Ruins of Detroit

[tbm3fan]

Ran across this site and it caught my attention with the title. Knew a lot of it had to involved automobile plants in Detroit. I wish I could have seen Detroit in it's prime and all these building bursting at the seems with cars and workers. I'm sure it was quite a sight. Then to compare Detroit to today. I have been on many old and rusty naval ships going back to 1942 but it would have been nice to also be on them when in their prime.

DetroitYES - Fabulous Ruins Table of Contents

 

[Fury440]

Great link - thanks very much for sharing it!

 

[amazinblue82]

Detroit's story is fascinating and tragic. Once the fourth largest city in America, and almost the richest.

Detroit’s Production Battle to Win World War II

The "Arsenal of Democracy" - Detroit built 30% of all the military equipment for WWII. A plant making auto transmissions was building bombers in under a month. A plant building passenger cars converted to building tanks in two months. 700,000 residents of metro Detroit area working in the plants. Then, fifty years removed from its heyday, it went bankrupt in 2009.

The story is hard to do justice to, however, without crossing some "lines" that get threads into a ditch on a forum like this. The third rail stuff -- "politics", "ethnicity", and even "religion" -- the Detroit story needs to cover to be understood.

Even the unintended but ultimately short-sighted policy things .. no subways/no regional public transportation strategy, 6-10 lane freeways that carved up neighborhoods AND fed urban sprawl, and state and local laws that discouraged "annexation" of adjacent suburbs -- that helped do the city in played a role COULD be controversial topics.

The confluence of economic, social, and political events that nearly killed one of America's greatest cities is actually quite instructive .. if the conversation steers an objective course. Flint, Gary, Cleveland, Baltimore, West Philadelphia, Camden, St. Louis, Oakland -- NOT Detroit's story, but some similar themes can be found in the story of those cities' declines too.

Anyway, we'll see how it goes.

 

[detmatt]

Thanks for the link. I'm going to have to spend some time with it.

 

[lemondana]

There are many pictures of Abandoned Detroit on the web. So sad, but it looks like the Packard Plant or at least part of it is getting another chance. Look up the "Packard Plant Project"

 

[newmexguy]

The lack of an annexation policy might have been the biggest single thing affecting Detroit. Driving down 8 Mile, the northern border of the city, the age of the structures on the south side of the boulevard is clearly evident. Incorporating suburbs such as harper woods and the grosse points certainly would have helped in terms of tax base.
Don't think blaming freeways is a valid point. Hundreds of millions if not billions can be wasted on "transit" schemes such as Bill Richardsons silly train or Jerry Brown's fiasco.
Individuals such as Kwame Kilpatrick have certainly played a major role in the decline of Detroit.

 

[amazinblue82]

The lack of an annexation policy might have been the biggest single thing affecting Detroit. Driving down 8 Mile, the northern border of the city, the age of the structures on the south side of the boulevard is clearly evident. Incorporating suburbs such as harper woods and the grosse points certainly would have helped in terms of tax base.
Don't think blaming freeways is a valid point. Hundreds of millions if not billions can be wasted on "transit" schemes such as Bill Richardsons silly train or Jerry Brown's fiasco.
Individuals such as Kwame Kilpatrick have certainly played a major role in the decline of Detroit.

Yup, "corrupt" politicians like Mr. Kilpatrick didn't help matters at all. But I think the seeds were sown for Detroit's decline before he was even born (in 1970).

The point on the freeways is fraught with a socio-economic debate that riles people to this day. I am gonna steer clear of that I hope but one google search will find tons of info on it for interested people here.

Where (the specific neighborhoods) the freeways were built, the displacement/isolating effects on/of the people (ALL ethnicities, btw - displaced people come in all colors and creeds) in those "poor" neighborhoods, then the allegations of discrimination that followed, etc, helped create conditions of "unrest".

The "Urban Renewal" decisions - what areas got razed and what went there in its place - are piled on top of that. Take a peek here for one objective analysis:

Urban-Renewal

Now, with the ease with which people and businesses could exit the city --because the freeways existed -- helped lead the explosive growth of the suburbs. The "migration" was fueled by the unrest -- 1943 and 1967 riots -- seriously who wants to live/run businesses around that kinda stuff when big, beautiful, "safe" suburbs beckoned only minutes away at 70 mph now?

