Ride It Sculpture Park

Traveling back and forth to an east side jobsite, I noticed construction activity on a vacant lot on the south side of the Davison just as it emerges at Conant.  A series of odd shapes were rising out of the ground, molded out of concrete, in a location that made my attempts at guessing their purpose virtually impossible.  With a little Internet research, I learned I had discovered Ride-It Sculpture Park.

Designed by the non-profit group Powerhouse Productions, the park is described on their website as a, "place where bored neighborhood teenagers and adults can meet, play, create, build and ride on."  Eventually the project is to include the renovation of an adjacent vacant home into a, "mini indoor park, [where] parts of the house [are] skateable and livable at the same time for visiting skateboarders and artists."

In light of the City of Detroit's in ability to maintain most of its parks and recreation centers, the organization's goal is to create a new model for  public space.  A do-it-yourself method that makes the neighborhood stakeholders in the park's success. 

The neighborhood has truly taken possession of this first phase of construction.  Complementing the organic forms, artists have enveloped the ramps and walls with a mixture of graffiti, art work and poetry.  This is a fall cry from the metal wheeled clip on roller skating my inner city generation executed on sidewalks in Philadelphia.  Watching a pair of helmeted skateboarders practice their craft on the colorful ramps, I wondering if I'm watching a future X games champion.  One thing is for sure, they now have a place to practice.

Jim Crow Hospitals

Each day, traveling south on the Jefferies and merging onto the east bound Fisher freeway, a streamlined metal clad vacant building rises along the horizon glistening in the southwest Detroit sun.  Horizontal bands of tinted windows alternate with bands of dulled stainless steel panels. With closer inspection, the vertical rusting panel joints compliment the rhythm of the windows, many of which are broken. The modern styled design, devoid of any extraneous ornamentation, stands in sharp contrast to its traditionally styled brick and mortar neighbors. 

The now vacant building was home to Detroit's last Black owned hospital.  Because white hospitals refused to hire black nurses, segregated its colored patients in separate wings, refused to allow Black doctors to perform surgery and required Black doctors to consult with White doctors before admitting patients, Black doctors started a tradition of opening their own hospitals.  Detroit would be home to not only the most hospitals dedicated to Black patients, but also showcase the most owned by African-Americans.

Southwest Detroit Hospital was the last of these Black owned hospitals to close.  Opened in 1974, when four smaller hospitals (two Black owned) merged, it would last only 16 years.  As federal standards for hospitals changed, small hospitals such as Southwest Detroit found themselves unable to complete with its larger sized, better equipped, competition.

According to my own research, only two other structures which housed Detroit Black hospitals remain standing: Dunbar Memorial  and Trumbell General.

Dunbar Memorial

Dunbar Memorial Hospital was one of the first Black hospitals to open in the City of Detroit. It was opened in 1919 by 30 members of the Allied Medical Society, an organization formed by African-American doctors angry with their White counterpart's treatment.  The hospital would expand from 27 beds to 40 beds in 1924 and would open Detroit's first school of Nursing for Black women.  In 1927, it would move to Brush and Illinois becoming Parkside Hospital.  It would remain open for 35 years closing finally in 1962.



Trumbull General

Trumbel General was originally located at 3966 Trumbell within a beautiful victorian home (not far from today's Motor City Casino) that has recently been renovated into lofts.

Below is a list of other long lost Detroit Black hospitals.  They reflect a time when healthcare was delivered in small community based hospitals within buildings that blended into their neighborhoods.  Follow this link to a University of Michigan project funded by the W.K. Kellogg foundation to learn more about each hospital.

Still standing
Dunbar Memorial Hospital (580 Frederick St.) 1918-1927
Southwest Detroit Hospital (2401 20th Street) 1974-1991
Trumbell General (3966 Trumbell) closed in 1974

Lost
Boulevard General (1852 West Grand Blvd) 1960-1974
Burton Mercy (271 Eliot) 1949-1974
Delray General (7125 W. Jefferson) closed in 1974
Baily General Hospital (292 E. Ferry) 1970-1974
Bethesda Hospital (544 East Garfield) 1931-1965
Fairview Sanatorium (441 E. Ferry) 1931-c.1960
Good Samaritan Hospital (503 E. Palmer) 1929-1966
Haynes Memorial Hospital (73 E. Palmer) 1950-1967
Kirwood General Hospital (301 E. Kirby) 1943-1974
Mercy General Hospital (73 Russell St, 688 Winder, 2929 W. Boston Boulevard) 1917-1976
Mount Lebanon Hospital (2610 S. 14th Street) 1950-1958
Parkside Hospital (Brush and Illinois) 1928-1962
St. Aubin General Hospital (St. Aubin and Maple) 1931-c.1947
Edyth K. Thomas Memorial Hospital (556 East Garfield) 1937-1965
Trinity Hospital (E. Congress and DuBois, 681 E. Vernor) 1934-1962
Wayne Diagnostic Hospital (271 Eliot between John R. and Brush) 1939-1949