Cass Gilbert's 1921 Italian Renaissance main library on Woodward Avenue, whose basement Burton Historical Collection vault holds Detroit's deepest archival memory — and, librarians say, a spectral cat and a glimpse of the Nain Rouge among the stacks.
5201 Woodward Ave, Detroit, MI 48202
Age
All Ages
Cost
Free
Free to enter as a public library. Some special-collection access requires a research appointment.
Access
Wheelchair OK
Marble-clad historic building with steps at the main entrance and accessible side entrance; elevator access to all floors.
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1921 · Cass Gilbert Italian Renaissance Architecture · Burton Historical Collection (founded 1914) · Cass Gilbert Jr. 1963 Wings · Vermont Marble Construction
The Detroit Public Library purchased property near Woodward Avenue and Kirby in 1912, and in 1913 selected Cass Gilbert — the New York architect best known for the U.S. Supreme Court Building and the Woolworth Building — to design a new main library. Mansions on the site were cleared in 1914, ground was broken in January 1915, and the cornerstone laid in November 1917. The building was open to the public on March 29, 1921 and formally dedicated June 3, 1921.
Gilbert's design — chosen by a jury of three from a competition — was a restrained Italian Renaissance/Beaux-Arts composition arranged around a central book-delivery room with three flanking reading rooms. The exterior is clad in Vermont marble with serpentine Italian marble trim; 'Knowledge is Power' is carved above the main entrance on Woodward.
The original three-floor, 180,000-square-foot building was substantially expanded in 1963 with north and south wings designed by Cass Gilbert Jr. in partnership with Francis Keally. The additions opened on June 23, 1963, adding 240,000 square feet.
The library is home to the Burton Historical Collection, founded on the personal library of Detroit historian Clarence M. Burton. It is one of the largest archives in North America focused on Detroit, Michigan, and Canadian history, with manuscripts, photographs, maps, and rare books housed across reading rooms and basement-level vaults. Library staff lore associates the B-level stacks — used for staff retrieval rather than public browsing — with most of the building's reported paranormal activity.
Sources
The most-cited source for the Detroit Public Library's haunted reputation is a 2024 WDET CuriosiD feature that collected staff reports going back decades. Reference librarian Cully Sommers told WDET that a former Burton Historical Collection clerk had said — with apparent seriousness over a long career — that there was a 'gateway to hell on B-level' and that her job was to protect it and 'stop everything from coming out into the world.' The story circulates among staff as half-joke and half-institutional folklore, attached to the basement-vault portion of the Burton collection.
Reported phenomena collected by WDET include: footsteps and knocking in empty stacks; a sense of being watched and followed; shadow figures glimpsed peripherally; and the recurring report of a near-transparent 'ghost cat' moving through the basement. A retired librarian named Anne Kabel submitted the original CuriosiD question after seeing a ghost-cat video. Other anecdotes include the voice of a small girl asking, 'Where's my doll?' overheard in the stacks.
A separate aggregated source (Visit Detroit) attributes a Nain Rouge sighting to a former employee named Alejandra Amalia, who reportedly heard footsteps and saw a child-sized figure in red running among the bookshelves in the basement Burton vault. The Nain Rouge ('red dwarf') is a Detroit folk-demon tradition dating to French colonial Detroit, sometimes treated in local folklore as a harbinger of disaster.
A 1927 book held in the library's collection — 'The Oldest History of the World Discovered by Occult Science in Detroit, Michigan,' signed by self-proclaimed prophet Benny Evangelista (himself murdered in Detroit in 1929) — is sometimes referenced in local lore as 'possibly cursed' for its association with the unsolved Evangelista family murder, though this is incidental to the building itself.
The lore here is well-documented within library institutional memory and surfaced through 2024 public-radio reporting, but most accounts are first-person staff anecdotes rather than formal investigations. Single-source name attributions (Alejandra Amalia, via Visit Detroit alone) should be treated with caution.
Notable Entities
Media Appearances
Tour Cass Gilbert's restrained Beaux-Arts main hall — marble staircase, the inscribed 'Knowledge is Power' lintel, and the central book-delivery rotunda. The Burton Historical Collection reading room on the upper floors is open to the public; the actual basement vault is staff-restricted.
Schedule a research appointment to consult the Burton Historical Collection — among the most extensive personal-collection archives of Detroit, Michigan, and Canadian history in North America. The B-level basement vault houses materials that staff lore associates with paranormal experiences.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
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