Black Bottom/ Paradise Valley and the original Detroit 1920s-1950s

 

The story : Its BACK!  Detroit Paradise Valley /  Harmonie Park  hopes to be a scene that started up again in the 1960s 

 Meanwhile it has gotten  completely restored down to the cobblestone in 2019

   

 The BELT is an art alley steps away from  old black area of  Harmonie Park - a musical street mainly Randolph and a theatre street (mainly Broadway)  Imagine black people taking a break between sets on Randolph . There was a thriving musical scene here from the 1870s to the 1970s Which is why people often argue where Black Bottom/Paradise Valley really was (see map)  Like other immigrant groups, for Blacks, the  landing neighborhoods of  Black Bottom/Paradise Valley kept shifting Northward until the population went around the mansions and  abutted Mack Avenue which is now the Medical Center. (That is Urban Renewal for ya - squeeze at both ends)

Fortunately  not every thing is gone .  The Black newspaper of record -The Michigan Chronicle has its offices in the Harmonie Park Music Historical area.Now that even the cobblestone is baack it is easy to close your eyes and imagine Ragtime  since the  early edge of  this fabled neighborhood started blocks form the river on  Adams in the post Civil War era . See Map. By the 1970s however, only Randolph street was left, just below Gratiot. WHY is this important ?

Finally the State of MI realized that Detroit lost an important piece of history and spent $$ to restore the area -particularly Randolph street and the BELT. Place the blame on the National Highway act, which  wiped out the main street Hastings(equivalent to Harlem's club scene)  and the Urban Renewal Movement which  tore down the rest. Motown arose from the rubble  The Supremes and Smokey Robinson were neighbors. Diana Ross moved here from a nicer neighborhood at 15  and black people in particular  were losing their jobs in the recession of the Eisenhower Presidency. Maxine Hubbard Belton moved here in 1953 and rented in  the area until 1960 , when Margaret  (yes me writing this ) started school and they were able to buy a house  near 8 mile ,Conant Gardens , which had great schools and was the black neighborhood to move into at the time.

Photo by Ryan " Jake" Jakubowski   of J&C Photography  Photography https://www.jcphotography-mi.com/about

PHOTOCREDIT  J& C Photography 2021

Amazing Photo of  January 2021 snowstorm in Detroit of  THE BELT 

 Harmonie Park  has an odd spelling but that reflects the 18th century

https://www.metrotimes.com/detroit/paradise-reclaimed-the-winding-journey-to-restore-detroits-historic-black-entertainment-district/Content?oid=2460356

 Since Harmonie Park 

 was the black entertainment district for Black Bottom  inhabitants  (named because of the rich river dirt French Farmlands  - not racist!)   & Harmonie Musical District  was  eventually part of a larger entertainment area  called Paradise Valley. which started at Gratiot and shifted the area northward, Post Ragtime. This was the 1920s- 1950s where most Detroiters tell stories about it. It was a stop on the chitlin circuit and you could see anyone from Duke Ellington to Pigmeat Markham during its heyday.

Abutting the black Bottom/Paradise Valley neighborhoods was the original immigrant area : Greektown.

  The Greek Town Casino/Hotel  originally owned by The Sault Chippewa Indians is nearby, The whole area is quite old and has beautiful old circa 1888 buildings. The general Immigrant area was  originally Greek and Slavic and Irish and was all wood and Burned completely in 1805.  Interestingly the original Jail and the first  housing projects in Detroit  aka  the Brewster Projects  (Diana Ross, Mary Wilson and Florence Ballard ) were placed at the North and South ends of this area from the riverfront following generally the borders of the French Farming Strips  pre 1785. The ribbon farm map below is from the Detroitography blog and shows  Detroit @1796.

