Venue: Bohemian National Home
Town: Michigan, US

Bohemian National Home is a historic building in Detroit, Michigan. The brick building sits at the corner of Tillman Street and Butternut Street in the residential section adjacent to the 3000 block of Michigan Avenue. The building is an imposing presence in the neighborhood of small, late 19th-century houses and cottages, measuring seventy feet on Tillman and one hundred feet on Butternut. According to the building permit issued March 20, 1914, the Bohemian National Home (Cesky Norodni Dum, as written in stone on the front of the building) was built by a group called the Bohemian Society. The building's original floor plan included a full ballroom with a stage and balcony; a "green room" with an access stairwell directly to the stage; a small gymnasium with brass tie downs for gymnastic equipment; a full shower and bathroom; a full service barroom with ladies’ and men’s bathrooms; a full commercial kitchen; two multipurpose rooms; and a caretaker's apartment. Arts and Crafts references appear, most notably, in the three-panel oak doors throughout the interior of the building. The original Bohemian immigrants came to Detroit to escape Prussian oppression and economic hardship in their homeland. A dozen recent arrivals formed the first Detroit lodge, in 1874, under the auspices of the Bohemian Society of America. This national organization first organized in 1854 in St. Louis, Missouri. The original Detroit lodge bore the name of Karel Havilicek Barovsky, a Czech hero of the 1848 revolution against the Habsburg dynasty. In 1890, the Detroit Bohemian Turners Society built Detroit's first Bohemian hall at the corner of Erskine and St. Antoine, on the near east side. A flag-bearing procession of the various Bohemian organizations who would use the facility commemorated the opening. By 1910, however, the east side hall had become too small to accommodate the growing community. The original plans for a new west side hall, and the announcement of a fund-raising drive to fi