Taft Colony

Seventy years is not a subdivision, it is a neighborhood

When a name covers construction from the 1930s to the 2000s, the usual tools stop working. There is no builder running through it, no era, no elevation package and no shared construction standard. A 1936 house and a 2003 house on the same street are different products with different buyers, different inspections and different insurance answers.

The practical consequence shows up first in pricing. A price per square foot averaged across the whole name will mislead in both directions, and an automated valuation drawing on a neighbor's sale will frequently be drawing on a house from a different half-century. Comparable sales here need matching on era and construction before size.

It shows up second in what the streets look like. Varied setbacks, varied massing, mature trees and houses that were never built to match read as a place that accumulated rather than one that was delivered. That is a genuine character and worth naming as such rather than apologizing for.

What each era asks

On the 1930s and 1940s stock, the questions are the ones pre-war houses always raise: foundation type and condition, whether any knob-and-tube wiring remains in service, plaster against later drywall, original window sash and the storms over them, electrical service capacity, and whether earlier work was permitted. Galvanized supply piping of that vintage corrodes from the inside and restricts flow long before it leaks.

On the mid-century houses, the systems cycle is the story — roofs, furnaces, air conditioning, water heaters, panels and sewer laterals have been through one or two rounds and the dates matter more than the finishes. On the newest houses, systems are current and the questions are workmanship, grading and drainage, and how the house sits against its older neighbors.

Federal law requires lead-based paint disclosure on anything built before 1978, which covers most but not all of this neighborhood — another reason the build year of the specific house is the first thing to establish.

Across all eras, a camera inspection of the sewer lateral is worth its cost. On a street where the oldest laterals are ninety years old, it is the single most informative small expense available.

Downtown Northville, on foot

The downtown is the reason for the address. Its historic core — roughly bounded by Cady, Rogers and Randolph Streets — was designated a Michigan State Historic Site on December 11, 1970 and listed on the National Register on July 31, 1972, with 73 contributing structures: nineteenth-century brick commercial blocks along Main, with Gothic Revival, Greek Revival and Queen Anne houses above them, most of the Gothic Revival built between 1860 and 1880.

Mill Race Historical Village sits north of Main on Griswold beside Ford Field, holding relocated nineteenth-century buildings including the house built around 1859 for William Purdy Yerkes, the village's first president. The city runs a full calendar in the downtown through the year.

One practical note: the historic district carries design review, and this neighborhood's relationship to that boundary is a property-level question rather than a neighborhood-level one. If exterior work is part of the plan for a particular house, the city is the place to establish what applies before anything is designed.

Four things called Northville

Northville is four separate entities sharing a name, and they do not share boundaries. The City of Northville straddles Eight Mile Road — the Wayne and Oakland county line — so the city itself sits in two counties. Northville Township is entirely in Wayne County and wraps the city on the south, a separate municipality with its own government, taxes and services. The 48167 and 48168 mailing addresses reach past both. And Northville Public Schools is a fourth boundary matching none of them.

The district is the one that surprises people. In Oakland County it serves the county's portion of the city along with Novi Township, the southwestern part of the City of Novi and a southeastern part of Lyon Township; in Washtenaw County it reaches a small part of Salem Township. In the other direction, parts of Northville Township are served by Plymouth-Canton Community Schools instead.

The consequence is that being in the district tells you very little about which municipality you are in, and the municipality is what sets the tax rate. Both facts appear on a listing. They are worth reading as two facts rather than one.

The track that closed, and what is replacing it

Northville Downs stood at 301 South Center Street from 1944 until February 2024 — Michigan's oldest surviving harness track, the first in the state to offer parimutuel betting, founded by John Carlo and run by the Carlo family for its whole life. Its last live race was run on Saturday, February 3, 2024, after eighty years.

It was also the last horse racing track operating anywhere in Michigan. Its closure ended the sport's continuous presence in the state, and the sequel has not gone smoothly: the ownership bought 128 acres near Five Mile and Ridge roads in Plymouth Township intending to build a replacement, and the plan died there. The township planning commission rescinded its recommendation of the development agreement in January 2024 after conditions attached to it went unmet, the township board ended negotiations, and a judge dismissed the owners' lawsuit against the township in April 2025.

In Northville itself the site is being redeveloped by Hunter Pasteur as a roughly $300 million mixed-use neighborhood called The Downs, with several hundred homes and commercial space. The part worth knowing is the water: roughly 1,100 feet of the Rouge River, buried in a concrete tunnel since 1962, has been brought back to the surface between Beal Street and Seven Mile, with a ten-acre River Park built around it.

For anyone buying near the downtown this is a live change rather than a historical note. Check the current status of the work directly.

Mill Race Historical Village

Mill Race sits north of Main on Griswold beside Ford Field, and it is not a museum in a building — it is a collection of buildings moved to one site. The Northville Historical Society created it in 1972 on land the Ford Motor Company donated to the city, and it now holds a church, a school, an inn, a general store, a blacksmith shop, an interurban station, a gazebo and three houses.

Several of them were rescued rather than merely relocated. The New School Church was built in 1845 by a splinter group of the Presbyterian Church of Northville, served as a church for only four years, and then spent a long second life as a school, a township hall, a Salvation Army barracks and Northville's library for seventy years — the Historical Society itself was formed in 1964 specifically to save it from demolition, and moved it here in 1972. The J. M. Mead General Store was the last timber-framed building standing in downtown Northville; it was taken apart board by board and reconstructed using some of its original material, finished in 2010.

The Hunter House, Greek Revival with half-gabled wings, was built by Stephen and Mary Hunter in 1851 and moved here in 1972 from the south side of Main at Griswold. The Cady Inn, a saltbox believed to have been an early coach stop, came from the north side of Cady Street in 1987 and now holds the Society's offices. Wash Oak School, moved in 1975, had served Washtenaw and Oakland counties as a one-room school from 1873 until 1966. The gazebo and the blacksmith shop are reproductions.

Schools

Taft Colony is served by Northville Public Schools.

Downtown and the west side of Northville

Downtown Northville, Fish Hatchery Park and Maybury State Park provide different options for an area visit. You can pair a home tour with a walk through the central shopping streets or a separate park outing.

Buying or selling here

This is a neighborhood where both sides should ignore the automated estimate and build the price from the property. Seventy years of construction means the last sale down the street may be poor evidence about the house in front of you.

For a seller, the argument is the specific house — its era, what has been done to it and when, and its distance from the downtown, which is the one thing every house here shares. For a buyer, establish the build year first, run the inspection agenda that goes with it, and settle what the city permits before planning any exterior work.