UNITED STATES SIDE OF DETROIT 

map by Detroitography 

https://detroitography.com/2013/03/18/detroit-ribbon-farms-map-1796/detroit1796/#image-attachment-anchor

We missed the Great  Fire of 1805.  Black people were here in Detroit  from @ 1834 when Canada outlawed Slavery and Michigan was a territory. The international border was the last stop on the Underground Railroad in the United States where escaping slaves took refuge in Churches like 2nd Baptist. Most blacks stayed here in Detroit working on the riverfront, but after the city suffered  the great fire of 1805 -distinct neighborhoods sprung up. See map: PLAN FOR DETROIT

Detroit was supposed to have a circular grid like Paris but the Cross hatch north -south British grid won out and was superimposed on the circular French grid . In any case the streets that have a little of both became slums. In the picture below the ribbon farms predated the slums , then the whole city burned down and had to start all over again. The slums :which included both Paradise Valley/Harmonie Park/Black Bottom start after the civil war. Blacks were restricted to this area and it became very overcrowded. See Map : UNITED STATES SIDE OF DETROIT 

Paradise Valley historically took up some 66 square blocks. Some say the area was bounded by Vernor, John R, Madison, and Hastings, while others say the neighborhood was bordered by Adams, Brush, Alexandrine, and Hastings. See Map: PLAN FOR DETROIT

 The community swelled from about 40,000 to 120,000, mostly by Southern blacks who flocked to Detroit for work in the automotive industry. The neighborhood was the only area where African-Americans could live at the time in the deeply segregated city                      

                                            PLAN FOR DETROIT          or why Love Child by Diana Ross and the Supremes sounds so heartbreaking - Its all in this map

(BACKSTORY ON DIANA ROSS)

 :https://detroitgetlucky.blogspot.com/2018/01/diana-ross-home-for-sale-aretha-may-be.html

  The slums started after the civil war. Immigrants fleeing Europe because of the political upheavals of the mid 1800s from Italy to the edges of Russia came to Detroit. The last group to colonize the area  that was already a slum thanks to overcrowding  and mostly wooden houses was black people from the Great Migration @1920-1950. The Urban Re-Newal movement razed the area along with the National Highway Act of 1949. See the pictures of  this area which was Detroit's equivalent of the Harlem Renaissance and lasted much longer due to black people getting paid by the car industry.

 Artistically ,The Great Depression killed off the Harlem Renaissance  1925-1929) Yet here there was enough going on for the REDBULL Academy to start documenting  Detroit's pre Motown Jazz and R&B scene see link https://daily.redbullmusicacademy.com/2015/08/detroit-jazz-and-blues

                                Wayne State University Archives Photo: Detroit News Archives (1938) 

    You have to close your eyes to see anything  that was jumping and musically thriving mid century Fortunately on  you tube  https://youtu.be/g2sOE2-DIHA  you can re live the era .

Maxine Hubbard moved here with Howard Belton in 1953  and rented near the Packard plant  and the edges of Paradise Valley. Her sisters Dorothy Davis and Gladys Hubbard lived nearby the Paradise Valley Black Bottom areas as well - all were able to enjoy some of the scene before they tore it down.  https://www.metrotimes.comm/detroit/paradise-reclaimed-the-winding-journey-to-restore-detroits-historic-black-entertainment-dostrict/Content?oid=2460356

All I remember is the Doctors office on Mack and St Jean near the Sears on the dividing line between Black Bottom and Paradise Valley also known as Gratiot. 

@ late 1950s All of us lived in a mixed neighborhood with older Germans and the Packard Plant nearby. Jessica Suzanne can tell you tons about  the era/area. The neighborhood has been razed.  Packard plant-  that famous ruin was still operating  but closed just as Black Bottom/Paradise Valley were done too. 1958 during the Eisenhower years was rough on black people and the economy.

Martha Battle Philpot  showing off Mural which features her Dads record Store in Paradise Valley at Bert Place Eastern Market/ Best place to hang out at a picnic table with a beer on Friday evenings till sunset https://www.secondwavemedia.com/concentrate/features/hipsterhistory0439.asp

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Packard_Automotive_Plant

the Packard plant has been purchased to be converted to lofts/stores etc. It is no longer a ruin that is explorable The famous overpass broke and it is constantly patrolled by security now. 