Long story short. People came to Detroit. It grew fast, got big and wealthy because of its industries -- cars in particular. Over the years the metro area got bigger -- the people never left the region. They just left Detroit. The vacant lots/blight stand today as testament that it DID ALL happen - no debate on that.

"Why" did they leave?

Unpeel that onion and you will find the confluence of events/things of fierce debate on economics, politics, immigration, and race that can be controversial.

Good thing is lots of info on it for people with interest to study and decide what they think for themselves. This is actually a good history:

History of Detroit - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[tbm3fan]

The point on the freeways is fraught with a socio-economic debate that riles people to this day. I am gonna steer clear of that I hope but one google search will find tons of info on it for interested people here.

Where (the specific neighborhoods) the freeways were built, the displacement/isolating effects on/of the people (ALL ethnicities, btw - displaced people come in all colors and creeds) in those "poor" neighborhoods, then the allegations of discrimination that followed, etc, helped create conditions of "unrest".

The "Urban Renewal" decisions - what areas got razed and what went there in its place - are piled on top of that. Take a peek here for one objective analysis:

Sounds familiar. Had that happen to Oakland with the beginnings going all the way back to 1927. I do remember this dig going on between the dates it started and finished. I also remember the blight it created almost overnight. Literally divided the city in two.

The story of how a highway without a purpose was built through West Oakland | ConnectOakland

The first time I encountered something like this was back in 1962 and the place was Bogota, NJ. I lived on Chestnut Ave. between Dunn and Queen Anne. US I-80 was being put in just two blocks away from our house spitting the town in two. I moved to Maryland in 1964 so I have no idea what the effects were on this town.

 

[amazinblue82]

Sounds familiar. Had that happen to Oakland with the beginnings going all the way back to 1927. I do remember this dig going on between the dates it started and finished. I also remember the blight it created almost overnight. Literally divided the city in two.

The story of how a highway without a purpose was built through West Oakland | ConnectOakland

The first time I encountered something like this was back in 1962 and the place was Bogota, NJ. I lived on Chestnut Ave. between Dunn and Queen Anne. US I-80 was being put in just two blocks away from our house spitting the town in two.

That's a good fact-based assessment of what happened in Oakland. Thanks for that link.

I understand the cost-benefit nature of "progress". Cities age, get torn down, get built on again, age and get torn down, and the cycle repeats since the dawn of civilized man. Most benefit from the changes, some don't and that's how it goes.

Had I been a city planner/elected official or even a voter in the 1940's and 1950's, I would have supported the Interstate system, Urban Renewal --whatever -- as well-intended concepts for progress.

The execution? I dunno. And again, its only ONE thing .. several other things are going on in the Detroit that had it on a decades long path to implosion.

Any objective look at it says some goofy looking stuff went down here in Detroit. What price for the progress if the unintended outcome is 180 degrees from what the planners hoped?

Or, as the conspiracy theorists like to say (sometimes unfairly and sometimes incorrectly in my view), "they" had an agenda for the discretionary decisions they made .. and "they" almost killed their city 50 years later because of that.

I saw a study once that said Detroit's three major freeways -- the connectors to the Interstate System for I-75, I-94, and I-96, plus others named the Lodge Freeway, the Southfield Freeway, and the Davison Freeway, that estimated over 12,000 houses, 100 churches, 2,500 businesses, etc were TORN DOWN.

Most businesses reappeared of course (2/3's eventually in the suburbs), more houses got built of course (3/4's in the suburbs) ... but certain communities (ALL ethnicities but poorer people disproportionately affected) were decimated and never recovered.

"Poor" people couldn't rebuild, their neighborhood businesses were gone, they couldn't afford/faced discrimination for new housing, their local churches were gone, a walk to the grocery store of five minutes before now took 25 minutes one way to cross a freeway at cross street or walkway 1/2 mile away now.

Again, its all done. Only thing that matters is what to do now going forward. Its not too late for Detroit by any means ... its just take a while to bring it back. Never where it was, but certainly better than it is now.

 

[amazinblue82]

This is interesting. 60 years of photos of the same general location. Roughly 15-20 square miles are shown in each photo.

Basically east side of downtown Detroit (lower left in all photos where its visible), the main diagonal street from southwest to northeast is "Gratiot". The next one to the left in some picutres at about 11:00 is "Woodward"

The North (Chrysler Freeway)/South (Fisher Freeway) arteries are part of the I-75 system was built. The rest of the transition was Urban Renewal that created the "open" spaces where densely clustered "poor" neighborhoods used to be.

