Architectural Nerd Part 2 of 3

 What happened to Black Bottom? 

The name by the way refers to the rich farmland from 1701. 

(more about the French Ribbon farms  that gave streets in black bottom their names) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Bottom,_Detroit#cite_note-Woodfordp170-8

You can blame it on the postwar recession. Packard Plant closed in 1956. No more tanks or airplanes being built. Jim Crow still in effect: Black men could not work at the lucrative Body By Fischer Plant. The city started building the Chrysler Freeway erasing Hastings Street- the Main commercial strip of the Black Bottom Neighborhood . Quite a few black people moved to the edge of Northwest Goldberg because the Jewish brokers were willing to sell to black families..  Northwest Goldberg ?That is where the 67 riots broke out! https://www.niche.com/places-to-live/n/nw-goldberg-detroit-mi/

12th street and Clairmont ( now Rosa Parks Blvd and Clairmont)was supposedly the epicenter.

 (Again thanks to Detoritography.com for this map of damage).  On the map below notice how Grand River Avenue really took a beating.https://detroitography.com/2013/12/04/map-of-detroit-riots-fire-damage-1967/

Click on image to enlarge 

Black Bottom or Paradise Valley?

Black Bottom was never well defined. It was full of wooden houses with details similar to Corktown homes. I made a map that approximates the black residency -see pink boundaries. People often get Black Bottom mixed up with Paradise Valley. Paradise Valley was the immigrant entertainment district. One version was  white  only with the occasional minstrel actor and eventually moved to Broadway. The Black version moved out of todays Greek Town and was almost an alley-( see Harmonie Park later in this article on the beige map.)  In 2002,  what was left of the black entertainment  presence was erased to make room for the Lions Football Stadium. (again , see  beige map later in this article.)

 Today in 2021,  the "last resident" of Black Bottom  still has property in Eastern Market - see  Bert of Berts Place .https://www.eatatberts.com/    Berts is the place to experience Jazz and Motown with Soul Food -especially on the weekends . Inside there is a mural that pays tribute to the entertainers of Paradise Valley between the wars.  

On the edge of Eastern Market ( the edge of Black Bottom approximately Brush Street /Vernor which is now empty fields )  Bert owned a lot that now is an art project/ tiny house/ air BnB on 2126 Pierce Street more  on  that later .... https://www.2126-pierce.com/

Urban Renewal Accelerates

The re- design of the city did not occur. Why ?  Nobody quite understood that the problem was economic - rooted in educational status and that dirty word - class. Middle class blacks were able to move into previously redlined areas https://detroitography.files.wordpress.com/2014/12/detroitholc-med_2000.png   thanks to mostly Jewish brokers who were ready to move their culture and synagogues Northwest anyway. As blacks left ,other blacks who were either not able to move or migrate back down south ,the  Brewster Projects were an option. Some blacks  dispersed into areas about a mile from Gratiot to streets like Heidelberg( Germans had left Black Bottom  earlier in the century before the Great Depression, but heir businesses stayed see Brewery Park on the beige map- scroll down)

 Sears was on Gratiot, the main street for shoppers of all races.  Its Art Deco inspired window treatments made it a directional marker for many years, and of course Detroit tore it down. 

https://digital.library.wayne.edu/item/wayne:vmc18581

 on your left : 

The Sears famous Art Deco

/Moderne logo as seen

 in Brooklyn NY 

 closes Dec 2021

By razing Black Bottom during the Urban Renewal movement of the 1950s and 60s, postwar economically disenfranchised neighborhoods were planned out of existence in the name of Progress. The social cohesiveness of  Black Bottom was doomed  by 1959 .The movement to  12th Street and  Clairmont (Northwest Goldberg community) barely had a chance to jell by 1967.

The city planners took post riot Federal Funds and tried to fix it. This meant building new neighborhoods  example: Lafayette  Towers over old Black Bottom . This meant tearing down houses at the edge of the Victorian Mansions  on the north side of Vernor, and linking Vernor into a service drive for the Fischer Freeway  than runs crosstown into the Chrysler Freeway. No wonder you cannot find any wood houses or brownstones on the east side between Brush to  Hastings/Chrysler Freeway to St Aubin street.

