page_title: Jefferson–Chalmers Historic Business District
section_title: Description
hierarchical_section_title: Jefferson–Chalmers Historic Business District / Description
caption_attribution_description: English: Jefferson-Chalmers Historic Business District Detroit
context_page_description: The Jefferson–Chalmers Historic Business District is a historic district located on East Jefferson Avenue between Eastlawn Street and Alter Road in Detroit, Michigan. The district is the only continuously intact commercial district remaining along East Jefferson Avenue, and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2004.
  The Historic Jefferson–Chalmers Business District is one of a few early twentieth-century neighborhood commercial districts that is still surviving in Detroit. During the 1920s, this district along Jefferson was the center of the east-side neighborhood's commercial, social, and cultural life. The district is unique in that two big-band era ballrooms, the cultural fulcrums of the early 20th century social scene, still exist within the district: the Monticello and the Vanity Ballroom.
context_section_description: The Jefferson–Chalmers Historic Business District contains 57 buildings bordering East Jefferson Avenue, running for eight blocks between Eastlawn Street and Alter Road, at the border between Detroit and Grosse Pointe Park, Michigan. Most of the buildings front onto Jefferson, but a few front onto side streets in the block adjacent to Jefferson. Most of the structures are two-story, multi-storefront commercial buildings, dating from the 1910s and 1920s, but the district also includes apartment buildings and churches, and houses two ballrooms: the Vanity and the Monticello. The buildings lining Jefferson generally fill the entire lot, fronting directly onto the sidewalk and sharing walls with adjacent buildings, creating an unbroken streetfront.
  Significant structures include:
caption: Jefferson streetscape in 2008, looking east from Newport
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