. planned to take over the business from his father; however, he took a different route after his son developed hay fever. The family began spending time up north to help his condition, and after getting annoyed with tent trailers, he invented the first travel trailer, called the Covered wagon, in 1929 with wooden walls and a canvas top.
The company debuted its prototype at the Detroit Auto Show in 1930 and saw success in the years leading into World War II. After transitioning back from wartime production, the company never started producing trailers again, and Arthur Sherman, Sr. went back into the chemicals industry. The company was located at the former Mazer-Cressman Cigar Company Plant until at least 1967, and it was sometimes used for testing products on small animals.
City Ownership - Part 2
By 1971, the structure was home to the Model Neighborhood Development Corporation, a non-profit housing group. The City of Detroit contracted the group to operate a project that was “designed to promote and stimulate housing development in Detroit’s Model Neighborhood area,” which was 9.6 square miles bounded by Grand River, the Penn Central Railroad tracks, Hamtramck, Mount Elliott, and East Jefferson. The money in the program was to be used for loans, land grants, and demolition grants.
Around this time, the structure was also used for storage and various other programs. It was likely purchased to bring numerous city agencies under one roof, as the plan had been to do in 1952. By the mid-1970s, the Neighborhood Services Department was housed in the structure, too.
Though this building’s most important history came in the 1930s, most former residents remember it for another reason: government cheese.
Reagan’s Government Cheese
In the early 1980s, the United States government had a problem. They had 560 million pounds of surplus cheese, and the media had a field day. They demanded answers as to why so much surplus cheese was sitting in government storage when food insecurity and rising prices were hitting Americans harder than a stack of bricks, all while the administration was cutting food stamps.
The Ronald Reagan Administration’s answer was to hand out 30 million pounds of cheese to any state that asked for it, intending it to go to the people who needed it most. In Detroit, the cheese went to food stamp recipients, though it didn’t take money out of your monthly allotment of stamps, and you could pick up your government cheese at the former Mazer-Cressman Cigar Company Plant and other locations like Focus Hope. The cheese was said to be worth $12 and came with a list of recipes.
A City Within A City
In January 1983, the City of Detroit’s Food Depot was located within the structure, and food drives were held there to feed Detroiters suffering from the rise in hunger that plagued the city during this era.
By 1983, the Detroit Home Weatherization Program, operated by the Neighborhood Services Department, was also located inside the structure. The program helped low-income Detroiters better weatherize their homes.
Throughout the 1980s, the structure was home to the main Neighborhood Services Office, Child Care Co-ordinating Council of Detroit-Wayne County, the Surplus Food office, Head Start Programming, weatherization programs, and the Emergency Child Care Assistance Fund, which provided short-term financial help for low-income parents in times of crisis.
According to the Detroit Free Press, by 1993, the Neighborhood Services Department’s main goal was to offer “Intake and referral services for weatherization, drug abuse, heat bank, and food programs, for education programs for veterans, and for senior citizen programs, for education programs for veterans, and for senior citizen programs for low to moderate income persons.”
The Human Services Department
By the early 2000s, the structure was home to Detroit’s Department of Human Services, a Detroit Community Action Agency.
A mural on the south side of the structure has become a ghost sign
In 2011, the Detroit Human Services Department contracted Clark & Associates for $1.2 million “exclusively to pay its employees to assist with the city’s food and clothing assistance programs,” according to the Detroit Free Press. However, Freep’s investigation showed that the nonprofit spent $210,344 of the contract on furniture that ended up at the Human Services Department Office at 5031 Grandy, pictured here. This violated a city ordinance that required City Council approval for purchases over $25,000. Greg Murray, the vice president and administrative representative for the Senior Accountants, Analysts, and Appraisers Association, was quoted in the paper, “A department that gave a no-bid contract to a company gets more than $200,000 in furniture?…there’s something wrong.” There was an investigation into the issue.
In October 2011, Mayor Dave Bing said that the conditions at the Department of Human Services Building at Grandy and Theodore were in dire shape and announced an emergency move from the building to the Herman Kiefer Health Complex near the Lodge and Clairmount. Detroit City Council felt this was an attempt to sidestep their approval, and they reconvened and voted against funds for the move. However, council members later said they likely would have voted to approve if Bing had followed the proper channels. The move to Herman Kiefer would have cost $641,000 in renovations. Despite the City Council’s vote, Bing continued with the move anyway, stating that the contract they had stopped was for renovations, not moving expenses.
In 2012, a Detroit Department of Human Services office was listed on the fifth floor of 1151 Taylor Street, Herman Kiefer Hospital. To my knowledge, the former Mazer-Cressman Cigar Company Plant at 5031 Grandy Street has been vacant and used for storage since the Human Services office moved out in 2011.
In the years following the office’s closure, the structure has slowly started to decay. Windows have been smashed, pieces of the Albert Kahn-designed facade crumble onto the sidewalk below, and many windows are open. Still, the city employs a security team that visits the structure daily, and the building appears mostly secure despite being in poor shape.
A Case For Historic Preservation
I believe the former Mazer-Cressman Cigar Company Plant should be designated a City of Detroit Historic District. Detroit’s most famous architect designed it, and it was the site of one of the most critical sit-down strikes in the Motor City's history. Additionally, it was an essential life preserver for Detroiters when deindustrialization and depopulation ravaged communities. Few of these structures remain in Detroit’s neighborhoods, and preserving this building should be a top priority for preservationists.
When the historical designation of properties in Detroit is mentioned, some associate the process with hurting development. Of the six large-scale cigar manufacturing plants in Detroit mentioned earlier that are still standing, four have received designation from the City of Detroit, which prevents demolition and improper renovations.
The two that haven’t are two blocks apart—the Banner Cigar Company at 2941 East Warren and the Mazer-Cressman Cigar Company at 5031 Grandy, pictured here.
The Banner Cigar Company is right down the street
Only four of the six plants are actively being used, and they’re the four that have been designated. Three of the plants are downtown, which is impactful. However, all four structures are in fantastic shape and are occupied. The two that aren’t designated are located just a mile and a half from the intersection of Woodward and Warren, the heart of Midtown.
One of the most significant hurdles for preservation is ownership, and the City of Detroit owns this structure. There’s no reason for it not to be designated so future generations can learn from and admire its architecture and history.
