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$700 / 5br - 5500ft2 - Restored Historic Home to Share (Detroit Midtown)
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Included: private room with huge walk in closet, full bathroom shared with one other person, shared use of the community rooms, garage, and outdoor spaces. Utilities are included! everything: gas, electric, water, and 1100mbps high speed WiFi
Welcome to historic Virginia Park Street. This 14 room home is shared by a maximum of 5 housemates. This home features original oak flooring throughout. All of the original windows have been restored and weatherstripped. Garage parking, all utilities, and exterior maintenance are included. The coin-free laundry room features two sets of washers and dryers.
Current housemates are professionals specializing in social work, film, fashion, and hospitality.
Please message us and introduce yourself today. We look forward to hearing from you!
Neighborhood History: Residents take intentional community design to a new level
Starting in 1894, our brick avenue and historic homes were designed and built with world class talent and materials..
By the late 1910s, residents of Virginia Avenue built new community entrances, featuring ornamental brick gateways and landscape plantings to create a lush and park-like thoroughfare..
In 1918, residents decided to officially rename Virginia Avenue to Virginia Park Street. For the decade that followed, this was paradise.
Coinciding with the market crash of 1929 and the Great Depression, many families lost there homes. Foreclosures met the citywide shortage of workforce housing. Zoning was changed to allow businesses and rooming houses to use the homes, and the neighborhood fell into a cycle of absentee management and disrepair.
At the start of the 1980s, General Motors partnered with Black young professionals to envision and set about rebuilding the New Center neighborhood into a place where upwardly mobile citizens would choose to live and raise families. Heavy lifting ensued, as Black homebuyers drove the rehabilitation of dozens of dilapidated large homes, block after block, into stunning homes where their families and neighbors alike could flourish.
They formed a network of neighborhood community groups throughout New Center. When General Motors left New Center in 1996, these residents stayed and invested more. Now for over forty years, our founders’ investment and example underpins this neighborhood with dignity, respect, beauty, great expectations, and grace.
15 years ago, another national calamity had caused foreclosures and disinvestment to become a problem for Detroiters. Virginia Park Street founders anchored our community through the storm. They continued holding regular community meetings, welcoming newcomers. Virginia Park stood out among Detroit neighborhoods that also have beautiful homes. Through intentional community gathering and conversation, the families of Virginia Park embodied and shared virtues.
In 1982, Virginia Park Historic District was added to the National Register of Historic Places. In 1983, JAG attorney Gary Felder and Mrs. Felder toured a large and badly deteriorated vacant home owned by General Motors, then headquartered nearby on Grand Boulevard. The Felders and GM collaborated and oversaw the home being used for job training in the skilled trades, as it was renovated and finished for the Felders to move in two years later.
Vietnam Veteran, Sargent Hyvert McGrady and Mrs. McGrady purchased their fully renovated Virginia Park home from General Motors as well, anchoring the second block off Woodward.
Medical Doctors Herb and Lynn Smitherman took on the rehabilitation of large home near Woodward, and Dr. and Mrs. Wolff purchased their historic home directly across the street. More successful and discerning buyers put down roots here, including the Sanders household, the Gilmore household, the Williams, Teagues, Bentons, Waldrops, Smiths, Bateys, and Straiths. These names represent the finest looking homes on our brick street today and their virtues raise the value of our community more than anything.
In 2010, a new wave young professionals moving to Virginia Park were inspired by the founders. We heard and discussed our elder neighbors’ lived experiences and great expectations, and together we prioritized quality of life issues that affect all of us.
We marshaled knowledge and resources to gain control of blighted and absentee owned vacant houses. We found out that the derelict properties were owned by investors based in other cities, states, and even other countries.
Together, we worked to bring damaged houses back under local control, and we rehabbed over a dozen more homes to make our community shine brighter for those living here. You are viewing one of the many formerly abandoned homes that our team has restored on this street since 2010.
We continue to maintain an active Block Club. Through community organizing, we have partnered with Midtown Detroit Inc and the City of Detroit to make infrastructure improvements. These include new underground wiring and new black historic streetlights, new management and landscaping of our two acre park, and a $5 million federal, state, and city funding package to rebuild and restore our brick and stone street, coming 2026.
Our Tenant Alumni:
Since we started buying and rehabbing the empty houses on Virginia Park Street in 2010, over 550 Detroiters have rented a room and joined our community of shared housing. Several have purchased our renovated homes. Several of our earlier tenants are now leading businesses and philanthropic organizations. Several have created and sustained wonderful restaurants, and all are uniquely and collectively helping power Detroit’s economy and society today.