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Din referat: America

America

Detroit
 
From the steely heights of wartime manufacturing, to the explosion of the post-war years, Detroit has seen its share of surges. Now Motor City's cultural renaissance throttles ahead at full speed.

Downtown is being reborn, Detroit's architectural history, from art deco to neo-gothic, is being revamped, the artsy Necklace District shines again and roulette wheels keep turning in the nation's most populated gaming city.

Forget the tired cliches about Detroit's demise. Remember that Motown began here in 1958 and changed America's music charts for all time.

In the early-'80s, the intrepid beginnings of techno happened in the warehouses of downtown Detroit and the present-day success of Eminem continues to shine a provocative light on this city's cultural world.

Museums abound, the Hydroplane Thunderfest drawsthousands every year and Detroit's People Mover keeps the city in motion.

From the native Anishnabe tribe to early French colonials to present day Motowners, something about the banks on the placid waters of the Detroit River have always drawn, and kept, a loyal crowd.

Downtown Detroit Hotels

Hotel Pontchartrain

2 Washington Boulevard Detroit, MI 48226

Around so long it's been dubbed the "Pontch" by Motowners, the Hotel Pontchartrain stands on the site of Detroit's first French fort of the same name. The 25-floor Pontchartrain recently underwent renovations to bring its rooms into the new millennium.

Rooms overlooking the Detroit River recall the fascination the French must have felt, while back rooms peek into Detroit's fire station. All rooms are softly classic and since Detroit grew up around this very spot, be certain you're central.
 
Luxury speed cruisers dock in front of this red brick ode to European prestige, set in Detroit's quaint and quieter River Town district.

Inside in the lobby, chandeliers, rich carpeting and crimson color schemes prove this French hotelier's hold on one of Detroit's more abundant addresses.

In a word, the guestrooms, from deluxe doubles to presidential suites, are lavish; the services, from meeting rooms to tanning beds, span the gamut of extravagance.

The City That Was

When you click on points of interest in the panoramic photo of 1906 Detroit in the right frame, text and images will appear in this frame. Each picture within the pages can also be clicked on to provide more-detailed, higher-resolution photos.

The Detroit pictured here has been washed away in a tide of technological and social change more rapid, perhaps, than any in human history. Click on the photo at right, read the text below, and witness the transformation of Campus Martius from grand civic plaza to post-Industrial urban backwater.

Campus Martius, Detroit, Michigan, 1906

This is downtown Detroit, 1906, on the eve of the automobile explosion. There are no automobiles in the three-picture perspective at right, even though Henry Ford had driven his first model through the streets of Detroit ten years earlier.

People and cargo travel by horse or electric streetcar, and pedestrians roam freely through the streets. Detroit City Hall (1871) is in the center with its wide lawn sloping to Woodward, Detroit's main street.

The scene has an aura of civic idealism, equal parts bustling metropolis and manicured garden; the dusty streets, striped by vehicle tracks, lend a rural air.

Detroit's major roads radiate from this public square known as Campus Martius. (Ironically, the city had been laid out in the shape of a spoked-wheel nearly one hundred years before Henry Ford manufactured the first Model T.)

All distances in Detroit were once measured from this point, including the "Mile Roads" that march into Detroit's northern suburbs. Woodward Avenue, Fort Street, and Michigan Avenue meet here, and Gratiot and Grand River start only a few blocks away. These are main arteries along which Detroit is still developing in the outer suburbs.

As the automobile transformed the country, Detroit quadrupled in population (1900-1930). Concrete was poured, skyscrapers soared, and the retail district, seen in the right panel of the panorama, expanded to world class status.

Increasingly prosperous Detroiters bought more and more of their own product, and downtown overflowed with cars.

By 1928, Campus Martius was the busiest intersection in the country according to a contemporary visitor's guide.

As early as 1920, civic leaders made plans to relieve the congestion around Campus Martius. Streets were widened, traffic signals installed, and subway schemes studied. The Great Depression put an end to the subway plans, and the city's growth slowed.

