5729 Grand River Avenue
Walnut Exchange, Michigan State Telephone Company, Michigan Bell, Midwest Graphic, Inc.
Around 1843, Mary Margaret Roehm, 6, and her family moved to the “wilderness lying northwest of the little town of Detroit.” Her father, John William Roehm, cleared a farm and built a home for their family. The oldest surviving building in Detroit dates back to the 1820s, but only a handful of structures from this era remain.
This isn’t a story about the Roehm house, but it isn’t often that we know the history of a plot of land that far back in time. This information was pulled from Mary Margaret’s obituary in April 1930 and is a testament to why writing things down matters.
I’m not certain how long the Roehm Farm House stood, but at some point, it was demolished. It was near the intersection of Grand River and Maybury Grand Avenues.
Just after the turn of the century, the Michigan State Telephone Company purchased a vacant plot of land that the Roehm’s once called home.
The MSTC was incorporated in 1904 to consolidate American Bell’s Michigan operations under one name. In 1908, they built a branch exchange on the vacant land they had purchased a few years prior. It was named the Walnut Exchange.
Today, it’s hard to imagine a time when a telephone exchange was necessary. Back then, an exchange was essentially a manual switchboard where an actual person connected one line to another. A city would have a handful of exchanges around town, and by the 1900s, there were a few companies running wires, which confused things a bit.
Within two years of completion, residents were already calling for another to be built in northwest Detroit due to the rapid population boom. In 1911 and 1914, additional equipment was installed.
In 1915, a third story was added to the Walnut Exchange. When it opened in 1909, there were 900 wires, and with the addition, there were 4,000.
A little over a year later, the Garfield Exchange was erected at Grand River and Chope Place, across from where Bishop DIY Skatepark is today. By 1924, the combined lines from the Garfield and Walnut exchanges doubled the number of any other two exchanges in Detroit.
I’m not sure when Michigan Bell left this building, but I’d guess it was in the mid-1930s
Over the years, I’ve found several businesses and organizations listed at the address. It had a furniture warehouse store in the late 30s and early 40s. The Hansen Advertising Agency had space here at one time. A church called First Nazarene was even listed as holding masses inside.
Most recently, 5729 Grand River was home to Midwest Graphic, Inc., a company run by William Donald Blaul Jr., who eventually lived in Algonac. When first incorporated in February 1969, the business was located in Livonia. None of the documents I’ve been able to dig up list its registered address at the Walnut Exchange, but there used to be signs for the company on the structure, and online documentation lists it on Grand River Avenue.
After Midwest Graphic, I’m not certain what happened to the structure. Google Street View from 2007 shows the building in disarray.
Around 2013, the single-story building next door was demolished. Its disappearance gives the Walnut Exchange a lonesome appearance, a small slice of a structure, all alone on the corner of a large vacant plot of land.
In 2014, artist Nicole Macdonald brought her Detroit Portrait Series to its tattered windows. The Contemporary Art Institute of Detroit and the Detroit Broadcasting Company presented the murals with support from the Chalfonte Foundation. The nine-by-seven-foot pieces depict people important to Detroit and Michigan’s history. Macdonald has similar murals on a building at Trumbull and I94 and formerly at Gratiot and St. Joseph. The latter structure collapsed in 2022.
For some time, 5729 Grand River was owned by the Contemporary Art Institute of Detroit. On their watch, the building fell further into disrepair, but graffiti was buffed within reason, and the structure was secured most of the time.
As recently as last week, I saw someone inside the lobby doing some work. It’s currently listed through O’Connor Real Estate’s Brittany Gonzales for $90,000. The listing states that it needs a new roof and complete interior rehab. There are no photographs of the inside on the page.
On Google Maps, you can see that some work on the roof may have been completed. It’s a flat structure, a design feature that is often the demise of buildings that aren’t looked after.
As handsome as it is, I’m not holding my breath for the renovation plans. Although positive things are happening in nearby neighborhoods, the Walnut Exchange is on a corner island behind 96 and 94. Von’s Express, a vacant liquor store across the street, and SHAR House, an organization that helps those struggling with addiction, are its only neighbors.
Around a century ago, workers were still switching phone lines here. A century before that, it was an uncharted wilderness. What do you think will be there in 2123?