      Here is the latest renovation update 5 minutes  on You Tube  https://youtu.be/W825UDf57tc

If you wish to live vicariously you tube has quite a few films on the beat up Detroit - 

We of course prefer the history stuff on Our Black Heritage - not buildings

but people  

        See  this 5 minute podcast on Black Bottom and the Chrysler freeway that replaced it

https://wdet.org/posts/2015/10/19/81771-curiosid-how-a-1900s-black-detroit-community-was-razed-for-a-freeway/ of the  Black Bottom/Paradise Valley 

It is very hard to visualize the original black area today in your mind. Detroit has been relentless in tearing down its past. The football Stadium  sits atop central Paradise Valley

  and specifically replaced the nightclubs

https://detroithistorical.pastperfectonline.com/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&search_criteria=paradise+valley&searchButton=Search.

Club Congo /Ebony Room Paradise Valley 

both of these clubs/restaurants  were  probably  black and tan clubs which means it was interracial  before WWII . In any case it went back to being all black after the 1943 riots 

Replacing Black Neighborhoods ? This type of renewal is typical.  Also one  has to look hard to find the Victorian era or the Brownstone era neighborhoods (Middle  Class  Whites  When  Originally  Built)  in a city that has PLENTY of SPACE. (143 square miles - 6.2 miles industrial = 138 miles)

               We are lucky we can at least walk the riverfront and the Dequindre cut 

what is being torn down is what has always been torn down- Wooden houses.

this was the edge of the

 Greek area which abuts the black area 

See next photo which is a block away (black area )

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-02-15/photos-detroit-s-black-bottom-before-urban-renewal

 

Black Family Skating in the D : Rock and Rolling since 1955

 5 minute Read Detroit Free Press < open to read

 You can skate to Gospel  or show off to  hip hop like Bow Wow in the movie Roll Bounce .

 Click on the link ABOVE for the full story on a black tradition in Detroit 

Yes Bow Wow has skated in the D even though the movie was based in LA 

 here is a clip  https://youtu.be/GB_lCL05KnI

Why I Bought a House in Detroit for $500 by Drew Philip is a book...

Drew has also written about Growing Food in Detroit 

 Planting Seeds on Detroit's Eastside  

click above for article

  Drew Philip & his dog Gratiot

 Drew Philip wrote a book 

You Must Read. 

scroll to end for  excerpt   With permission of the publisher, Scribner. All rights reserved.

As of this post 1/2021 , the book is still timely. Detroit primes you for the post CoVID future.  It is still affordable and creatively open to possibilities.

 Its 2021. The pricey new lofts are 99% full downtown but who needs downtown when McDougall Hunt, Core City and West Village border  or share familiar avenues with   the gentrified* precincts of Hamtramck * see note at end

Victorian era Woodbridge 48210 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woodbridge,_Detroit

Woodbridge and Indian Village. Make it safe and walkable like Eastern Market/Dequindre Cut and people will be ready to build the 21st century in a Detroit that is fair and does not charge retirees on Social Security  with $600 million dollars in taxes on buildings that will never produce that value. Tear down what cannot be fixed. Admit that the City wants an average of  70 K for a rehabbed and ready house for a neighborhood that has no goods and services (But Instacart  or Amazon can address some of the deficiencies?)

Lets face it : Drew Philip is not the average person. He is special. As of 2021 the houses start at double what he  paid @2009 , but he still worked a miracle that I want to emulate.  

Now, at $1000 on the  Detroit Land Bank Auction site,  you need $25,000 liquid just to bid. Yet I still peruse the offerings, district by district, carefully noting the zip codes so I can do census research on the neighborhood.  My relatives who own rehab and construction remodeling companies can hook me up... but sinking about 75K into some decimated property in  @6 months to comply with the City rules on restoration of a abandoned property is like pouring Money into a hole and expecting roses to sprout with twenty dollar leaves. Everybody tries  to talk me out of it. 

 

Some points to consider 

Why not pour  money into something  that can be passed on? Why not have a paid for house to live in? Is this not the Goal? Is'nt the American dream roomy enough to have variations on the dream of having a paid for roof over ones head?

 I think we should continue to tear down any wood or shingled houses in Detroit that are not habitable. The new Demolition Czar has gotten better at managing the problem of abandoned and possibly dangerous places for housing. 

