Alhambra Apartments

A six-story Romanesque Revival apartment building constructed in 1924 in the Woodward East Historic District. Once a bustling mid-century apartment house that has seen decades of decline.

The Alhambra Apartments were built in 1924 as a six-story residential building designed in the Romanesque Revival style at 100 Alhambra Avenue in Detroit. Divided into twenty-four units, the building was once hailed as one of the most opulent residences in the city, attracting Detroit's upper class during the boom years of the automobile industry. But the Alhambra's history of violence predates even the current structure, and the land itself carries a dark reputation.

The most notorious event associated with the Alhambra site involves Rose Barron, a domestic worker in the early twentieth century. In 1905, after being demoted from cook to scrubwoman by her employers, Barron exacted revenge by slipping arsenic into the household biscuits, killing two people. Despite overwhelming evidence against her, the jury deliberated for fifteen hours before delivering a shocking verdict of not guilty. Rose Barron has since been remembered in local crime history, and the poisoning cast a long shadow over the address.

The building's haunted reputation deepened with the disturbing death of a thirteen-year-old girl named Mary, who was reportedly burned alive within the building. The circumstances of her death remain murky in the historical record, but her presence is felt throughout the Alhambra to this day. Locals and visitors have reported seeing an eerie light emanating from the building's windows, particularly on upper floors that have stood vacant for years. A white apparition has been spotted flying down the hallways, described by multiple witnesses as a spectral figure that moves with unnatural speed through the corridors before vanishing.

The Alhambra has been featured on US Ghost Adventures' Detroit Ghost Tour, which passes the building and recounts its violent history. Whispered voices have been heard in empty stairwells, and the building's atmosphere has been described as oppressive even in broad daylight. The combination of the arsenic murders, the death of young Mary, and decades of urban decline has left the Alhambra Apartments as one of Detroit's most persistently haunted residential buildings, a place where the city's gilded past and its capacity for violence exist in uncomfortable proximity.