The Supremes began as the Primettes, teenagers from the Brewster-Douglass housing projects on Detroit's near east side. In 1958 Florence Ballard, then a junior high student at Brewster, met Paul Williams and Eddie Kendricks of a vocal group called the Primes. Their manager, Milton Jenkins, wanted a sister act. Betty McGlown, Williams's girlfriend, was already singing, Ballard brought in her best friend Mary Wilson, and Williams brought in Diana Ross, who had moved to Brewster at fourteen. When they auditioned for Berry Gordy in 1960, through Ross's former neighbour Smokey Robinson, he told them to come back when they had finished high school. They kept turning up at Hitsville anyway. In January 1961 Gordy signed them on condition that they change the name, and handed Ballard a list that included the Darleens, the Sweet Ps, the Melodees and the Royaltones. She picked the Supremes. Brewster was built for a different purpose: Eleanor Roosevelt broke ground in 1935 on one of the first federally funded public housing projects for Black Americans, and the first 701 units opened in 1938. The original low-rise blocks came down in 1991, the Frederick Douglass towers emptied by 2008 and were razed in 2013 and 2014, and new housing has begun going up on the vacant tower site.
Getting there
42.3494, -83.0500
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