Ossian H. Sweet House
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Ossian H. Sweet House
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| Location | 2905 Garland Street Detroit, Michigan |
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| Coordinates | 42°22′13″N 82°59′3″W / 42.37028°N 82.98417°WCoordinates: 42°22′13″N 82°59′3″W / 42.37028°N 82.98417°W |
| Built | 1919 |
| Architect | Maurice Finkel |
| Architectural style | American Craftsman bungalow |
| NRHP Reference # | 85000696 |
| Significant dates | |
| Added to NRHP | April 04, 1985 |
| Designated MSHS | November 21, 1975 |
The Ossian H. Sweet House is a privately owned house located at 2905 Garland Street in Detroit, Michigan. Designed by Maurice Herman Finkel, the residence's second owner was physician Ossian Sweet, an African-American, and the site of a confrontation in 1925 between the Sweet family and a mob attempting to force them out of the predominantly white neighborhood. The house was designated a Michigan State Historic Site in 1975 and listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1985.
Ossian Sweet was born in Florida and received a medical degree from Howard University. He practiced medicine briefly in Detroit, then continued his medical studies in Vienna and Paris before returning to Detroit in 1924 to accept a position at Dunbar Hospital. He began saving money for a home, and by the spring of the next year had saved $3500. Sweet used the $3500 as a down payment on a $18,500 house located on Garland Street in east Detroit.
The house Sweet purchased is a 1½-story brick house, built in 1919, and is typical of many homes in working-class Detroit neighborhoods. It is a Bungalow-style structure with a full basement, an open porch on the first floor, and an enclosed sun porch on the south side. The second story is covered with brown shingling, and atop the house is a simple gable roof with a central dormer. The house is enclosed by an unpainted silver aluminum fence.
The house is located on the corner of Garland and Charlevoix, in what was at the time an all-white neighborhood. Sweet chose a home in an all-white neighborhood because housing options in black neighborhoods were in general substandard, and he wanted better housing accommodations for his wife and daughter.
Ossian Sweet and his wife, Gladys, moved into the house on September 8, 1925. A group of neighbors in the community, aware of Sweet's imminent arrival, had vowed to keep blacks out of the neighborhood, stating that they intended to maintain "the present high standards of the neighborhood." Sweet knew of the neighbors' antipathy (telling his brother that he was "prepared to die like a man"), and arranged for some friends and relatives to stay with him for a few days. He also brought along guns and ammunition.
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