Detroit — One fire may be an accident, two fires a coincidence, but three fires — as in the case of the third Heidelberg Project to burn, the “Penny House,” and one would have to conclude that an arsonist or arsonists are methodically blazing the city’s controversial art works. The latest act of apparent violence to strike the Heidelberg Project, where another house burned Thursday, has stunned Detroit and its artistic community.
The Detroit Fire Department’s Arson Squad has apparently come to the same conclusion as they step-up the investigation into the destruction of the properties owned and created be internationally acclaimed artist, Tyree Guyton.
At the University of Michigan Museum of Art, director Joseph Rosa called the news heartbreaking. “The project has such an important history as a way to rethink the city and bring it back,” he said, noting that any number of other towns have studied Heidelberg as a way to reinvent distressed neighborhoods.
The off-beat art projects have also become one of the city’s most significant cultural attractions for locals and tourists alike. “I don’t know a visitor to Detroit with their eye on art who doesn’t go there,” said Nancy Sizer, director of the Detroit Artists Market.
“If we were to lose Heidelberg,” said Jerry Herron, dean of the Wayne State University Honors College who wrote part of “Connecting the Dots,” a 2007 history of the project, “we’d lose one of the most vibrant and creative responses to the desperate hardships that often attend our urban condition. Tyree quite brilliantly turned the refuse of an abandoned neighborhood into a reason to make people want to come and see and understand.”
Firefighters were called to the “Penny House” about 3 a.m. where they found it fully engulfed with flames.
“It was totally involved by the time we arrived,” Chief Douglas Lyon said. “All that we could do at that point was take a defensive position. No other structures were damaged because the structure is kind of off by itself. We’ve been called over there quite a bit lately.”
The “Penny House” was located only a half a block away from the former “Soul House, which burned on Nov. 12.
On Thursday, members of the Arson Squad were at the scene collecting evidence. Investigators say they have a person of interest who they plan to contact, according to Detroit Fire Capt. Charles Simms.
Today, the Heidelberg attracts a worldwide attraction, and in addition to the public art space, its gift shop and welcome center located inside the Numbers House, provides arts education to youth in Metro Detroit whose struggling school districts might not otherwise afford to provide it.