The middle class buildings in Black Bottom , were also considered slums by this point. At this point in the mid 1950s . the houses of Black Bottom  were occupied by blacks. Then in 1958  residents  were given 30 days to move .

 https://web.archive.org/web/20140803084534/http://reuther.wayne.edu/node/8609

If you like podcasts on Black Bottom by the residents , etc. check this out  https://www.michiganradio.org/tags/detroit-housing-commission 

For deeper reading see the Walther Reuther Library at Wayne State University 

specifically these sources

The Origins of the Urban Crisis by Thomas J. Sugrue

For more on urban renewal in the 1960s, see the Jerome P. Cavanagh Papers and the Detroit Commission on Community Relations (DCCR) / Human Rights Department Records.

Urban RE-moval 

These are the borders of both the rich (Brush Park) and the poor (Black Bottom) after consulting several sources I decided that its nebulous .

Studying a series of maps, I noticed  streets were completely erased. Unfortunately some of the most detailed maps  example :Sanborn maps  only show industrial buildings  without noting existence of residences or civic buildings. When trying to figure this out I made my borders on Google maps .

 Videos : show amazing overcrowding but also amazing energy.       https://youtu.be/4sY8ywTLkUg

  Urban renewal accelerated after the 1967 riots. Flush with money from Washington, everything below the 8 mile border was subject to re-design regardless of how the actual inhabitants were living. Therefore Woodward East, a new construction, does not exist... Black Bottom does not exist either... The only thing left between these two interdependent neighborhoods were the old Mansion sized Victorians, mostly empty in an area that was not considered a protected historical district until @ 2015 . Many a black person worked for the people in the mansions, who lived near their businesses downtown. When the old money  families depleted by  the great depression, finally moved away from downtown, it was part of an overall trend to move uptown to areas like Boston Boulevard.

Not everyone was happy with the renewed interest  in the area- rules multiply when something is designated historical - down to the paint colors! 

 https://www.metrotimes.com/detroit/brush-park-and-hope/Content?oid=2170286

In any case this webpage has MAPS from original surveyors to Sanborn and Google that show how the mansions were also disappeared by early revisions to streets This is the Motor City and streets needed to be wider (and immigrants needed to be moved...) Lots of pictures here for architectural nerds

https://lemacks.com/2019/07/12/the-lost-streets-of-brush-park-detroit/

All Fade Away 

Brush Park was old & in 2013 ----Who cared ?

https://www.deadlinedetroit.com/articles/20978/leduff_anthony_bourdain_cared_for_people_in_a_time_when_too_few_do

The protected Historically preserved homes and buildings of Detroit 

 including BRUSH PARK are pictured below

 https://historicdetroit.org/homes

https://historicdetroit.org/buildings

Reddit :  Detroit Yes 

https://www.detroityes.com/mb/showthread.php?18241-What-happened-to-Brush-Park-in-50s-60s

QUOTE "Anyway, by the '60s it was clear that Brush Park was going to be gone soon. Like the rest of the black neighborhoods and "outmoded housing" east and northeast of downtown, it would be torn down for urban renewal. The eastern portion of Brush Park had already been replaced by public housing in the '50s, the heart of Paradise Valley - the Hastings St. business strip - was being torn down to build the Chrysler Fwy, and the northern part of the neighborhood was scheduled to disappear soon for the Detroit Medical Center."

QUOTE "So, the embarrassingly ugly and old Victorian houses of Brush Park were a goner, and everybody but a few "crazy" people called preservationists knew it. Because planners and developers were certain that 'everyone' wanted clean-lined, undecorated new houses, apartments, office buildings, and street-free "super-blocks" in that era of 'progress'. In the '50s and '60s Detroit was leading the country in tearing down the old and ugly and replacing it with the new and shiny. Detroit was a city on the move!

