Bohemian National Home - Bohemian Period (1914-1962)

Bohemian Period (1914-1962)

According to the building permit issued March 20, 1914, the Bohemian National Home (Cesky Norodni Dum, as written in stone on the front of the building) was built by a group called the Bohemian Society. The building's original floor plan included a full ballroom with a stage and balcony; a "green room" with an access stairwell directly to the stage; a small gymnasium with brass tie downs for gymnastic equipment; a full shower and bathroom; a full service barroom with ladies’ and men’s bathrooms; a full commercial kitchen; two multipurpose rooms; and a caretaker's apartment. Arts and Crafts references appear, most notably, in the three-panel oak doors throughout the interior of the building.

The original Bohemian immigrants came to Detroit to escape Prussian oppression and economic hardship in their homeland. A dozen recent arrivals formed the first Detroit lodge, in 1874, under the auspices of the Bohemian Society of America. This national organization first organized in 1854 in St. Louis, Missouri. The original Detroit lodge bore the name of Karel Havilicek Barovsky, a Czech hero of the 1848 revolution against the Habsburg dynasty. In 1890, the Detroit Bohemian Turners Society built Detroit's first Bohemian hall at the corner of Erskine and St. Antoine, on the near east side. A flag-bearing procession of the various Bohemian organizations who would use the facility commemorated the opening. By 1910, however, the east side hall had become too small to accommodate the growing community. The original plans for a new west side hall, and the announcement of a fund-raising drive to finance the project, appeared in the Detroit Times on August 19, 1910. The existing building at Butternut and Tillman is a scaled-down version of the $30,000, three-story building originally planned, but it proved sufficiently large to house the Bohemian community until the post World War II era. In 1962, a newly formed organization called the Detroit Lithuanian Home Association purchased the building.