This building was once the base of operations for the company run by Detroit’s most famous historian, Clarence M. Burton, the man who made the Burton Historical Collection at the Detroit Public Library possible.
“Burton’s collection, and his contributions to the preservation of Detroit history, cannot be quantified," the library wrote in its book “Burton Historical Collection,” released to mark 100 years of the archives being available to the public. “Here, the word ‘priceless’ appropriately applies. … His near obsession with collecting all manner of historical evidence of these times - especially from Detroit, Michigan, and the Northwest Territory - would translate in 1915 to a repository of immense value, both in sheer volume and in importance.”
But to fund his obsession of collecting historical Detroit documents, he had to have a day job. His firm, the Burton Abstract & Title Co, prepared abstracts - or legal histories of parcels of property.
What made the company so important? Well, let's say you wanted to buy a piece of expensive property from the estate of a late landowner. It turns out that the executor didn't have the right to sell the land. If you paid them, well, you paid for something that is legally not yours. Burton's company could help you avoid such a problem. Burton had records stretching back to 1785 for every parcel in Wayne County. This included tax payments for each back to 1827. It also provided title insurance and similar services.
Burton Abstract said that it sometimes handled deeds on land originally belonging to the Potawatomi Nation, and that sometimes it would come across deeds with the signature of Native American chiefs drawn on the document.
Though land records aren’t the most exciting topic in the world, Clarence Burton would become something of a Detroit hero and a historian whose history is worth exploring.
The man, the historian, the legend
Clarence Monroe Burton was born Nov. 18, 1853, in Whiskey Diggins, Calif., to Dr. Charles S. and Annie Burton, a writer and poet who had been published in Harper’s Monthly.
His father may have been a doctor, but he contracted an intense and incurable fever - gold fever - so the couple hopped into a covered wagon and left Michigan for the West Coast in search of riches. It was here, amid the couple’s Gold Rush pursuits, that they had their future historian. But after two years of trying to strike it rich, the Burtons gave up and decided to book passage on the vessel the Yankee Blade to sail through the Isthmus of Nicaragua and make their way back around the coasts to Michigan.
And that’s when the gold hijackers attacked the ship, wrecking it off the coast of California. Of the 900 aboard, 160 drowned. Annie and baby Clarence were pulled from the waters and into a lifeboat, miraculously being saved from the same fate.
With enough adventure to last a lifetime, the Burtons settled in Hastings, on the west side of Michigan, about 40 miles south of Grand Rapids.
Burton would move to Ann Arbor to attend the University of Michigan in 1872, where he graduated with a law degree two years later. It was at U-M in 1874 that a 20-year-old Burton caught the bug after listening to a lecture on “The Northwest in the Revolution,” in which the speaker discussed the importance of documenting and preserving history of the cities they called home. Burton said he decided to acquire at least one historical item or book every day of his life going forward.
After college, Burton moved to Detroit, where he took a job with real estate attorneys John Ward and Eugene C. Skinner. Here, his passion for research and history would only grow, as he poured over family histories, birth and death records, wills, and property titles. He would embark on a lifelong pursuit of collecting historical documents, newspaper clippings and genealogical papers.
Burton bought out Skinner’s shares in 1881 and Ward’s 10 years later, changing the company’s name to the Burton Abstract & Title Co. The timing couldn’t have been better, as Detroit was about to embark on a major building binge, and Burton was the go-to guy for property abstracts and title insurance. It was said to have become one of the largest and most successful companies of its kind in the country.
His growing business allowed Burton to amass a library’s worth of materials, which led to him being named the official city historiographer in 1908. Meanwhile, he wasn’t just perusing shelves at bookstores to build his collection. He scoured the basements, attics, barns and sheds across the region. He would recount how he used a pitchfork to scoop up papers littered across the floor of one home, filling seven barrels with historical documents — one of which was the original copy of “The Journal of Pontiac’s Conspiracy,” detailing the Ottawa chief’s almost successful attack on Fort Detroit on May 7, 1763. The account — likely written by French native Robert Navarre, who spoke several Native American dialects, which allowed him to gather details from both sides — had been missing since the 1840s.
In another, he found the papers of William Woodbridge, Michigan’s second governor, stuffed into an aging outbuilding. He sailed to Paris and London to track down the papers and story of Detroit’s founder, Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac, copying 12 volumes of the explorer’s papers in Paris.
Somewhat famously, Burton outbid the Canadian government for the manuscripts and papers of Col. John Askin, giving the history buff one of the most definitive accounts of the War of 1812.
