Motor Cars and Subdivisions
In 1906, an orchard was removed and Joseph Berry subdivided McKinley Place from Lake Shore Road to Grosse Pointe Boulevard. This process of subdividing farms and large estates began as though in anticipation of the first family cars. The coming of the automobile transformed Detroit into the Motor City and brought a new era to Grosse Pointe, as traveling into Detroit became easier.
Of the many great houses built in this century, the most important to today's residents is "The Moorings," built in 1910. Forty years later, Mrs. Russell A. Alger and her children gave their magnificent house to the people of Grosse Pointe for a community center, in memory of those who served in World War II.
Most of the houses in Grosse Pointe today are built of brick. They vary in architecture from Colonial, English, Tudor, Georgian and Cape Cod to French, Spanish, Italianate or contemporary design. Here and there are a few clapboard houses with intriguing histories. Many early houses were moved to make way for Jefferson Avenue mansions or Kercheval businesses. Among the Pointe's most salable residences are a few which began as gingerbread-adorned summer cottages or combination store/residences. Some of the houses built early in this century for residents of modest means have been renovated and still are occupied.
New Community Institutions
Residents founded a variety of social clubs during these years. The Country Club of Detroit took this name when reorganizing in 1897, and it moved to its present site in 1923. In 1911, the Grosse Pointe Hunt Club was organized. The Lochmoor Club, formed by golf enthusiasts, dates from 1917. The Grosse Pointe Club ("Little Club"), was founded around 1924 primarily by yachtsmen. In 1919, dredging was begun for the yacht basin and landfill for the Grosse Pointe Yacht Club. In 1934, the Crescent Sail Yacht Club leased Henry B. Joy's dock and moved out from Detroit. In addition to the private clubs, the Mutual Aid and Neighborhood Club was started in 1911/12 by summer residents interested in providing recreational and social services to the year-round community.
What is now University Liggett School began with a typhoid fever epidemic in Detroit about 1914. With Detroit under quarantine, Grosse Pointe Country Day School opened its doors on Roosevelt Place, moving to Grosse Pointe Boulevard in 1916. When it joined Detroit University School on Cook Road in 1954, the Grosse Pointe Public Schools purchased the old school building and the headmaster's house. The latter was the residence of the Superintendent of Schools until it was sold in 1990. Meanwhile, the Liggett School, founded in Detroit in 1878, had moved to a new building on Briarcliff. In 1969, Liggett joined with the previously merged private schools under the name of University Liggett School; it uses both campuses.
As late as 1911, village councilmen still were directing town marshals to round up stray cattle. But as population of the Pointes grew, so did expectations that solutions be found for problems concerning roads, flooding, safe drinking water and disposal of garbage and sewage.
