A Peek Inside the Abandoned Laredo Apartment Building, Detroit

I can only imagine by looking at the images of this old abandoned apartment building that it was once a beautiful place to live. According to some who lived there in the past, my assumption seems correct.

This Art Deco-type building was called The Laredo Apartments and is located in the Dexter-Linnwood neighborhood  of Detroit. Built in 1928, it’s an 18,473-square foot complex that has been sitting vacant, abandoned, and crumbling since 2007.

The apartment building was the brainchild of an immigrant by the name of Henry Nussbaum in order to house many of his fellow immigrants who came to live in the neighborhood. Henry was a plumber by trade who came here from Austria in 1919 at the age of 24. Aside from being a plumber and now a landlord-of-sorts, he dealt with products from the Standard Sanitary Manufacturing Company which later became American Standard.

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Henry passed away in 1947 and was buried in Royal Oak’s Oakview Cemetery.

The Laredo, sitting on the corner of Elmhurst and Lawton, had around 20 apartments specifically intended for middle-class and upper middle class families. Now, approximately 20 years later, it may be rotting and crumbling on the inside with smashed windows on the outside, but the building still has a majestic quality to it that shines through.

Now take a quick tour of the inside and see if you think it should be preserved...

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