The Detroit Financial District is a United States historic district in downtown Detroit, Michigan. The district was listed on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places on December 14, 2009, and was announced as the featured listing in the National Park Service's weekly list of December 24, 2009.It includes 33 buildings, two sites, and one other object that are deemed to be contributing to the historic character of the district, and also three non-contributing buildings.The American Institute of Architects describes Detroit's Financial District as "one of the city's highest concentrations of quality commercial architecture". According to the National Park Service:From the 1850s to the 1970s the Financial District in downtown Detroit was the financial and office heart of the city, and it stills retains an important banking and office presence today. Banks began to locate along Jefferson Avenue in the Griswold and Shelby streets area in the 1830s. Substantial office buildings, often containing banks in their street levels, began to line Griswold in the 1850s. Detroit's massive early twentieth-century auto industry-related growth and economic boom resulted in large-scale redevelopment of the area between 1900 and 1930, and another wave of development took place in the 1950s and early 1960s. The Financial District continues today to be an important financial and office district in Detroit.In the new millennium, the 47-story Penobscot Building stands at the center of the district as a state of the art class-A office tower and serves as a hub for the city's wireless Internet zone and fiber-optic communication network. Other major class-A office renovations include the Chrysler House and the Guardian Building, a National Historic Landmark. The Financial District is served by the Detroit People Mover and QLine light rail. Viewed from the International Riverfront, the district is bordered on the left by the 150 West Jefferson skyscraper which replaced the Detroit Stock Exchange Building and on the right by the One Woodward Avenue skyscraper.
