Lee Manor was one of more than 50 apartment complexes in the Dexter-Chicago Boulevard area.

The first mention of the building was May 3, 1925, in the Detroit Free Press, stating that it, as well as the Gloria Ann Apartments located next door, were nearing completion and that the Lee Court Apartments on Collingwood Street had just opened.

A “for rent” advertisement first appeared in The Detroit News on Aug. 19, 1925, before it formally opened.

The apartment complex formally opened Sept. 13, 1925, with 47 three- and four-room apartments. It was designed by in-house architects of builder Ralph T. Lee’s company, which owned the building.

"Lee Manor was constructed," the developer told the Detroit Free Press for an Aug. 30, 1925, article, "in view of the steadily increasing demand for apartment houses of the better type, and is equipped with conveniences to satisfy the most discriminating tastes."

The four-story building was built at a cost of about $400,000, the equivalent of $7.8 million in 2026, when adjusted for inflation. Each apartment had its own radio connection, electrical booster pumps to make sure each faucet had adequate water pressure, and a mop-shaking chute, among other things. The building also had a ballroom, billiards room, a beauty shop and more. According to the Sept. 13, 1925, edition of the Detroit Free Press, the lobby alone is said to have cost $40,000, about $779,000 in 2026.

Of the lobby, the Free Press wrote Aug. 30, 1925, that “entering from an attractive court, quaintly illuminated, one passes into a spacious lobby sumptuously appointed, with a fountain in operation at one end and a large open electric fireplace at the other.”

All of this gave "an air of luxuriousness which enhances the beauty of the whole architectural scheme," the Detroit Free Press wrote Sept. 13, 1925. Decorations of gold leaf lend an artistic touch to walls and ceiling, while massive prism glass chandeliers and candle wall lights present a distinctive and colorful lighting scheme.” The building had different color schemes throughout. The basement, billiards and ballroom were “stippled in oil of soft brown,” whereas “the halls of the four upper floors are stippled in green and the rooms in blue.” Apartments on the first two floors were finished in ivory, and apartments on the top two floors were done in mahogany. Each apartment had a full bathroom with a tiled shower.

Off the lobby was a commercial suite, initially occupied by a beauty shop. There also was a ballroom for residents.

This was part of a $3 million development of Chicago Boulevard being undertaken by Lee, or about $58.4 million in 2026 inflation-adjusted value.

The Lee behind the Lees

Lee made a fortune in real estate in the city, rising from making $1.50 a day in a furniture store to having a fortune worth more than $6 million before the Depression, a whopping $118.2 million in 2026, when adjusted for inflation. In October 1919, Lee left his job as an engraver with the J.B. VanAlstyne Engraving Co. and his $50-a-week salary to enter the real estate business and start building Detroit apartment houses. Lee was a natural and quickly became one of Detroit's best-known builders. He dazzled clients in his fifth-floor office in the General Motors Building (today known as Cadillac Place). On March 29, 1940, the Detroit Free Press called him "Detroit's most spectacular real estate operator" during the 1920s. The Detroit News wrote Feb. 20, 1927 that "in the building and real estate journals, the rise of Ralph T. Lee is spoken of as 'meteoric.' The adjective is not misused."

Just a month after the Lee Manor opened, on Oct. 25, 1925, its namesake sold the building to Cash W. Talbot for an undisclosed amount. The building’s estimated value was $400,000, about $7.8 million in 2026, which is what Lee spent building it.

But Lee still had plenty of properties. In 1935, Lee had built more than 30 hotels and apartment buildings, including the Lee Plaza, the Lee Crest, the Wager Terrace, the Orpha Mae Apartments, the Bohr Apartments in Highland Park, the Margaret Lee, Elmhurst, Glen, Doherty, Burlingame and Tanton apartments. Hundreds upon hundreds of Detroiters were living in Lee's buildings.

Then, in July 1935, Ralph Lee admitted in court that he, his wife and a third person operated a hardware company for almost the sole purpose of selling supplies to the Lee Plaza and his other buildings at retail prices instead of at wholesale. The following month, Lee was found in contempt of court and ordered to pay the bondholders $30,000 ($743,000 in 2026).

