Part of Temple Bar collapsed in May 2024. It reopened seven months later.
The Cass Corridor bar is a Detroit institution of the specific kind that does not advertise itself as one. It has been around since 1927, runs a consistently good DJ program, and has stayed genuinely queer-friendly through every wave of gentrification. When the rear of the building partially collapsed last spring, most people who cared assumed it was done. Old building in Cass Corridor goes down, that is usually the ending.
It was not the ending. The owners launched a GoFundMe that pulled in nearly $24,000, worked with the Detroit Historic Commission on structural repairs, and reopened the bar in December 2024. The section that collapsed came back. The programming came back. The regulars came back the same night.
Detroit has lost a lot of buildings that mattered because nobody had the money or the patience to fix them. Temple Bar getting saved by its own community, without a developer buying it and turning it into a cocktail lounge with a curated cassette wall, is the kind of outcome that does not happen enough. The repair list was not glamorous. The reopening was not a scene. The bar is just open again.
Temple Bar is at 2906 Cass Avenue.
