Lathrup Village, Michigan
city in Michigan

The City of Lathrup Village ( LAY-thrəp) is a city in Oakland County in the U.S. state of Michigan. An inner-ring suburb of Detroit, Lathrup Village lies roughly 17 miles (27.4 km) north of downtown Detroit, and is entirely surrounded by the larger city of Southfield. As of the 2020 census, the city had a population of 4,088.
History
The city of Lathrup Village is an outgrowth of the development known as Lathrup Townsite, the dream of its developer Louise Lathrup Kelley. In 1923 she purchased a tract of 1,000 acres (4 km2) in Southfield Township, in southern Oakland County, and proceeded to plant a residential neighborhood that encompasses the city of 1.5 square miles (3.9 km2). Lathrup Townsite was conceived as a controlled community with rigorous standards, including houses built only of masonry construction; early integration of attached garages; as well as established minimums for construction cost to ensure quality. The community also had housing covenants to prevent the sale of homes to African American families, part of a larger trend in the mid-20th century of white Detroiters fleeing to the suburbs to avoid living near black residents (see white flight). As the community developed, Mrs. Kelley implemented numerous innovative directives, including operating a shuttle service to local shopping areas, and allowing the financing of automobiles as part of the financing of houses, which created a stronger connection between the relatively isolated townsite and more established suburbs, as well as the city of Detroit. Mr.
“Lathrup Village, Michigan” enters the record as city in Michigan. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Lathrup, Village and Michigan can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“Lathrup Village, Michigan” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Lathrup, Village and Michigan provides the most credible route into that argument.
Place names and jurisdictional language are key evidence: both can reveal earlier catalogue descriptions and overlooked record series. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 28, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2200069. VIAF identifies the subject as 123216306. The Library of Congress control number is n85064185. Authority coordinates are 42.496, -83.223. 3 of 5 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2020 and 1923.
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This entry incorporates text from “Lathrup Village, Michigan” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.