One good building: Federal building in Detroit goes up for auction

A 91-year-old federal office building is likely to shift to private ownership in the coming months.

United States Immigration Station

Address: 333 Mount Elliott St., Detroit

Architecture: Colonial revival

History: Built in 1933 by the federal government. Got a modern addition and renovation in 1962. Went up for auction in March.

The federal government built the United States Immigration Station in 1933 as part of an infrastructure blitz in response to the Great Depression. It made sense to build a U.S. Border Patrol station in Detroit near the river, where illegal liquor smuggling from Windsor, Ontario was rampant. (Although Prohibition ended in the same year it was constructed.)

The three-story, Colonial revival-style building has some nice brick and limestone features. The station got a renovation in 1962 that saw the construction of a modern glass addition. It housed the Border Patrol until 1964, when the division moved into a new station on Atwater Street. The Mount Elliott Street building was then exclusively office space, most recently for the Department of Homeland Security.

In 2005, Congress renamed it the Rosa Parks Federal Building. It was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2013. In 2021, the U.S. government announced plans to sell the building, prompting legislation to move the Rosa Parks name to another federal building on Michigan Avenue .

The Mount Elliott building went up for auction in May with a starting bid of $400,000.

One good building: Federal building in Detroit goes up for auction · Outlier Media