LYNN NEARY, host:
The patterns of urban growth and decay can be seen in many cities, but Detroit is held out as an extreme example. Commentator Desiree Cooper lives in Detroit. She has this story of one house in a neighborhood that has gone from fashionable white enclave to victim of white flight to integrated professional community.

DESIREE COOPER: The lumber barons and auto executives of the early 1900s built Palmer Woods. It was a stunning enclave of estate homes, one next to the other, built under a canopy of Dutch elms. When George and Matilda Fisher married in 1919, they built their new 5,000-square-foot house in Palmer Woods on Cumberland Way. He was an executive for the Kresge Company. He journeyed to his native Germany and filled his home with marble and wood carvings from the Black Forest.

George and Matilda had their youngest child, Sally in 1930. Sally remembers the huge dinners they'd have in the majestic dining room and how she'd slide down the wooden banister in the entrance way. Once her brother Donald took a padlock and clamped it on the iron spindle along the staircase. He lost the key and the lock stayed put for all the years she lived in the house.

She remembers how World War II strained the family. Her father closed the massive living room to conserve heat. He filled the attic of the house with sand in case a bomb set their roof on fire.

Sally lived in Palmer Woods until she married in 1951. By then, many of the family she had grown up with had begun moving to the sparkling, opulent suburbs. Her parents held onto their home, even when white flight was accelerated by the riots in 1967. But when George died, Matilda finally agreed to sell the house in 1970. By then the property values, even for the stately homes in Palmer Woods, had plummeted.

Even as affluent whites and blacks continued to leave the city over the next 20 years, Detroit became a place of opportunity for a new generation of mostly black professionals. In 1988, two African-American lawyers, Ed and Florise Ewell, found themselves planning their wedding and looking for a house at the same time. On a whim they toured the house on Cumberland Way. It was just like the storybooks, Florice said. 'I walked in, and I knew that's where I wanted to live.'

She and her husband bought the house for $250,000 and settled in to raise their children in what had become one of the city's many purposely integrated neighborhoods. Florice had no idea why the house had been built or who had lived there before, but she always felt there was a spirit of love and family that filled the cavernous rooms. When asked whether the house had ghosts, Florise once said, 'No. It's full of angels.'

They restored the house and filled it with many family antiques. Last year Florice put her house on a neighborhood home tour. She discovered that a member of the family who built the house was still alive. Sally hadn't been in her childhood home for 30 years, so Florise extended an invitation.

Sally arrived on an unseasonably warm winter day, barely able to contain her wonder. 'I broke my front tooth on these steps,' Sally said. Once inside she grew teary. 'I used to get stuck in this bathroom,' she said. 'The door was so heavy I couldn't push it open.'

'That happens to my daughter, too,' Florise said with a laugh.

'Is there still a padlock on the stairs?' Sally asked?

'A padlock?' Florise repeated, surprised that anyone know about the lock. 'It's right there.' The padlock had been there for nearly 70 years.

As Sally and Florise settled on the sofa to swap photos and memories of the great house, they could have been relatives, not perfect strangers. 'It's so different,' Sally said of the house she knew so well, 'but it's still home.'