Jeffries Projects, Public housing complex near Lodge Freeway in Detroit, Michigan.
Jeffries Projects was a public housing complex in Detroit, Michigan, made up of thirteen high-rise towers and several rows of smaller houses. The development was designed to house families across a wide range of sizes, and it covered a large portion of the near west side of the city.
The complex was built in two phases between 1953 and 1955 and named after Edward J. Jeffries Sr., a Detroit judge whose son later served as the city's mayor. From the 1990s onward, the towers were torn down one by one as the city moved toward replacing large public housing blocks with smaller mixed-income developments.
For decades, the site was home to thousands of Detroit families who built close-knit communities within the towers and row houses. That sense of neighborhood belonging shaped how many former residents still talk about the place today.
The site sits on the near west side of Detroit and is best visited during the day, when the surrounding streets are easier to navigate. The original towers are gone, so there is nothing to enter, but the newer residential developments are visible from the street.
The Cornerstone development, completed in 2012, set aside rental housing in the form of townhouses and duplexes specifically for people who had previously lived on the site. This meant that many former residents could return to the same land rather than being displaced permanently.
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