Burton would write 27 texts about Detroit history, ranging from "A Sketch of the Life of Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac, Founder of Detroit" to his four-tome magnum opus, “The City of Detroit Michigan 1701-1922.” Exhaustive in scope and full of minutiae, dates and details of the city’s early history, it is the definitive tale of Detroit’s early days.
Burton would be widowed three times. His first wife, Harriet, died in 1896. His second, Lina, died less than a year later. His third, Anna, died in 1925. He had three daughters and six sons, many of whom would work in their father's family business.
In 1902, Burton joined the Board of Education, where he served until 1913. He was also a member of the Constitutional Convention of 1908 and the City Charter Commission of 1917. In 1920, Burton was one of nine candidates on the GOP side for Michigan’s 13th Congressional District, but wasn’t elected.
Burton’s incredible gift
At a Jan. 7, 1914, meeting of the Detroit Library Commission, Burton officially offered to donate his home on Brainard Street between Cass and Second avenues — packed to the rafters with some 30,000 books, 40,000 pamphlets and 500,000 unpublished papers — to the Detroit Public Library, forming the basis of the Burton Historical Collection. In a resolution dated March 16, 1914, the commission acknowledged Burton’s gift as a “rare instance of patriotism, unselfish devotion of scholarship and unprecedented private generosity to the Public Library of Detroit.”
“I believe that my collection of manuscripts is the most valuable collection in the country, not excepting the collection in the congressional library,” he said, referring to the Library of Congress. “I want to be sure that it will be continued intact and preserved. … I think it ought to remain in the city of Detroit.”
The Burton Library opened to the public in September 1915, and in 1921, Burton gave the collection a $50,000 endowment, the equivalent of about $870,000 in 2026 valuation, when adjusted for inflation. Burton moved to comfier confines in the Boston-Edison neighborhood.
Of course, Burton is not the only one who has donated items to the collection. In 1917, the Michigan Historical Commission made the Burton Collection the official repository for the personal papers of Michigan citizens who donate them. From former Mayor Coleman A. Young’s papers to regular folks sharing family treasures with the city, today, the Burton Historical Collection is home to more than 500,000 books, 250,000 images, 4,000 manuscript collections, and about 1,000 newspaper titles. Its scope even goes beyond Michigan, offering records on everything from the Salem Witch Trials to the Lewis & Clark expedition to the California Gold Rush that lured Burton’s parents west in the 19th century. Combined, it encompasses some 400 years of North American history, and is regarded as one of the best such collections in the nation.
Thanks to Burton and others, the collection includes:
The original deed to Detroit, also known as the Chippewa Treaty of 1874, was bought from a private collector for the Burton's files.
The wampum belt that was part of the payment given by Lt. George McDougall on May 5, 1769, to Native Americans to acquire Belle Isle.
Genealogical documents such as U.S. Census records dating all the way to the first count in 1790 to 1940, immigration records, property deeds, church documents, and birth, death, marriage, baptism and military records.
Copies of the papers of Cadillac, founder of Detroit.
A letter dated Oct. 15, 1860, in which 11-year-old Grace Bedell of Westfield, N.Y., wrote the then-clean-shaven Abraham Lincoln and advised him that he should grow a beard. Four months later, a bearded Lincoln met Grace and told her, “You see, I let (my whiskers) grow for you, Grace.” The letter was donated to the Burton Historical Collection in 1968 by Michigan Congressman George Dondero.
Historic surveys and maps from the 1700s of the French ribbon farms that once lined the Detroit River.
Civil War documents, including correspondence between President Lincoln and Gov. Austin Blair, diaries of soldiers, and lists of Michigan volunteers who enlisted.
Original blueprints from Michigan Central Station.
A large collection of Black cultural artifacts from Paradise Valley and Black Bottom, two African-American neighborhoods tragically lost under the guise of “urban renewal.”
Records for Detroit’s Olympic Committee, documenting plans, renderings and more from the city’s eight failed attempts to land the Games between 1939 and 1972.
Hundreds of photographs and documents detailing the construction of the Ambassador Bridge.
Early 17th-Century Catholic Jesuit missionary reports.
Letters by Father Gabriel Richard, the pastor of Ste. Anne’s Catholic Church and the priest who gave the city its motto, “Speramus Meliora; Resurget Cineribus,” following the Great Fire of 1805.
On May 21, 2015, the Detroit Public Library commemorated the 100th anniversary of the Burton Historical Collection.
Burton’s other home
Despite his ravenous appetite for historical documents and old books, Burton still amassed enough of a fortune to build a new home for his company in 1923.