Only they didn't move fast enough on Brush Park. After the urban renewal craze of the '50s and '60s had passed, the federal money dried up, and the urban economic realities of the '70s had begun to set in, there Brush Park still sat, unmodern, unloved, marooned, and increasingly empty."

Lets look at a map - my map of what happened (made for my family reunion walk so its more art than Google ) if you want it super large, change your page size over 100% (see upper rt hand/ screen 3 dots)

A group of excellent architectural renderings  of the restored Victorians
or what is left of Brush Park   https://www.flickr.com/photos/17295206@N02/

LOST NEIGHBORHOODS  pt 1 of 3

 Woodward East/ Piety Hill/ Brush  Park

 Each area   is in various degrees of whats left and who has the $$$ 

The next 3 links define  the areas so you can see how it evolved/dissolved 

Woodward East  https://detroithistorical.org/learn/encyclopedia-of-detroit/woodward-east-historic-district The Woodward East Historic District is recognized for its High Victorian style homes which were built for Detroit’s wealthiest citizens in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Although some buildings have deteriorated and been lost over time, many have been restored recently with particular attention to their unique architectural details.
The Woodward East Historic District is encompassed by the larger Brush Park Historic District neighborhood located in Midtown Detroit. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1975, and is bounded by Alfred, Edmund, and Watson streets, from Brush Street to John R. Street.
The origin of the neighborhood can be traced back to a ribbon farm granted to an early French settler in 1747. The land eventually came into the possession of an Irish trader, John Askin, whose daughter married Elijah Brush. The land then passed to Brush in 1806 and became known as the Brush farm. His son Edmund oversaw the subdivision of a portion of his land beginning in the late nineteenth century. When developing the area, the Brush family placed restrictions on the lots, requiring high quality homes to be built on the mostly 50 square foot lots to ensure the desirability of the area. Over the years as the City of Detroit grew, the area became home to leaders of commerce, finance, industry, and the courts. A significant number of magnificent houses of worship were built in the area leading to the nickname of “Piety Hill.” The first location of the now famous Pewabic Pottery was a carriage house on Alfred Street. The Brush family continued to maintain ownership of some of the properties well into the 1960s. 

In 2015, the Ransom Gillis house, built in 1876 at 205 Alfred Street, was renovated by HGTV’s Nicole Curtis. https://www.hgtv.com/shows/rehab-addict-detroit/episodes

BEFORE                                                             https://www.flickr.com/photos/allanm/24801176/

 

AFTER                                                                       

https://historicdetroit.org/buildings/ransom-gillis-house  

In 2017, Dan Gilbert of Quicken Loans announced a $100 million, 8.4-acre, mixed-use development project called City Modern within the Woodward East District...

  https://www.citymoderndetroit.com/ 

LOST NEIGHBORHOODS pt 2 of 3 

Piety Hill  or pietyhill ?

 Piety Hill/piety hill  is a forgotten neighborhood  (There is a reason for small p /Big P) 

Some say it. borders Boston /Edison Historical district https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston%E2%80%93Edison_Historic_District However the pre 1915 housing does not exist here . West Grand Boulevard was the border, and Detroit barely existed north of this point until after 1915.  Estates built  by the rich dotted the  Woodward corridor all the way to 7 mile (Palmer Park), but not the type of houses you have in the present 7 blocks of  Glynn Court/ Boston Blvd/Chicago Blvd/Longfellow/Edison/ Atkinson and Clairmount, all west of Woodward.

Conclusion : If you think Piety Hill started below the 1915 expansion border of West Grand Boulevard,  you are correct. 

