Created in 1849 in the same period as many other rural cemetery movement burial grounds were founded throughout America, Elmwood Cemetery was inspired by Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris, which we looked at back in October of 2022. It’s the oldest still existing non-denominational cemetery in Detroit, and it lies to the northeast of downtown…
Tag: Michigan
Michigan Central Train Station, Detroit
The Michigan Central Station, after sitting vacant for decades and held hostage by a billionaire’s greed, has almost reached its opening day. Towering over the northwest end of Corktown and overlooking an expansive park planted with beautiful flowers that links it to Michigan Avenue and downtown, the station replaced a smaller depot deeper in the…
Corktown and Environs, Detroit
I was driving around in the Hubbard Farms and Mexicantown neighborhoods, and I snapped these photos. I also spotted the Michigan Central Terminal off in the distance; we’ll come back to it in a bit. But then I finally found what I was looking for, which is the Corktown neighborhood, which claims to be the…
North Brush Park and Eastern Market, Detroit
We head back south on Woodward Avenue to the 1888 Frank J. Hecker House, which sits on the northeast corner of East Ferry Street. Hecker was a partner of Charles Lang Freer, and together they made a fortune in their Peninsular Railroad Car Company. The house is based off Chenonceaux, which I visited last year….
Roman Catholic Cathedral of the Most Blessed Sacrament, Interior, Detroit
The staff graciously turned on the lights for me so I could photograph the interior of the cathedral, which was completed in 1930, several years after the church was consecrated. There were some renovations in the early millennium that are apparent as they look different than in a typical Gothic Revival cathedral. The stained glass…
Roman Catholic Cathedral of the Most Blessed Sacrament, Exterior, Detroit
The Cathedral of the Most Blessed Sacrament sits on the east side of Woodward Avenue, fairly far north from downtown in a largely residential area. While the above aerial image accurately captures that there is some demolition and abandonment around the cathedral, when you’re on the ground you see there are actually several historic districts…
Woodward Avenue, Churches and Other Buildings, Detroit
We’ll leave Brush Park behind and turn on to Woodward Avenue at the Ecumenical Theological Seminary and head north. Woodward Avenue is perhaps one of the most iconic streets in Detroit, and stretches all the way from the Detroit River all the way past Eight Mile Road, the city limits, all the way to the…
Brush Park, Detroit
Perhaps there is no better place to start our examination of Detroit than the Brush Park neighborhood, just northwest of the downtown area, separated by one of many interstates, in this case, the Fisher Freeway, or Interstate 75. The aerial photograph captures the neighborhood in 1998. It is certainly not 1998 anymore! The whole area…
The Motor City: Detroit, Michigan
If I understand the point of this somewhat incoherent essay, it’s that a tension exists between various groups who want to define the “real” Detroit — is it the Detroit of the bustling past, the shockingly ruined present, or the inevitably gentrified future? While this debate is inexorably being proved pointless — nostalgia will prove…
“Urban Prairie”
Update: The original article link is dead, so here’s another one on the same subject. A great article on the demise of one block in Detroit.