Detroit has a typical rustbelt city problem. Approximately 6.2 miles is so industrial that its not habitable. Nobody should live in or near a former  brownfield. One of the ways to remedy the pollution is to  plant.  Detroit has forests or farms to fix the soil , cheaper than having  a considerable amount of polluted dirt hauled away. The dirt haul is expensive- I personally witnessed a Brooklyn Whole Foods move at least 2 stories of practically Superfund level muck - just to show how responsible they were, but Amazon has DEEP pockets. 

It might take a generation for the earth to heal  

but Detroit has more than enough space .

My Story is influenced by Drew Philip's story 

Most of the places I grew up in are gone. Am I sad? No,  I have been away too long perhaps.  I lived in New York and its boroughs from 1985 to 2015. Seen gentrification first hand. Seen my share of ruin. Lived through a couple of recessions luckily with severance pay, or got rehired quickly. That did not happen to people in Detroit, so its easy to see how things fall apart. It not fair.

Example: 

Try living in brownstone Harlem on a street where you are the only person who has a career level job to report to, and you can nod good morning to both the retirees and the gangbangers and buy fresh caught crabs from the retirees on Fridays on the corner.  But in that situation you are acutely aware that the inequity is almost permanent. *see note at end

What if you are in a state of modern grace? 

What if you  make money  blissfully untouched and unbothered - you are a digitally supported  worker who can order in, still collect a paycheck and does not know anybody who has CoVid. If this is you, you must read this book not just as an amuse bouche. Let Drew Make You Think  As Grace Lee Boggs once wrote, and Drew re quoted,

"Building community is to the collective as spiritual practice is to the individual."

 A passage from the book follows- originally posted on buzzfeed.com  Order the book here:

https://www.amazon.com/500-House-Detroit-Rebuilding-Abandoned/dp/1476797994/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=why-i-bought-a-house-in-detroit-for-500&qid=1611354653&sr=8-1

                                                                                                                            

Why I Bought a House in Detroit for  $500  by Drew Philip 
After college, as my friends left Michigan for better opportunities, I was determined to help fix this broken, chaotic city by building my own home in the middle of it. I was 23 years old.  

My first job out of college was working for a construction company in Detroit.“

We're an all-black company and I need a clean-cut white boy,” my boss told me over drinks in a downtown bar when he hired me. "Customers in the suburbs don’t want to hire a black man."

When a service call would come in, we would ask, “Does he sound white or black?” If it was the former, I would bid the job. If the latter, my boss would. Detroit is one of the most segregated metro areas in the nation, and for the first time I was getting what it felt like to be on the other side of that line. In contrast to the abstract verbal yoga students at the University of Michigan would perform when speaking about race, this was refreshing. And terrifying. I couldn’t hide behind fancy words any longer.

I grew up in rural Michigan, 45 minutes away from any freeway. I’m the first male member of my family in three generations never to have worked in front of a lathe, and aside from one uncle, I’m the oldest with all of my fingers intact. The university had given me some grandiose ideas like “true solidarity with the oppressed,” and I figured “the oppressed” lived in Detroit, never mind the patrimony. I thought I was making a sacrifice. I thought moving here was staying home when everyone else was leaving the state. I thought I was going to change the world and had some vague notions of starting a school. I cringe at how naive I was. I first rented an apartment in the city, sight unseen, that didn't have a kitchen sink, so I did my dishes in the bathtub.

Aside from bidding jobs, I spent my days like everyone else: sanding floors in cheap rentals for $8.50 an hour, which got me thinking: I could buy a house and fix it up myself. Not that I was sure how to go about buying, let alone renovating a house. It was just an inexplicit dream, some trick that would keep me from leaving like everyone else, make me a true Detroiter.

Not long after, I went to a Halloween party dressed as an organ grinder. At one point I set my cardboard organ down in a corner to dance, and when I went back to get a beer I'd hidden inside it, sitting next to the organ, all knotted up and looking out of place, was a guy named Will dressed as an organ grinder's monkey. Between his fingers he held a hand-rolled cigarette.

"You want to go outside and have a smoke?"