 Boston/Edison corridor ? piety hill small p.  Here is the context:

1910 . Ford had his factory moved from Piquette street just one block from the East Grand Boulevard border to  the countryside . What is now the city of Highland Park had the first assembly line of mass production cars . Literally half way between the original  Ford Plant(Milwaukee Junction neighborhood)  and  Boston Boulevard Mansions  is piety hill.  small p. You will not find it easily on a map . There was a big hill on Woodward at Boston Blvd and of course it is flattened now. Woodward climbs from the river but hills do not occur  until Palmer Park.- the actual park which was the estate of a  Thomas Palmer https://peopleforpalmerpark.wordpress.com/2012/05/15/history-

 So why is this area piety hill?  No answer so far, not even in this link: https://www.historicbostonedison.org/ Lets look at Piety Hill now in 2021.

 Mostly 4 square wooden/brick houses similar to the Motown Museum were built up to West Grand Blvd in  Piety Hill after 1915. So  how did Piety Hill gets its name?

 https://detroitography.com/2014/09/12/map-historic-detroit-neighborhoods-1884/

Again thanking the great Detroit Blogger Alex B. Hill and his site Detroitography.com   whose collection of old maps might drive you crazy But it is FUN!

Quote : "The portion of the city just west of Woodward Avenue and north of Grand River Avenue, forming part of the old Fifth Ward, is sometimes designated as Piety Hill; for the reason that it is largely occupied by well-to-do citizens, who are supposed to largely represent the moral and religious portion of the community. "

This description  places Piety Hill  in a bigger area absorbing Woodbridge !

see part 3 of Architectural Nerd  after Christmas 2021!!!

Woodbridge has an amazing collection of Victorians and is the most restored/gentrified area of the city west of  Midtown/Downtown Detroit. Nothing under 40K - well, more on the Detroit Land Bank in part 3.

Aha !

This is the only church left? Blessed Sacrament Cathedral is centrally located at the piety hill border on Woodward. It is the only church that was ever there. Around Blessed Sacrament the  streets have fancy names and big houses but they are not Mansions like you see in Boston/ Edison. But since Piety Hill once covered an area from  Warren on the north to Grand River on the south ....And Woodward on the east and Wayne State Campus /Trumbull on the west , it is a bigger area to carry officially the Big P name. There is even a map to support it. Once again, Alex B.  Hills fabulous collection of old maps at Detroitography.com pinpoint the original neighborhood circa 1880s -the Victorian Period in housing.

https://detroitography.com/2014/09/12/map-historic-detroit-neighborhoods-1884/

  This is the 5th ward aka Piety Hill, pre 1915 . Since Blessed Sacrament was built in  piety hill  it may be that the designation was only for the 250th birthday of Detroit and the final completion of the Neo Gothic masterpiece in 1951 !)  

It took forever to complete the Norman- Gothic structure. And it does not look like Notre Dame from the outside, but it does have French influences.

 https://books.google.com/books?id=SiUsbJk-1KMC&pg=PA43#v=onepage&q&f=false

 Blessed Sacrament Cathedral is on Woodward at the border of Boston Edison historical district.It made sense to connect them. But this piety hill is  not the neighborhood I discovered by bike while I was attended Wayne State - Those amazing Victorians and other houses were the 5th ward!! 

Wards dissolved  in November 1919 

https://www.metrotimes.com/news-hits/archives/2014/11/05/detroits-old-ward-system-95-years-later

Conclusion : the neighborhood of Piety Hill was so Old  that it basically is no longer...  We are lucky Woodbridge managed to hang on . Maybe thank Henry Ford Hospital, Wayne State University  and Motown Museum. These 3 entities hold a lot of the real estate in the area, and establish and anchor a buffer zone that stabilizes the area . Woodbridge in particular is a desirable for creatives and professionals.

LOST NEIGHBORHOODS part 3 of 3 

Brush Park/ Forest Park 

Lets face it: the historical district  boundaries and the actual boundaries are not the same. I remember wandering around streets like Erskine both in Brush Park and in Black Bottom : For both areas,  the boundary being Brush street. Brush was a slaveowner and used slaves on his ribbon farm. Today , the actual Brush  street very closely follows the actual tract of  farm  owned. How did the Mansions get here?

