On a blown-out stretch of Grand River, where the street was long ago stripped of life, a muraled building dappled with shards of mirrors hints at the unique things inside.

Dabls African Bead Gallery, located where Grand Boulevard splits Grand River, is one of the few eye-catching facades in a long stretch of drab blocks. It’s housed in a century-old rowhouse owned by Olayame Dabls, who covered its exterior walls with bright, colorful patterns and African motifs overlaid with sparkling mirror fragments.

His gallery contains thousands of beads, some in old jars and bottles carefully lined on shelves, others in rows of hanging strands that refract light from the windows and give the air inside a hint of color. Some of the beads are centuries old.

But a lot of the attention the property receives comes from the sprawling art project behind the building, set in a vacant field. Called “Iron teaching rocks to rust,” it’s an arrangement of stones pained black and situated in classroom-like rows, headed by large metal pieces – a metaphor, said Efe Bes, a local artist and musician affiliated with the museum.

“The iron is trying to teach them how to rust,” said Bes, founder of the Bambuti “other world music and dance group,” whose music blends traditional African rhythms with contemporary beats like techno. “The iron is basically European society teaching black folks how to become European. That’s what the school systems are doing. We got some that have assimilated or almost assimilated and learned how to rust, so they have some rust attributes.”

The yard also features monuments to Africans who died trying to escape slave ships and a good-size stage, where Dabls said he planned to hold, among other festivals, a “beer bust” in early fall. He welcomes visitors and obligingly leads them through the project, explaining the intent behind each element.

“It’s dealing with the social/political situation that we find ourselves in here in America,” Dabls said. “Because of the unusual way in which we came here, internally we did not bring any cultural information with us. So coming out of slavery, of being enslaved rather, we mimic the European culture. Our goal was to be included. So we’ve tried that, it did not work, so we’re at a stage in our history at this point in time where we began to say ‘OK, I need to know something about Africa.’”

To that end, Dabls collects textiles, carvings and all artifacts African, all of which are housed in a museum on the premises. The bead museum was founded in 1971, and before settling in the rowhouse had several locations around town: the Book Tower, Trapper’s Alley in Greektown and the David Whitney Building. Besides caring for the museum all these years, he’s also the author of “African Beads, A Coloring Book?” and was once a curator at the old Charles Wright Museum of African American History.

Dabls says despite the Afro-centric theme behind the gallery and the art projects, his visitors are diverse. “We get people from all over the country coming here now, and we get people donating material, people dropping mirrors off, people asking ‘What can I do? How can I help?’ Because the genesis of this is it’s of the people, and the more people are involved in this the greater the success of this lasting because others will have a personal part in it. We have all kinds of folks involved with this installation here – Europeans, Africans, all nationalities come here and can relate to the energy that’s here. There’s an energy in what we’re doing here and that energy is what’s going to drive it forward.”

Bes went further. “This is the only thing happening in Detroit right now that’s going to change Detroit,” he said. “And the reason I said the only thing is ‘cause everything else has been tried before.”

Dabls African Bead Museum is located at 6559 Grand River. Hours are noon-7 every day. The art display outside is always open. For more information, call (313) 898-3007