July 29 -- Detroit -- heading out Woodward, and Grand Boulevard

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Detroit, in the stone, and in the reflections.

One theme of the tour was that there once was tremendous wealth and power in Detroit, and that there are a lot of elegant buildings, still in use, that demonstrate that strong past (and indicate hope for the future).

Campus Martius Park, right in front of the new Compuware building, from a moving bus.

Comerica Park, current home of the Detroit Tigers baseball team.  There was a game, the evening of the 29th, and there were plenty of people headed for the stadium.

The Fox Theatre has been totally renovated by the Ilitch family, who own the Tigers and the Red Wings, in addition to the Fox Theater, and Little Caesar's Pizza. The Ilitch family are wonderful supporters of downtown Detroit.

I had not realized that the Fox Theatre is right across the street from Comerica Park, but as you can see from the reflection in this pic of fancy carving around a Fox Theatre window, it is.

Detroiters take their professional sports very seriously.  They continue to come out for games in big numbers, even when their team hasn't had a winning season in years, as is the case for the Detroit Lions (football).

Woodward runs north northwest up from downtown Detroit. This building belongs to Wayne State University, as you can see, and parts of it are for rent. It is kitty corner from the Art Institute.

In front of the Detroit Institute of Arts is Rodin's The Thinker.

Across Woodward from the DIA is the Detroit Public Library.

Up Woodward one more block from the DIA, we turned northeast on Ferry.  On the corner is this Loire-Vally-inspired former private home of a railroad-car baron.

This building was built by Charles Lang Freer, another railroad-car baron, who amassed an enormous collection of spectacular Chinese and Japanese art, and a lot of work by James McNeill Whistler.  Is this sounding familiar?  Yes, this is the very same Freer who donated his collection, along with the funds to house it, to the Smithsonian in Washington, DC.  We were told, on the 29th, that Freer offered the collection to the University of Michigan, which turned it down due to the cost of housing it.  (!!!)  I have enjoyed this collection many times.  In Washington.  I didn't realize it had Michigan connections until the 29th.

From Ferry, we turned southeast on John R. There are a lot of cultural institutions of various sorts in the immediate vicinity of the DIA.  I visited the College for Creative Studies, once, many years ago, and never realized (or don't remember knowing!) that it is right across John R from the DIA. The Detroit Science Center is kitty corner (across John R) from the DIA, and the Museum of African American History is adjacent to that. I did know that the Detroit Historical Museum is across Woodward from the DIA, as we parked in its parking lot once, when we were going to the DIA and its parking lot was full.

The Scarab Club, on John R between the CCS and the Science Center, was built as a venue for small musical ensembles to perform. It is a plain building, with this embellishment. I liked the scarab, and when I saw the brick "on the big screen," I discovered I liked the color variation in the brick, too.

You can't go far, in Detroit, without getting back to cars and factories.  Here is the place where Henry Ford and his associates worked out the assembly-line concept for mass-production of manufactured goods.  Nine thousand Model T Fords were produced here in 1908.

A bit of mise-en-scene..........

The General Motors Building.  This building housed General Motors, until they bought the RenCen.  This building now houses State of Michigan offices.

And now for something completely different, here is the home of Motown. An amazing amount of excellent music came out of Detroit on the Motown label!

This is the Packard Motor Car Company plant.  It is huge ("the first very large vehicle-assembly plant"), and entirely abandoned.

Not surprisingly, its neighborhood is in dire straits.  Abandoned house, with missing windows, just like it's much-larger cousin up the street.  Once upon a time, these neighborhoods were solid with bombed-out-looking houses.  Some time in the last 10 or 15 years, a great number of those buildings were razed.  Detroit is a much greener (-looking, at least) place, now, with grassy empty lots instead of burnt-out rubble.

And people still live here -- the house on the left has no windows, but the one on the right looks to be in good shape.....

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