In  1856 Elijah’s Brush  son Edmund Askin Brush had an idea. He planned to turn this old farm of his into an elite neighborhood, a place only the richest of the rich be able to enjoy.   see more here : https://www.abandonedspaces.com/mansion/brush-park-a-forgotten-luxury-detroit-community-that-is-gradually-reviving.html?chrome=1

Forest Park , the dispersed Black Bottom 

 A good reading of Drew Philp book https://www.drewphilp.com/  paints  a picture of the last round of urban razing  circa 2009 when he brought A $500 house in Detroit.  Early in the book, Drews' friend Will loses  a renovated home : a whole block disappeared for the campus of  Detroit Edison Public School Academy at 1903 Wilkins Street. This time the whites were being urban renewed in the same area where  Blacks managed to scatter after the Chrysler Freeway... 

Hope !

 Drew and his urban renovator neighbors make a great case for

 EXTREME NEIGHBORLINESS 

 https://www.ted.com/talks/drew_philp_my_500_house_in_detroit_and_the_neighbors_who_helped_me_rebuild_it?language=en   It  is the helping hand that makes a great block(s).

You can see this in a lot of Detroit's Blocks . Blacks  living almost as nuclear, self contained  family units  are the required life form in old cities especially when it is NOT a project, and people of various careers and incomes live there , possibly owning their own companies and employing their kids. This was the case in Conant Gardens and Northwest Detroit.

The Future 

 Once Blacks left Hastings Street did upward mobility improve?  A pattern in this city : Black people were the  last ethnic group that remained   in the immigrant landing area. Just like black people are the last population  still living in post bankruptcy Detroit. Gentrification is occurring slowly . One day I saw a white professional couple and their baby on the front porch of my Aunts block on Fischer - deep East side. The wooden house was charmingly and fully restored. This one block looked like it did in the late 50's, almost like something out of Pleasantville.  

 Regrets or Restoration ? 

 No more Black Bottom .

Is it a permanent goodbye for a neighborhood  that disappeared under Urban Renewal.?  Now there is talk of restoring part of the business spur 375 aka  Hastings Street/Chrysler freeway into a park. 

Hmmm.

Go walk the Chrysler  service drive with boundaries  past the  Dequindre cut railroads-as far as the Air BnB on 2126 Pierce... next to Eastern Market. Whew!  Black Bottom/Paradise Valley  was Big /Overcrowded but  Blacks had a definable neighborhood close to the rich, close enough to walk.  Part of it was called Kentucky - (see the map from Detroitography  here) https://detroitography.com/2014/09/12/map-historic-detroit-neighborhoods-1884/)   

The northern  border of Kentucky  neighborhood was approximately Superior street and the northern border was approximately Warren.

Forest Park in 2008 / Black Bottom in 1956 /Germantown in 1010   All gone now. Would love to put a tiny house  in any of these old neighborhoods .Its all empty anyway. I could build my own subdivision.

 60 Tiny houses.

 3d print houses. 

all different price ranges. 

I personally want to build a 3d printed one on a lot  near the Old Saturn Plant 

https://www.businessinsider.com/photos-european-couple-moved-into-a-3d-printed-concrete-home-2021-5

Or I could get ahold of the kids from Cranbrook = they initially built this near Black Bottom/Eastern Market from cinder block 

 It has been cleaned up and restyled as  Mural architecture  (my term) here:

 https://goo.gl/maps/wbFGkDyWCjDfdNh76    

In any case I cannot afford Piety Hill (Woodbridge) anymore .I did not leap into realestae in the 70s when NOBODY wanted the houses around Wayne State. I did date a guy who had one of those Piety Hill Houses, and I can not find it now, the area has been razed . It is similar to the fate of Germantown/Dutch Town  which  is pre Black Bottom : people moved west across Woodward. The Jeffries Projects took over the southern half of the fifth ward where Piety Hill was.  It remains to be seen if the New Jeffries built people scaled to 2 stories and renamed after Motown stars will work as a community and not an eventual slum . 

