When I moved into the Palmer Park Apartment Building Historic District in the spring of 2024, I wasn’t sure what kind of environment I was moving into. Sure, I had been jogging in the apartment district’s titular park for a year at that point and I felt comfortable enough. But of course, spending an hour a day in a well-maintained public park is a different ballgame than spending days at a time in a nearby neighborhood.
Palmer Park is situated directly east of the Detroit Golf Club — so close that on a map, they look like two halves of one park — and South of the affluent Palmer Woods Neighborhood. It also forms the border of the hard-knock Woodward and McNichols corridor.
But a place is more than just a set of coordinates. When I moved in, what I heard regularly were kids playing basketball at the park. I saw people lounging on their balconies. I smelled the aroma of many a summer cookout. I saw people living amongst the beautiful architecture of the Apartment District…