Aretha Franklin House (The Rose Estate)

She could have lived anywhere — Malibu, Manhattan — and the Queen of Soul chose Detroit, staking her claim in the Palmer Woods / Detroit Golf Club subdivision, long a symbol of Black excellence in the city. She bought this three-story brick mansion in 1993, named it the Rose Estate, and recorded A Rose Is Still a Rose within its walls — then threaded roses through the whole house: a rose-red bathtub, rose-patterned carpet, even rose-shaped door handles, with a solarium looking out on the golf club’s 7th hole. After years of decline following her 2018 passing (she spent her last decade downtown at Riverfront Towers), a pair of preservation-minded owners poured over $2 million into a genuine restoration — saving nearly 100 original windows and that famous tub. It sits on a gated road, so you can’t reach the front door, but you can catch the silhouette of the Queen’s house from the edge of Palmer Woods. Worth the reverent drive-by.