Maternity Homes

 This building and its past use has been on my mind here recently, as well as the former hospital, behind me as I was taking this picture, now used as the Detroit Job Corps Center. This building is formerly the Florence Crittenton Home for unwed mothers.. According to a post on the Historical Detroit Area Architecture group on Facebook, it was built around 1952. This building housed teen girls and young ladies who were pregnant out of wedlock, and due to societal, religious and familial norms at the time, were not welcome at home. Family and friends were told that the young lady had moved away or had gone to be with a relative who was dying or vey ill. These homes helped a young lady while she was pregnant. Many times, after the child had been born, the child was put up for adoption. The mother, in most cases, was not informed of her child's adoption, and was in the dark about her child's wherabouts, the homes would not tell the mother where their child was located, or be told any information on the child's adoptive parents. As of the past 10=20 years, many mothers and the children they gave up have been reunited after a decades-long search for each other and limited information on parents and in birth and adoption records, at times, being sealed. For this Crittenton Home, the hospital across Woodrow Wilson in Northwest Detroit, where this is located, is the former Metropolitan Hospital, which was at one time a Tuberculosis Sanitarium  It is currently the location for the Detroit chapter of the Job Corps. If Metropolitan Hospital was not used for the mothers and their children, I am guessing Herman Kiefer Hospital just south of the home on Taylor and Hamilton/John C. Lodge freeway was used. Florence Crittenton wasn't the only organization to run unwed mothers homes. Many religious and civic groups also ran these homes, as well.