Katelynn Medley

Detroit Free Press

Michigan’s Civil War history is coming back to life after restoration of the castle-like Grand Army of the Republic Building at Cass and Grand River in downtown Detroit.

Constructed from 1899-1901 as a meeting place for Civil War veterans, the five-story stone building fell vacant from 1982 until 2011, when David Carleton, Tom Carleton and Sean Emery bought what’s known as the GAR Building for their media company, Mindfield.

“Actually the building was so loved that once news got out that we had bought the building … people literally came out of the woodwork” with artifacts from the Civil War, said David Carleton, who is executive producer at Minefield. “We also found a handful of items in the building that were here, forgotten, fallen behind bookcases.”

The owners, who opened two restaurants on the ground floor in addition to their office space, are developing a public memorial room for the artifacts they discovered and others they received from donors. The memorial, expected to be open in the spring of 2020, will be by appointment because they are not staffed to have a full museum.

“Part of our development agreement with the city is creating a memorial to the Civil War vets,” Carleton said. “We’re also working with the Detroit Historical Museum to add things.”

Rifles and whiskey glasses

Artifacts throughout the building include a Spencer rifle manufactured in Boston, a Union uniform, portraits, whiskey glasses and more. Carleton and partners were pleased to discover, when they traced the serial number on the rifle, that it was carried by a Michigan soldier in Gettysburg in 1863.

To create the exhibit, the owners are working with Bruce Butgereit of Grand Rapids, a Civil War preservationist and consultant who is executive director of History Remembered Inc.

“The memorial room will help tell the story of the building through text, photos, artifacts and more, in a timeline format,” Butgereit said. “While other museums and memorials focus on a broad local history or a certain subject in general, this memorial room will be a personal experience about the building and its place in Detroit history. It is important for us to preserve our history’s past because behind every building façade, under every headstone, and in our combined memories are stories that deserve to be shared. We hope to help today’s generations get in touch with the past — with those no longer with us — and share their contributions to history.”

After the Civil War, David Carlton said, “there were no veteran groups, no VA, no V anything, so the union veterans formed a group called the Grand Army of the Republic.” It became a important organization with political clout, with nearly 500,000 members by 1899, when Detroit’s building was started.

The building’s land was willed to the city by Gen. Lewis Cass, a onetime governor of Michigan territory, U.S. secretary of war and a presidential candidate, according to HistoricDetroit.org. When completed, the GAR Building had shops and provided space for veterans “to gather, meet and discuss things personally,” David Carleton said. “They utilized it until the early 1940s, when most of them had passed away at that point.”

A city rec center

After the GAR was dissolved, it was taken over by the city of Detroit and turned into a welfare office and then a parks and rec renter until its closure in 1982.

The owners take pride in their renovation of the building, with Carleton describing the renovation as the wrapping and the memorial room as the ribbon to decorate it. The memorial Room will include a timeline of the GAR Building and group, along with artifacts.

Its architecture is known as Richardson Romanesque, according to HistoricDetroit, “a 19th century style named for renowned master H.H. Richardson that produced castle-like buildings with heavy stone blocks, small windows and arches.”

The restaurants, Republic and Parks and Rec, reflect the building’s past uses.

“Our prize was being able to restore the shell,” Carleton said. “For us, the best artifact is the building itself. We’ve proven that we are sincere in our thoughts about the memory of the veterans, so I think there's a comfort with sending them [the artifacts] here. I think as people get further and further away from that generation, they’re not less important, but they have less value to some people. I think they look at this building, and it’s like sending them home — turning them back to where they started.”

The Carleton brothers and Emery hope the memorial will be complete and running by Spring of 2020.