Encyclopedia Of Detroit

East Frederick Avenue Historic District consists of two residences, a Victorian home at 544 Frederick and a Romanesque Revival style red brick home at 580 Frederick, both of which were built in the 1890s. The neighborhood was developed by Frederick Farnsworth, for whom the street name originated. The area, at Frederick and St. Antoine streets, was designated a City of Detroit Historic District in 1984. 

After World War I, the Great Migration brought an influx of African Americans to Detroit from southern states, and the area became an African American neighborhood.  The Victorian home at 544 Frederick was built by John Owen, Jr., a prominent Detroit realtor and land developer.  The home was later purchased by Bertha Hansbury and her husband, William H. Phillips. Hansbury, who was a graduate of the Detroit Conservancy of Music, opened a music school in the residence in 1925 called Bertha Hansbury Music School, in order to teach music to young black students in the neighborhood. She taught and mentored thousands of young African Americans during the years she operated the school. Phillips opened the Household Art Guild from their home as well, which served as the first employment agency for African Americans in Detroit.

The home at 580 Frederick was built by the Guy W. Vinton company for Detroit jeweler Charles W. Warren. In 1918 the home was purchased by a group of 30 physicians and converted into Dunbar Hospital, Detroit’s first African American hospital. The hospital was named in honor of Ohio poet Paul Lawrence Dunbar and it operated from 1919 to 1927. The home was then purchased by Charles C. Diggs, Sr. who later became the first African American Democrat elected to the Michigan State Senate. His son, Charles C. Diggs, Jr. was the first Black person to represent Detroit and Michigan in Congress. The Diggs family also purchased the home next door, which is no longer standing, at 584 Frederick for use as a funeral home.  

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