Located directly across from the Old Wayne County Building’s south entrance, this building served as the headquarters of the Burton Abstract & Title Co. from May 1924 until 1969.
A demolition permit was pulled Aug. 7, 1923, for a one-story brick store on the site on East Congress between Randolph and Brush streets, and a building permit for the new home of Burton Abstract & Title was issued that Aug. 30. This new Burton building was designed by the firm Herman & Simons. Martin & Krausman served as general contractors on construction.
In 1924, the company became a pioneer in offering title insurance, which proved to be a major moneymaker for the firm.
However, in 1930, Burton would retire and turn the business over to one of his sons, Louis. Just two years after retiring, Burton died of a cerebral hemorrhage on Oct. 23, 1932, at his home at 121 Boston Blvd. The 79-year-old had been ill for several months and bed-ridden for several weeks. He was interred at Grand Lawn Cemetery.
As the company turned 100 in 1966, it was led by president Edson N. Burton, the third generation of his family to run it. “Burton A&T,” as the papers had taken to calling it for short, had grown to have $10.5 million in assets, more than $100 million in 2026 valuation. Edson Burton told the Detroit Free Press for an Aug. 28, 1966, story that 1,200 real estate deals were happening every day in metro Detroit, and it was still doing solid business - so much so, it had four offices across metro Detroit.
The company’s offices on East Congress were renamed simply the Burton Building in 1960. It would serve as the firm's main office until 1969, when it bought 751 Griswold St., and hired Southfield, Mich., architects King & Lewis to turn the old bank into its new executive offices. Its old headquarters on East Congress was turned into its Wayne County regional office.
The Burton family would continue to run the company for decades, until selling out and becoming a wholly owned subsidiary of St. Paul Companies Inc. of Minnesota in November 1969. But the new headquarters in the old bank didn't fit into St. Paul’s plans, and the 16,000-square-foot building was put up for sale. Burton wouldn’t find a taker for a decade, and would use it as a small closing office in the meantime.
An abstract plan for the Abstract & Title Building
Plans were announced in December 1971 for a new $21 million annex for the City-County Building to be built across two blocks bounded by East Jefferson Avenue and Randolph, East Congress and Brush streets. The 312,000-square-foot annex - designed by Harley Ellington-Pierce, Yee & Associates and Richard C. Rich & Associates - would have offered three floors of office space and six floors for parking, enough room for 1,700 cars, according to an article in the April 27, 1972, edition of the Detroit Free Press.
The Detroit Common Council approved the plan on April 26, 1972, and the City began condemning buildings in the footprint, including the former Burton Abstract & Title Co. Building, the old Goodwill Industries Building, and about half a dozen bars and restaurants. Reports said that ground was to start in early 1973 and be completed by the end of 1975, however, the plan would get scrapped.
This left the City with a bunch of buildings but no plan for them. In 1972, the former Burton Abstract & Title Building became home to the Community Development Commission, an economic development arm of the City. The agency would be rebranded the Community & Economic Development Department a few years later.
Meanwhile, in a move that no doubt would have upset the Detroit-loving Clarence Burton, the company hired Rossen-Neumann Associates of Southfield, Mich., to design new headquarters at 1650 W. Big Beaver Road in suburban Troy in 1973. It also finally found a buyer for its building at 751 Griswold St., selling it to the Church of Scientology in October 1979 for $650,000, about $3.2 million in 2026 valuation.
For reasons that aren’t exactly clear, the City decided to pull the Community & Economic Development Department out of the former Burton building and pulled a demolition permit for the structure on April 29, 1977. It started coming down the following month, along with neighboring structures. The plan for the site? It would serve as a surface-level parking lot for the next seven years.
Mayor Coleman A. Young did have a vision for the site, given its location across from the Renaissance Center and being such a large parcel in the heart of downtown. City officials called the development of the site crucial for revitalizing downtown and adding much needed hotel rooms and apartments, which City planning officials said was key to adding to the area's vitality and booking more conventions. To develop the $95 million apartment-hotel complex, Young tapped H.B. Hagood & Associates, a firm that had been launched July 21, 1976, and quickly became one of the largest Black-controlled development firms in the state.
On Nov. 14, 1978, Robert Millender, an attorney and campaign manager for Coleman A. Young and U.S. Rep. John Conyers, died at age 61. Within days, Young announced the new development would be named in Millender’s honor. Ground for it was broken on March 1, 1984, at a ceremony attended by Mayor Coleman A. Young, Gov. James Blanchard and other dignitaries. In 1985, the Millender Center was opened on the site of the Burton Building and other lost structures.