But the trouble wasn't over for Lee. Two weeks later, bondholders went after him in court over some of his other properties. The Public Trust Commission accused him of "milking" the Lee Crest, for which he was a co-receiver. The mortgage was in default, but Lee was taking money coming in for his own salary instead of paying off the debts on the property. He also admitted that when he moved into the Lee Plaza in 1931, he sold the carpets in his Chicago boulevard home to the hotel so he could keep them.

In September 1935, Lee was in federal bankruptcy court, trying to explain why he suspiciously transferred the hardware business and interest in his buildings to his wife. Saying, "I don't recall now" why he made the transactions and, "I have forgotten that, too," when asked why the transfers weren't recorded. He was finished. About 1937, he moved to Florida and attempted a comeback by re-entering the real estate business. But in early March 1940, he became ill and returned to Detroit. Lee died at age 49 on March 28, 1940.

The Lee Manor, post-Lee

The Lee Manor operated normally for decades, as nothing out of the ordinary was covered by the media until the early 1970s. The building was still in use as of June 11, 1971, which is the last time the address shows up in newspapers while it was occupied.

Around this time, the Lee Manor was acquired by William Perkins, a barber turned real estate developer with plans to renovate the building for low-income housing. He spent $280,000 (about $2.3 million in 2026) on acquiring and partially renovating the building with funds from the U.S. Department of Housing & Urban Development (HUD) before abandoning the renovation in August 1972, at 27 percent complete. By March 11, 1973, the building was abandoned, with broken windows and piles of rubble outside the building.

Perkins was in legal trouble, with multiple lawsuits over not paying contractors, as well as rumors of financial misappropriation, accusations of extortion, and over $60,000 ($502,000 in 2026) in unpaid taxes to the federal government, though HUD stated that it was probably that “his financial problems stem more from lack of management skills, administrative naivete, labor troubles, and shoddy bookkeeping practices,” the Free Press reported March 11, 1973. A $695,000 mortgage on the building had gone into default by this point. Perkins was working on several other buildings in Detroit, with some $1.7 million already spent on the half finished projects.

By Jan. 7, 1977, Lee Manor was still vacant, one of six apartments that had been owned by Perkins, who had been given a $4 million mortgage (about $23 million in 2026) from the HUD, and got only one building operational, a 50-unit apartment complex at 2210 Philadelphia St. However, it was in the red, with HUD looking to repossess it, just like it had already done with the other five, three of which had been demolished, those being 2637 W. Boston Blvd., 3353 W. Boston Blvd., and 1484 Collingwood St. Another vacant building that Perkins owned was an apartment building at 3200 W. Chicago Blvd., next to Lee Manor.

This was part of a massive HUD-funded program to rehabilitate 24 Detroit apartment complexes - with 2,180 units among them - for low-income housing. The price tag was $33.2 million, $184.6 million in 2026. Unfortunately, it was a complete failure by January 1977, with six projects never completed, 13 foreclosed upon - or about to be - because the owners had stopped paying the mortgage, and five completed but operating in the red. Losses for HUD were expected to hit $30 million, $183.5 million in 2026.

"And that doesn't begin to count the social losses, the broken dreams of Detroit's inner-city poor who thought they were going to get 2,180 low-cost apartment units when patronizing bureaucrats went on the Operation Rehab spending spree after the 1967 riots," The Detroit News wrote for a Jan. 7, 1977, article.

“"It was a social rip-off," Robert Koenig, loan management chief of the HUD’s Housing Management Division in Detroit, told The Detroit News. "People's hopes were raised, then dashed by the program." In particular, he described the Virginia Park neighborhood as “worse off now than when we started.” With worries that similar projects across the city will fail “because the buildings are so old they will collapse long before the 40-year mortgages expire.” Collapse, or be demolished, in the Lee Manor’s case.

A demolition permit was issued for the Lee Manor on March 26, 1981. Also to fall were the remaining two apartments that Perkins owned.

The site of the Lee Manor is now home to a Kingdom Hall of Jehovah’s Witnesses. Of the more than 50 apartment complexes built in this residential district, only a few more than a dozen still stand today, though some of Lee’s apartment empire live on, including the Lee Plaza and Lee Crest.