So to not confuse you- the Victorian era had used Dutch another name for Germans.  The Dutchtown was  bordered by Hastings street  bot by 1908 moved to 18th and Popular streets in Core City . Cool Projects like True North are happening  now in the 1908 German neighborhood /See the photo below.

Why build a True North or a Jeffries? Are the the taxes on new buildings higher than  present housing?

Residents below 8 mile are really being ripped off, living in semi sturdy homes  that may be paid for but NOT worth it. The neighborhood that  between the Grand River Art corridor and the Jeffries Freeway may be the  only area left for a urban homesteader who can either fix a wooden house cheaply or do something completely new.

People are being experimental in Core City. True North uses Quonset Huts for an AirBnB that is so chic that it should be featured in Architectural magazines.

http://truenorthdetroit.com/home 

Soil Testing a Must

industrial corridors Dead. can you live there?

https://detroitography.com/2014/07/21/map-industrial-corridors-of-detroit-1958/ Alex. B.Hills website Detroitography.com

There are so many industrial corridors - one has to find out what industrial actions were near a potential home/business  purchase or construction.  Yet people find ways to integrate the demolition sites and the future - visit the creatives   in the Humbolt Forest  https://goo.gl/maps/pjujRJ3RSK7Xj9AG9    and do some yoga or graf  https://www.facebook.com/pg/humboldtforrest/posts/ 

OR

 If  you want to live on former farmland  visit the non traditional   entrepreneurs in Grixdale restoring Goldengate  street  https://www.facebook.com/GoldengateRestorationProject 

or be radical and off grid by being kind to the next generation- the kids 

a 22 minute video here 

https://youtu.be/VdIewb5afnY

Grixdale has the most destroyed neighborhood rep. A lot of burned out 4 squares in wood/brick. This used to be the estate of Thomas Palmer and his wife Lizzie Merrill Palmer. Check out re-grid.com 

Enter 235 Merton Ave and the free version will give you the plat:

 S MERTON 189-188 MERRILL-PALMER SUB L45 P54-5 PLATS, W C R 2/152 76.54 IRREG

Translation : Most land in Detroit was owned by wealthy people who bundled together farms into eventual subdivisions. Sometimes those subdivisions had neighborhood names.

Now those areas are empty and mowed. Go to Wayne County Land Bank to see architecturally interesting  homes that need a lot of love. I did the math. Just multiply your auction purchase price by 5 to  7 to get a home with good bones back to its former glory .  A current example of  resurrecting an home in a stable historical neighborhood is

 https://www.amazon.com/Detroit-Hustle-Memoir-Life-Love/dp/076245735X

I love success stories . This one is inspirational even if there is no way I can even attempt to do what this couple did to secure a great home. They came out on top in a crazy real estate market but more importantly :

they are architectural nerds in good standing.

The Rest of Us

Can any one , a normal non professional ,  take a  depopulated and razed area and convert it?

Yes You Can.

Better get real good at writing grants. Your 35 to 50 K is just enough to start . 

The solution : 

Future Listening! Put this record on and start writing that grant

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLE9viMkChrogfcNx6O2V1vspfdi9VAhvt

                                  

Any ideas ?? 

OK I digress. But writing a grant or two is better than owing the bank . Just make it work. 

Maybe its 3d poured concrete.

 https://allthatsinteresting.com/prvok-3d-printed-house

Prvok od Burinky housing  inc. from the mind of sculptor Michal Tropak, in collaboration with Burinka —https://www.prvokodburinky.cz/en/ 

a construction and housing company that specializes in 3D printing. 

Here is the video tour-https://youtu.be/lznz33IkaA4

Gentrified or Fried ?

 Canfield Block reminds me of Brownstone Brooklyn and Harlem where I lived until I came back to Detroit  due to family business. Will I find the area  I want to live in? Detroit has so much space, so many 3000 sq. ft. lots that I may be able to do something. Maybe a Container Construction Home. Or a tiny house...

https://www.wewilltransportit.com/michigan-shipping-container-homes/

 I am no architect, but I can dream.