Built in 1924 as a Detroit Edison office, 22644 Woodward Avenue later became the center of local controversy in downtown Ferndale in the mid-1990s when the Loving Touch Massage Parlor occupied the building. The Ferndale Jaycees picketed the business in an effort to close it and shined car headlights on patrons as they left. Since 1997, the site has housed Woodward Avenue Brewers, a popular brewery and one of the pioneers of the revitalization of downtown Ferndale in the 21st century. Ferndale, like many communities along Woodward Avenue north of Detroit, began as a rural area, with the earliest non-native American settler arriving in 1821. Originally part of Royal Oak Township, it had farms and served as a resting point with services for travelers on Woodward Avenue between Detroit and Pontiac during the first half of the 1800s. In 1890, the Campbell farm near Hilton Road was platted for summer cottages, and Ferndale's population began increasing as a rural resort community outside Detroit. Transportation improved with the arrival of the Detroit Suburban Railway in 1890 and the paving of Woodward Avenue in 1912. The area was platted into subdivisions from 1910 through 1924. With 1,600 people, Ferndale became a village in 1918, with two churches, three schools, including the school at Woodward and Nine Mile Road, and six stores. Over the next seven years, the population increased dramatically, primarily because of the construction of Ford Motor Company's Highland Park Plant two miles south on Woodward. By 1924, the village's population had reached 24,000, and in 1927 Ferndale became a city. The years after World War II brought further growth in residents, businesses, and new industries, and major efforts during the last 20 years to bring new businesses and improvements to the downtown commercial area created new vitality in the city and its residential neighborhoods.