"Architectural Ghosts of Detroit's Past"

[ButteMT61]

Sad to see this...http://www.npr.org/blogs/pictureshow/2012/11/02/164038079/architectural-ghosts-of-detroits-past

 

[Stanley Doble]

Original post deleted.

You are right. I apologize for the inappropriate comments. It's too late to do anything anyway.

 

[sheeplady]

The liberals must be thrilled..... all their dreams have come true..... no more fat bellied Capitalists in top hats, no more dark satanic mills, no more smoke stacks belching pollution into the air. No more down trodden workers in soul destroying assembly line jobs.

Now the people are free to develop the best that is in them, their spirits to open like a flower in the sunlight. Let's go to Detroit and see how that is working out.

What a wonderful example of politicians, unions and academics all working together for the common good. Ralph Nader and his friends must be so proud.

This is incredibly inappropriately political for this forum.

 

[BigFitz]

This is incredibly inappropriately political for this forum.

Quite right. Nice way to get someone else's thread locked.

Thanks for the link, Butte.

 

[1961MJS]

Hi

There are a lot of good web pages on abandoned Detroit. I find it ludicrous that the Packhard Factory closed in 1958 and has been neither torn down, or reused to any extent. At least Detroit is tearing down some of their abandoned buildings creating forest and grasslands. The population decreased by roughly half over the past 50-60 years.

Later

 

[tonyb]

There are so many reasons to bemoan what has become of Detroit that it could be considered unseemly to find any good in it whatsoever, but as a big believer in historic preservation, I can take some comfort in knowing that, unlike most American cities, many of downtown Detroit's architectural gems dating from early in the 20th century and late in the 19th are still standing, or so I've been told. (I haven't been to Detroit myself in nearly half a century.) Call it preservation by neglect -- there being so little demand for the underlying property that no one wishes to build upon it and tear down the existing structures. I know that's the story with most of the "landmarked" districts in Seattle -- for the most part, they were quite down at the heel in the 1960s and into the '70s, until enough people appreciated those structures for the treasures they are, and lobbied to protect them.

And ButteMT, your namesake town has quite the well-preserved downtown as well. I always make a point of spending at least a couple of hours, and a few bucks, there every time I find myself driving through. It's one of my fave places, as are many other settlements in Montana.

 

[JonnyO]

At least Detroit is tearing down some of their abandoned buildings creating forest and grasslands.

Burnt down, more or less, than torn down. Detroit Fire runs at least 5 house fires a day, sometimes in the same house that was on fire the day before.

 

[LoveMyHats2]

Being a Native of Michigan, and growing up in the early 1950's in a Suburb of Detroit, makes where it has gone to being today, more than just sad. I really think it would take a miracle to bring it out of the dump that it has become.

Detroit was the leader of Industry, and it reached out all over the surrounding cities with Machine shops that would support the Auto Industry. In all, I would safely state 98 percent of those Machine shops are gone. The "journeyman" machinist are all old and not working, the need has been replaced by CNC robots, and a onlooker to make sure the CNC computer is doing it's job.

Along with the shops being gone, so have a vast amount of retail stores, Hudsons, Sibleys, Florsheim, and services that were in the media and music has all taken a walk, MoTown moved our west, large shopping malls replaced the service retail shops for fashion, and even those malls are taking a beating and some have closed down.

The very heart of downtown Detroit beats with only a few of the die hard favorite places to dine or stay, and on one upbeat part of the area, the local police department has been trained well to be kind and helpful to anyone in that area using the few places that are upscale and not closed down, such as the Ren Center or Cobo Hall, or the famous restaurants and the play houses that still exists.

The monster of how things caused the city of Detroit to crumble took a few years in the making, but the recovery of it just does not seem to be showing it's head at all. In other places mother nature has caused major damages over the past two decades and at least some repair and rebuilding took place, but it just seems no one really cares to repair or rebuild Detroit.

 

[LoveMyHats2]

Here is a link to a very informative and good website that shows a story and history line regarding the Hudson store that is gone from Detroit, and some other interesting locations of places as well.
http://departmentstoremuseum.blogspot.com/2010/05/j-l-hudson-co-detroit-michigan.html