Crumbling Wurlitzer Building in Detroit finds a buyer
One of downtown Detroit's most infamous skyscrapers has found a buyer — and possibly a savior.
The Wurlitzer Building at 1509 Broadway has been snatched up by a developer, according to the CoStar Group real estate database.
Ari Heckman, a co-founder of ASH NYC, the New York developer reported to be buying the crumbling building, would not confirm the deal or give details, telling the Free Press only that, "I cannot discuss specifics at this point, but can say that we are very enthusiastic about Detroit and look forward to sharing more details in the not so distant future."
The pending sale comes in the wake of billionaire Dan Gilbert buying up multiple downtown buildings, the reopening of the grand David Whitney Building on Grand Circus Park, the groundbreaking for a new hockey arena and a slew of other redevelopment projects downtown.
A group out of Lansing had agreed to buy the Wurlitzer in 2013, but the deal fell apart.
The threat
The city has been ticketing the building's owner for years for code and safety violations.
In 2008, owner Paul Curtis switched the building's ownership over to a limited liability corporation, 1509 Broadway LLC. The move has largely shielded him and his wife, Wayne County Circuit Judge Daphne Means Curtis, from any personal liability in case someone is hurt from falling debris from the building's cascading facade.
The scariest such instance came April 12, 2011, when a 50-pound piece of the building tumbled 14 stories and punched a hole through the roof of the 1515 Broadway cafe next door. The business' owner, Chris Jaszczak, said the piece splintered a wooden ceiling beam and shattered his front window. Afterward, his employees put a chalkboard sign in front of the business jokingly offering "free coffee with purchase of Wurlitzer Building."
"I sometimes wear a hard hat when I take out the trash, " Jaszczak told the Free Press at the time.
That July, Detroit city inspectors took the LLC to court. "The city said that the Wurlitzer's falling debris posed a potential danger to unsuspecting passersby." Wayne County Circuit Judge Robert Colombo ordered Curtis to take steps to ensure the public's safety. About a month later, on Aug. 16, workers showed up and removed its dangling fire escape and rusted-out awning.
Later that year, Nov. 13, 2011, part of the rear wall collapsed into the alley. And two months later, a wintry wind sent another portion of the building's back wall come tumbling down.
No one was hurt in any of the Wurlitzer's brick-dropping incidents.
The Wurlitzer's glory days
The slender skyscraper once housed the famous Wurlitzer Co., which made pianos, organs, jukeboxes, radios and instruments. But it was most renown for its "Mighty Wurlitzer" organs for movie theaters.
In its heyday, the Wurlitzer Co. built more than 2,000 of them for theaters nationwide between 1911 and 1943, including majestic instruments for the Fox, Fisher, Michigan and State (now the Fillmore) theaters in Detroit. The Capitol Theatre, now the Detroit Opera House, also had a Wurlitzer, as did certain churches.
When the Wurlitzer was installed in the Fox Theatre in 1928, its owners boasted that the organ was so powerful, it had to be muted to keep from cracking the marble columns, the Free Press wrote in 1963.
The building was designed in the Renaissance Revival style by Detroit architect Robert Finn, and opened in December 1926. The Detroit Times praised the Wurlitzer Building at the time as "a structure complete in every detail and entirely worthy of the art to which it will be devoted."
It features a grimy-yet-gorgeous terra cotta face with intricate ornamental detail over the now-graffiti-plastered windows.
The building's "sheer beauty scarcely can be excelled," the Times boasted.
But the building's last tenants, the Travelers Aid Society, moved out in March 1982. And it's been all downhill and look-out-below from there.
Dan Austin, assistant editor for opinion digital/interactive, also runs the Detroit architectural resource HistoricDetroit.org. He has written two books, "Forgotten Landmarks of Detroit" and "Lost Detroit." Contact him at daustin99@freepress.com.