Healthy Home Assessments in Royal Oak

Reading a Royal Oak home

Woodward-corridor city whose walkable downtown, zoo entrance, and music venues make it one of metro Detroit's busiest nightlife suburbs. On the record: Named in 1819 when Governor Lewis Cass, recalling the oak that hid King Charles II after the Battle of Worcester, christened a great tree here the 'Royal Oak'. 28,269 households, 59,008 residents. Cass reportedly named it after telling the story of King Charles II hiding in an English oak (the 'Royal Oak') in Boscobel Wood to escape the Roundheads after the Battle of Worcester.

The building stock

Census five-year estimates through 2023 put 65.0% of housing units in detached single-family homes and 66.4% of occupied units with their owners. Adults with a bachelor's degree or higher come to 62.6%. The record of building starts around 1925, so the assessment reads an older envelope. A local landmark: Detroit Zoo, a major zoological park largely within Royal Oak.

Mixed house types here, at 65.0% detached, mean the order of the visit is set on site once the envelope and the mechanical layout are established.

Local ground in Royal Oak:

• Detroit Zoo main entrance and water tower. The zoo's Royal Oak entrance beneath the 150-foot water tower built for the city in 1928, the year the zoo opened.
• National Shrine of the Little Flower Basilica. Art Deco church built 1931-36, declared a national shrine by the U.S. Bishops' Conference in 1998.
• Royal Oak Music Theatre. 1928 vaudeville house by John H. Kunsky, reborn in 1976 as a concert and comedy venue.
• Detroit Zoo grounds. The zoo's Royal Oak acreage and entrance plaza off Woodward and I-696.
• Downtown Royal Oak entertainment district. Restaurant, bar, and festival district around Main and Fourth streets.

Streets and settlements

Addresses fall in 48067, 48068, 48073 and 48084. The term 'going postal' was popularized after a 1991 shooting in which fired postal worker Thomas McIlvane killed five people at the Royal Oak post office.