Lucille Ball’s Former Wyandotte Home

Here’s a Downriver deep cut almost nobody knows: the Queen of Comedy, Lucille Ball, once lived in Wyandotte. Around 1914, her father, Henry Ball, moved the family from Jamestown, New York to Wyandotte for a job with the Bell Telephone Company, and they rented the back apartment of a home on Biddle Avenue for ten dollars a month.

Honest framing: little Lucille was only about one to three years old at the time, so this is less “where she grew up” than “where she took some of her very first steps” — but it’s a real, documented stop on the map of one of the most important careers in entertainment history. The original building (126 Biddle, in the old numbering) was demolished in 1963, and the address today is 3738 Biddle Avenue. So there’s no house to see — just the spot, downriver along the water, where the future Lucy Ricardo spent a Michigan toddlerhood before the family moved on.