After the usual pleasantries, him looking nervous and fidgety, me overeager to make friends, I told him I wanted to buy a house on the city's east side.

He answered, "I just did .

__________________________________________________________________________Notes

* Gentrification is not always created by educated white  people who are affluent or creative or both

 Hamtramck:

the gentrification occurred when an ethnic group the Chaldeans left Detroit and moved into Hamtramck with families Most of the creative types left possibly due to a culture clash between conservatives, religious (Catholics who tend to be  Chaldeans and Muslims usually  other Middle-Easterners)  versus  college/post college age artists and musicians.  See Williamsburg Brooklyn for a similar culture clash and gentrification issue.  https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702303491304575187942725181712?reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink

Harlem :

Younger black people with means replacing older black people who often move  back down South to retire   https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Society/2014/0316/Why-African-Americans-are-moving-back-to-the-South

Money does not buy Health: A Map of Metro Detroit

click on map to see notation 

 

... Detroit is ready for a Post Covid Future ?

 

Renaissance City.Motown.Motor City.Arsenal of Democracy Detroit is ready for a Post Covid.Future

 if you want to build it on an empty lot  

2019

2011

2010

2008 

 The pictures tell a sad story but this is even sadder: Detroit charged its remaining citizens too much for their  aging houses and cracked streets. They let the pensioner or that vet only drawing social security pay to the tune of 600 million dollars to make up for the short fall. The schools closed anyway. People of course walked away from their properties. Or Died in a cheaper place like the tiny southern town they originated from... So much so the city population was based on money from those no longer working :

    Retirees can tell you this 5 minute story                       

    Listen to the Link here:

https://www.npr.org/2020/01/16/797098432/investigation-reveals-detroit-overcharged-homeowners-on-property-tax-after-reces

The auction of properties improved. Rehabbed and ready houses hit the list. Foreclosures held by the city hit another list. Detroit Land Bank  lists still needs improvement however. There are not enough people interested in buying a side lot to their property just to pay taxes on a Bigger Yard. 

 The links are here- Look for yourselves  at the colored links. Just know that you need 25K in a Chase account just to start bidding.  Unfortunately the houses in most of these auctions  whether Rehabbed and Ready/ Foreclosure  or As is Lots/Derelict houses are in neighborhoods that are  much more populated by housing valued  well below your purchase. The following snapshot  of a Foreclosure.com list  tells me that 90K for a house is too much to pay in a residential neighborhood that does not have many mom and pops and no National chains nearby on a shopping avenue.

Tiny houses Anyone ? Yes for those socialized homeless . Detroit has done this already 

Video Here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FxWpMrbg5lk

When it is  post Covid by the mid 2020s  Lets go Modern and Green - a proposal

Build Container Houses on those lots. I want to build a 3 dimensional primary colors container  building that acts like an afterschool learning lab so STEM is almost 24-7 As a kid who grew up during the space age this anti science thing has got to die !!! . People should know that messenger RNA does not send messages back to the FEDS but  instead tells your immune system how to be the rebels to the Empire. 

Image source: By Gabi Slizewska

https://www.expii.com/t/messenger-rna-mrna-overview-role-in-translation-10218

Loosen up the provision that states only lots of 3000 square feet or more can contain temporary machinery and sheds to house materials used to re build. It makes sense to be able to store and watch your materials on your lot just like the big developers do. Authorize the Demolition czar to make sure no one overstays their shed welcome. The tools disappear form the property  once its habitable by either a business or a household.  RE-zone for more mixed use and  the artists will come here , the creative, the next Genius who promotes  middle class living standards because they could find the  energy in Detroit.to make something so cool we have a new nickname.

Covid IS SO DREARY.   Can't brighten up the landscape by creating more than just murals?? If it sounds like impatience it is because the possibilities depend on a change in how gentrification etc. is viewed. We are all in this together post COVID ,

We should not look at each other as   Us and Them -but survivors who want to really build something NEW TOGETHER.

 

Not just writing. Planning to stick around to make it happen of course. After living in NYC you  see the possibilities when you come back home. The meek do not have to inherit what is left...