Starting in 1949, all the little boxes were where people lived and worked. The Greeks, the Polish, the Germans, African Americans (hardest hit group it seems), and ending in 2000s where you can see the new Comerica Park where Tigers now play.

So watch the transition from the middle to right on Gratiot diagonal. Then basically repeat this series of pictures, over 120 square miles of Detroit, SIX MORE TIMES, in urban areas near as dense as it shows in 1949, for the other freeways that got built from downtown to city limits.

1949 - The Starting Point

1952 - Urban Renewal opening up spaces.

1961 - 10 years of Urban Renewal

1967 - The Chrysler Freeway (I-75) is getting started, running from south southeast to north northwest. Still no Fisher Freeway yet.

1981 - The monster interchange (I-75) between the Fisher and Chrysler Freeways and look how big the "city blocks" have gotten.

1997 - Look back at 1949 photo to see the contrast

About the year 2000. Comerica park and Ford Field where Lions play in lower left. Basically how it looks today, again compare to 1949.

 

[Carmine]

Why you can't stop looking at ruin ****

In one of psychology's classic studies, published in 2001, a research group led by Roy Baumeister documented the overwhelming evidence that people respond to bad events more than good ones. The superiority of negativity holds true for relationships, friendships, moods, parenting styles, stereotypes and reputations, feedback and critique, and health and happiness. If only to avoid it, the mind pays far more attention to the bad than to the good. How it applies to ruin ****.

Ruin ****—and disaster **** more broadly—clearly falls under the umbrella of bad events. We may be drawn to ruin **** for the same reason negative stories have led nightly newscasts for years: that's what our minds prefer.

I'd quite happily contribute to a fund that would pay a hacker to crash these ruin **** sites and their half-baked, out-of-state analysis of the City of Detroit.

 

[tbm3fan]

Why you can't stop looking at ruin ****



I'd quite happily contribute to a fund that would pay a hacker to crash these ruin **** sites and their half-baked, out-of-state analysis of the City of Detroit.

Now I don't believe my link does any half baked analysis of the City of Detroit at all.

 

[amazinblue82]

Now I don't believe my link does any half baked analysis of the City of Detroit at all.

I didn't see anything in the DetroitYes! link that tbm3fan posted (a site run by local people who are advocates of city) got factually wrong. Of course, we are all free to judge that particular content/site as we each see fit.

"Bad" things DID happen in Detroit. "Good" things ARE happening now in Detroit. Time will tell the rest of the story.

 

[amazinblue82]

An aside and then I'm getting off this road thing.

Anyone interested in this particular topic ... the highways/interstates and the effects on American cities .. can find of lot things to do more research on from elements covered in this video.

The producers have a "point of view" obviously, and they single out Detroit in part of their material. But they also talk about a dozen other cities briefly.

I personally am taking NO position on whether the topics this video covers are "right" or "wrong", or the motivations of the infrastucture decision-makers over the past 80 years wherever they were, etc.

That's "third rail" stuff I am not getting any closer to -- those judgments are for individuals to decide for themselves. I just find the objective facts to be instructive.

 

[Carmine]

I'll try to make my unfavorable reaction understandable.

First of all, the viewpoints on DetroitYes! (it has a huge forum) are so all-over-the map as to defy categorizing them as good/bad. They go everywhere from "Golly I miss the old movie theater" to "Capitalism is the root of Detroit's decline". However, the fact remains that they are one of the oldest sites on the web hosting pictures of abandoned Detroit buildings and most of their traffic comes from those seeking ruin ****.

What is ruin **** and what's my beef? I'll admit the pictures themselves are fascinating and tell a story. The problem is they tell a story from 10,000 feet. For example, people from all over the world seem to know this famous picture of Detroit blight (Hell, this one comes from the BBC):

..and of course it comes with this introduction that sounds like an 8th grade book report:

the gigantic Michigan Central Station has come to represent Detroit's rise to industrial greatness and long, painful fall into economic depression. "No other building exemplifies just how much the automobile gave to the city of Detroit - and how much it took away," writes Dan Austin in his book Lost Detroit: Stories Behind the Motor City's Majestic Ruins. Today it is one of Detroit's most prominent eyesores, and a barbed-wire fence has been erected to keep out the vandals and scrappers that plagued the building in the decades since it closed.

