MICHIGAN BUSINESS

Historic theater building in Detroit razed for future development

Detroit Free Press

One of the oldest theater buildings still standing in Detroit was demolished this week to make way for a future development, although its historic facade is being preserved for reuse.

Demolition of the old National Theatre building in Detroit was well underway on Jan. 30, 2024.

The National Theatre building, 118 Monroe St. in downtown, which dated to 1911 and had been vacant since the mid-1970s, was torn down as part of a development plan by Dan Gilbert's Bedrock real estate firm.

The theater was next to the popular Monroe Street Midway outdoor entertainment spot, and Bedrock has proposed a multiphase development on the broader 3.6-acre site dubbed The Development at Cadillac Square.

An artist rendering from Bedrock showing the The Development at Cadillac Square.

It calls for a new 2,000-seat concert venue in collaboration with operator tvg Hospitality, and eventually 250 to 280 apartments, about 90,000 square feet of retail and 400,000 square feet of office space.

Last fall, workers carefully dismantled the National Theatre's facade and put it in storage for future reuse in the planned concert venue. Bedrock last year also razed a pair of old empty buildings behind the theater that were in the footprint of the future development.

A Bedrock representative did not respond Tuesday to an inquiry about the demolition and status of the development plan.

The National Theatre was on the National Register of Historic Places and had been sold to a Bedrock-related entity by the city in a 2019 property package deal.

The National Theatre on Monroe Street, on Friday, Aug. 18, 2017, in downtown Detroit.

It was the only theater believed to be designed by architect Albert Kahn, according to Michael Boettcher, an urban planner and historic Detroit tour guide. Kahn is best known in Detroit for his many commercial and industrial buildings.

“It opened in 1911 and it was really sort of the granddaddy of a whole row of theaters," Boettcher said. “Those two blocks of Monroe Street were our first theater district in Detroit. That was the most prominent and obviously lasted the longest — the building did.”

The Monroe Avenue Commercial Buildings, also known as the Monroe Block, is a historic district located along a block-and-a-half stretch at 16-118 Monroe Avenue in Detroit, Michigan, just off Woodward Avenue at the northern end of Campus Martius. The district was designated a Michigan State Historic Site in 1974 and listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1975. The 13 original buildings were built between 1852 and 1911 and ranged from two to five stories in height. The National Theatre, built in 1911, was the oldest surviving theatre in Detroit, a part of the city's original theatre district of the late 19th century, and the sole surviving structure from the original Monroe Avenue Commercial Buildings of the Antebellum period.

The National Theatre opened as a vaudeville theater and later showed films for a time, before switching to burlesque shows with live music, according to a detailed history of the building on HistoricDetroit.org. The theater pivoted to pornography in the 1970s and later closed for good.

Bedrock once planned to build a larger development on the site with a lot of office space, but adjusted and downsized those plans in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Bedrock officials said last year that they anticipated starting construction in September 2024 on the 2,000-seat concert venue as well as a 30,000-square-foot "market hall."

The project's second phase, involving apartments and possibly a grocery store, could happen in October 2026, with the final phase involving office space set for 2028.

Another old and long-vacant downtown Detroit theater, the United Artists Theatre, 150 Bagley St., was demolished in 2022 as part of a redevelopment of an old 18-story office building attached to the theater. The former office building is to reopen later this year as a 148-unit apartment building known as the Residences @ 150 Bagley.

Contact JC Reindl: 313-222-6631 or jcreindl@freepress.com. Follow him on X @jcreindl