After the war, Detroiters, like most Americans, were far more interested in the open spaces of their suburbs than in the grimy confines of the central city.

Despite well-intentioned (yet often clumsy) attempts at urban renewal, the central city and Campus Martius slowly withered as families left the city to raise baby boomers in the clean air of suburban tract housing.

The City Hall in the center of this picture was torn down in 1961, leaving an open public space. New buildings were set back from the street, and the streets were widened, but by the late 60's, the number of people in downtown was declining.

The closing of the huge Hudson's department store in 1982 signaled the end of retail in downtown, and only government and financial institutions hang on today, awash in a sea of unused office space and boarded storefronts.

General Motors' recent purchase of the Renaissance Center for a bargain basement price ($72 million for a complex that cost $350 million to build twenty years ago) is an indication of how far the decline has gone.

Campus Martius is still a relatively busy intersection, but no more so than dozens of other places across town and probably less so than many rural interstate exit ramps.

In the photographs at right, scattered pedestrians walk at random slants across the open space. Today, they cling together at crosswalks or huddle at bus stops, numbed by the thrum of tires and the dull grinding of laboring motors.

Detroiters have a bittersweet nostalgia for their downtown, and some still go back for sporting events, parades, and the like; but none of them would give up their strip malls and cineplexes to go back to 1906.

The collective psychology that built civic plazas like Campus Martius no longer exists, dissipated in the march of technology, time, and social turmoil that goes by the name of Progress.

The average Detroiter walking across Campus Martius in 1906 probably had a pretty good opinion of Progress; the frontier days were still in living memory, and the technological and material improvements in daily life were manifest.

The average Detroiter today wouldn't walk across Campus Martius at all, though he may drive through it on the way to a Red Wings game. He may even have a fair opinion of Progress, but It probably doesn't cross his mind as he waits at just another stoplight at what was once "the busiest intersection in the country, by actual count!"

Soldiers & Sailors Monument

At the top of this 1871 monument to Civil War veterans is "a colossal personification of Mich igan as a semi-civilized Indian queen menacingly brandishing a sword with her right hand and clutching a shield with the left."

(From an 1870's Michigan History.) Michigan was indeed a menacing presence during the Civil War,providing 90,000 troops (8th in the Union, despite ranking 10th in population) for the Federal cause.

The 24th Michigan Infantry (part of the famous Black Hats) fought at Gettysburg where they helped stop Lee's numerically superior forces on the first day then faced the Pickett's famous Charge on the third day, suffering eighty-percent casualties. Other Michigan units served with equal distinction.

The 24th was born at Campus Martius; at the request of the President, Governor Austin Blair called for six new regiments of volunteers on July 15, 1862.

The next day, Detroit civic leaders held a rally in Campus Martius to recruit voluteers. Some in the crowd, mistaking the call for the imposition of a draft, began to protest, and the rally turned into a riot.

Rally leaders, including the octagenerian Lewis Cass, (former governor, Secretary of War, and Indian fighter) were escorted into the nearby Russell House hotel under the protection of the Wayne County sheriff. The riot was seen as a black mark upon the patriotism of Detroit, Wayne County, and Michigan.

To remedy this, the governor called for a special regiment of volunteers outside the six requested by Lincoln; potential enlistees were encouraged to "rescue the honor of Detroit."

Another rally was held at Campus Martius, this time things went smoothly, and, after finishing their training in camp at Woodward and Eight Mile Road in late August, the 24th M
ichigan Infantry paraded through the city to the riverfront where they embarked on an Eastern-bound steamer.

Before the Civil War, Detroit was a hotbed of the populist, mercantile politics that fueled Northern opposition to Southern aristocrats and the plantation economy.

The city's merchant class and newly prosperous immigrants saw the future of the United States patterned after their own recent successes which had been the product of freely-available land, protectionist trade/open immigration, and growth in transportation.