What the inevitably fail to mention is that MCS was just a bad idea from the day it opened, and if not for the Federal government's willingness to pour money into a hole callled Amtrak, it probably would have closed two decades earlier. From the time it was built, it never got anywhere close to full occupancy. In 1950, at the peak of the city's population, you could have fired a cannon through the upper floors without hitting anyone. It's poorly located, far from the central city. Inefficient, made of stone and glass without central A/C in a city that's either -10 or 90+ and humid. Yet this building "has come to represent Detroit's rise to industrial greatness and long, painful fall into economic depression" ... with all the accompanying claptrap about the evils of the automobile.

Then there is the Packard plant, a humongous industrial site that was so inefficient as to be abandoned in 1955. Of course there are the opulent movie theaters in ruin, just like those in every other major city once the government broke up the studio-owned theater model in the 1960s. Oh the neighborhoods... Detroit had the highest percentage of individually owned, single family homes in the nation. We don't have massive blocks of 10-story apartment buildings. That means that both mass transit and massive urban-renewal projects don't work. This is a horizontal city, not vertical.

Now what you don't see in ruin **** are the success stories. Chrysler has (and is) operating an assembly plant in Detroit on Jefferson Ave since its founding. Two engine plants. The Viper plant. Huge tooling and stamping operations. Only the Cadillac division of GM has ever built cars in Detroit and they still do, at a modern factory a few miles from the old factory site. (Other GM divisions operate in other MI cities) Ford has not manufactured any cars in Detroit-proper since the 19-teens. (Dearborn, Wixom, other suburbs). My point is, Detroit-proper never was the "glory center" it was made out to be, nor is it the smoldering ruin it's portrayed as now.

And the ruin is what you see in the photos. How visually interesting is this...

vs. this:

 

[Carmine]

With a title like "How highways wrecked American cities", why would you assume bias?

...The producers have a "point of view" obviously, and they single out Detroit in part of their material. But they also talk about a dozen other cities briefly.

I personally am taking NO position on whether the topics this video covers are "right" or "wrong", or the motivations of the infrastucture decision-makers over the past 80 years wherever they were, etc.

That's "third rail" stuff I am not getting any closer to -- those judgments are for individuals to decide for themselves. I just find the objective facts to be instructive.

[/QUOTE]

Very little by the way of objective fact in that video, unless you're counting the re-hash of old hippy conspiracy theories. Although I do like the way they seem to include Toyoda as one of the co-conspirators in 1930s-50s US highway planning, lol.

 

[amazinblue82]

I agree with you on the short-shrift paid to what was and still is great about the city. Our experiences with the City may be different and that may create a few differences in how we see things .. and its cool.

Its just the decline is SO striking, and SO unprecedented in an American city. Absent a natural disaster, how does ONE city lose 60% of its population in 50 years? How does it wind up with almost 100,000 vacant structures?

All in an immediate region that got BIGGER (more people) in the same time frame? That fact pattern is begging to be better understood -- with a maximum of indisputable facts so we know what to try to work on.

Your MCS story is interesting .. never at capacity and poorly placed .. i didn't know that. Lotta reasons why its an eyesore today, but I'm lame on the history of it from inception to when it closed.

Anyway, the Detroit "ruins" cannot be denied. If I drive drive Woodward, Michigan, Grand River, Fort Street, Jefferson, or Gratiot from downtown to the city limits, do the loop of Grand Boulevard, drive down Fenkell, Warren, Mack, any of the Mile roads within the City limits -- it just knocks the wind outta me. I frickin' get teary eyed and depressed over it.

If you want, I will join you in posting a few more positive stories/pictures that show the Comeback of the City? The stuff Dan Gilbert is doing, the Illitches, and thousands of other people makin' the positive change happen with contributions big and small.

 

[amazinblue82]

With a title like "How highways wrecked American cities", why would you assume bias?

Very little by the way of objective fact in that video, unless you're counting the re-hash of old hippy conspiracy theories. Although I do like the way they seem to include Toyoda as one of the co-conspirators in 1930s-50s US highway planning, lol.

The facts are there was an interstate system Act in 1956, "they" demolished thousand of buildings, in many cities (I was in Topeka Kansas and I-70 came through there -- my Dad showed me all the stuff that got razed there way back in 1965. given has was born there in 1933).

So all that stuff happened. The country spent the 60 billion, and 90% came from the Feds, and the roads got built.

