Tau Beta Community House

Founded in 1901 by four young women ages fifteen and sixteen as a social club for girls, Tau Beta soon turned to service work, volunteering for the Visiting Nurse Association, delivering meals to shut-ins in Detroit, and establishing a tuberculosis clinic. By 1916, it had become a service organization and opened a settlement house on Hanley Street to serve Polish immigrants who had come to work at the Dodge Main auto factory, offering legal aid and medical services to Hamtramck residents. In 1920, the organization moved to a larger building nearby, where it provided a daycare center, a playground, laundry services, and Hamtramck’s first public library. In 1928, the Detroit architectural firm Smith, Hinchman and Grylls designed an even larger building for Tau Beta, whose expanded space supported full-time doctors at medical and dental clinics, a gymnasium, an auditorium, and a full-sized kitchen. By the 1950s, growing social service options in Hamtramck had reduced the need for Tau Beta’s work, and in 1958 the women shifted to charity work outside the community house and sold the building to the Immaculate Conception Ukrainian Catholic Church for use as a school. Various businesses later occupied the house until Hamtramck Public Schools bought the property in 2017, and although the front entrance and modern exterior are not original to the 1928 structure, the interior remains largely unchanged.

Hamtramck, Michigan · United States