It has taken me way too long to get to Detroit, given how close it is to Toronto. I visited the city, almost, with Rick in 1996. We went in via a city bus, and took the People Mover around downtown, staring at the devastation of the city out the windows, like some reverse Disney ride. We didn't linger, and ever since then I have longed to go back, for the truly beautiful architecture and good museums, but also to see the parts of the city that are largely abandoned. The experience of the urban prairie and it's rapid transition into middle class housing was something I found fascinating and sad. As I commented to Yvon, every missing and dilapidated house tells a story of crisis and loss, and it can feel overwhelming to be amongst those ghosts.
Photo List (Total 399 Photos) Click bolded headers below to view, or click "just the best" for quick tour
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Detroit viewed from Windsor (8 photos) - The view of downtown Detroit from the Canadian side is quite beautiful, and I remember being mesmerized by it when I first saw it in 1996. These photos include a single instance from that first time in Windsor, three images from a visit with Mary to Windsor in 2015, and four images from my 2018 visit.
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Central Detroit (117 photos) - This gallery starts at Hart Plaza along the waterfront, and goes in a large sort-of circle, including the Campus Martius and the Grand Circus. Most of the images are exterior shots of buildings along this route, but we did go into the Renaissance Center and the amazingly decorative Guardian Building.
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North Along Woodward (76 photos) - This gallery starts at the Detroit Institute of Art, which we visited on Friday night, and continues at the remarkable Main Branch of the Detroit Public Library, which we were in on Saturday morning. It also includes outdoor shorts of some of the other museums in the area, like the Detroit Historical Museum, the Michigan Science Centre and the Charles R. Wright Museum of African American History. It also includes general photos of the area, including some of the mansions.
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Ruined Detroit (89 photos) - I had always been fascinated by reports of the ruins of Detroit. I had seen photos of glorious buildings in ruins, and heard of the urban prairie, formerly filled with houses that have disappeared, now dotted through with a few houses only and the remaining parts of the blocks are empty fields (and this was more spectacular than imagined). The city is in the process of restoring many buildings now, but there are great, everyday swathes of it that remain abandoned. This gallery starts at the Heidelberg Project, which converted a street of houses into an art installation. It continues through the urban prairie. I think there are perhaps too many photos of abandoned houses, but I couldn't help myself. When you cross Alter Avenue, you are immediately in a wealthy neighbourhood, and that transition was amazing. After the prairie, there are shots of commercial and industrial ruins, a few along Jefferson east of downtown, but most along Michigan Avenue. This also includes the train station and a downtown theatre converted to a parking lot.
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Ford Museum of American Innovation (51 photos) - We arrived in Detroit on a cloudy day, but the plan anyways was to go immediately to this museum in nearby Dearborn, where you can wander through Henry Ford's massive collection of cars, trains, planes, other industrial objects, as well as glass, furniture, etc. It's quite the place, and we spent quite a few happy hours wandering through. I think we were both impressed with the "power" section, which was not that popular.
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Greenfield Village (58 photos) - Henry Ford liked to collect buildings and equipment, and Greenfield, which is a kind of historical village on steroids, is the result. It is beside the Ford Museum, and when we had finished there, we had time for the village (though it is huge!) and a huge storm had just passed, so it was largely free of people. Though there were lots of important people's houses (Robert Frost, the Wright Brothers), the highlight for Yvon was being in a large working barn from the 19th Century, and the highlight for me was a long and interesting conversation with a guy in the general store (the only building brought to Deerfield Village in one piece). We also saw a heron catch and then viciously kill a fish in the pond, it was like nothing I had seen before.