Even biased conclusions from content producters sometimes rely on immutable facts. As the cliche goes, "we are entitled to our own opinions, but not to our own facts". We (any consumer of information) have to try to sort through the noise to find truth as we see it lest we wind up just believing whatever we are told.

Personally its hard for me to take things at face value - especially things that just don't make sense at first glance .

Anyway, however the roads got built .. influenced by Ike's time in Europe, GM, Toyota, space aliens -- is instructive to me. I get to do more work to decide what I think happened, and decide what I wanna do (who to vote for, where to invest my money, etc.) with that information.

 

[amazinblue82]

Saving Orchestra Hall - what motivated individuals can do. Stunning acoustics by any standard, a great place and a success story being saved from ruin.

Detroit Symphony Orchestra - Saving Orchestra Hall

Once an acoustical legend, Orchestra Hall fell into disrepair after the Paradise Theatre closed. By 1970, the building was slowly but surely becoming a ruin—peeling paint, cracked and crumbling plaster, rotting carpet and draperies. Few gave much hope that the hall could be saved. When word came that this once venerable concert hall was headed for the wrecking ball so the lot could be used for a new department store, local citizens led rallied to save the great concert hall. Following a series of marches and sidewalk benefit performances, musicians and friends of the DSO succeeded in saving Orchestra Hall from demolition.

The task of saving Orchestra Hall was anything but an overnight success. With months of work, millions of dollars and the help of hundreds of skilled crafts persons, the hall underwent a major restoration and renovation. The replacement of decorative plasterwork required the reproduction of hundreds of delicate designs in many sizes, some of which, while appearing the same in all respects were actually configured differently for the left and right sides of the Hall. Additionally, the building’s exquisite architectural details and decorative painting were replicated.
​

BEFORE - 1970 Closed and In Disrepair

AFTER - 2013, restored to better than new.

 

[Carmine]

The facts are there was an interstate system Act in 1956, "they" demolished thousand of buildings, in many cities (I was in Topeka Kansas and I-70 came through there -- my Dad showed me all the stuff that got razed there way back in 1965).

So all that stuff happened. The country spent the 60 billion, and 90% came from the Feds, and the roads got built.

Even biased conclusions sometimes rely on immutable facts. We have to sort through the noise to find truth as we see it.

Anyway, however the roads got built .. influenced by Ike's time in Europe, GM, Toyota, space aliens -- is instructive to me. I get to do more work to decide what I think happened, and decide what I wanna do (who to vote for, where to invest my money, etc.) with that information.

Is it really all that unprecedented? Didn't similar things occur in other large cities? Detroit is often cited by both sides of the political spectrum because they can pick and choose facts to suit their needs. One side likes to blame unions (while ignoring that Japanese, Korean and German unions make the UAW look like a church choir group). Another hates "the automobile" in general (while ignoring the problems of pollution and disease in a city filled with 100,000 horses crapping every 50 feet). And what better city to choose than the one which is so closely identified with both unions and automobiles?

See how fair I'm being by calling out both sides?

As to the whole highways-wrecked-everything argument, we'd be hearing a different version of whoa-is-me from "community activists" if highways had purposefully bypassed certain areas. "The man avoided connecting our neighborhood from all the good jobs!"

If you like satellite shots, here's one where the man plowed an expressway right through whitey's suburban dream, first I-94 in the 60s, then I-696 in the 70s.

There are no broad swaths of vacant land. Most of the homes you see existed before and after the expressway came through. In fact, I bought my first home literally behind a demolished street because the expressway makes it super easy to get anywhere in metro Detroit and because the 300' deep lot gave me room for a big garage. The lot only became so big when the home behind it was demo'd.

Here's another satellite image. Why is the left side so sparely populated? Why is the right side so much more dense? What is magic about that road running through the center?

The homes are the same ages (probably the same plan and builders). Equal access to mass transit... In fact, the left side has access to an additional bus system. Both sides predate any expressways. You'll note I've drawn two red X's. Let's have a street view of the left red X, then the right...

The "magic road" is the border between the City of Detroit and the City of Grosse Pointe. If Detroit had been able to annex this city in 1950, do you think the pictures would look any different now? The difference is 60 years worth of corruption and sloth that was tolerated in one city, and not tolerated in another.

Not expressways. Not racism. Not a cabal of evil capitalists. Not air pollution.

Just what one set of people were willing to tolerate as "normal" and what another were not.