Abandoned Poetry

It can be strange sometimes stepping into empty homes that seem to be frozen at the time they were abandon.  I've come across furniture, photographs, record collections and even breakfast left on the range.  But one of the most interesting surprises are the notes and drawings that are scribbled on walls.

Last Thursday, I ran across this poem written on the bedroom wall of an abandon Detroit home...

-11-8-10 -

you can try to hide

the pain from your

friends and to make

others believed you

moved on.  But you

can never deny the

truth to the person

who has hurted

you the most is

still the person

you will always

choose to love

Robert + Cedies

4 eva till the world blows

Reviving Detroit's "Potato Patch Plan"



A seated Hazen Pingree 

overlooks Grand Circus Park

Detroit is in the midst of the worst depression in its history.  Its city treasury is almost empty.  Some 25,000 Detroit men are unemployed.  Huge swaths of land sit vacant after a predicted real estate boom instead becomes a bust.


The people elect a Republican mayor who promises to reform City government.  He promises to end corruption in city paving and sewer contracts.  He promises to reform a corrupt school board.  He dedicates himself to fighting privately owned utility monopolies by creating the municipally-owned Public Lighting Department.  He fights to reduce streetcar fares by threatening to also create a municipally owned streetcar system.  But chief among all of the new Mayor's accomplishments is a welfare program known as the "Potato Patch Plan" that launches him into national prominence.

Michigan's 24th Governor
Hazen Pingree in 1885
photo credit

Now at this point, you might be confused about exact what period in Detroit history I'm describing.  It's the year 1894 and Mayor Hazen Pingree continues his first term, serving a City deep within the grip of the Panic of 1893.  During this second summer of the panic, Mayor Pingree executes a plan which will systematically use vacant city land for gardens which will produce food for the city's poor.  He auctions his $1,300 prized horse for $387 to raise funds for the securing of 430 acres of vacant land.

The location of the Detroit's "Potato Patches"
from an 1894 government report
Image credit

The City's clergy and aristocracy vehemently opposed the program claiming that "unemployed men were too lazy to work", "they would steal one another's crops" and "potato bugs would invade the city".

A group of women heading out to a potato patch circa 1890
Photo credit

In the first year, 3,000 families applied to participate, but only 945 were accepted.  Each of these first lucky families was given a one-half acre plot.  By the end of the first year, roughly $14,000 worth of food was harvested.  In 1895 and 1896, 1,546 and 1,701 families were respectively accepted into the program.  In 1896, the value of food grown by participating families was estimated at $30,998, significantly more than the amount paid out by the City's poor commission.  The program was an unprecedented success and immediately silenced its critics.  That same year, Mayor Pingree cashed in on his political successes and won a campaign to became Michigan's 24th governor.

It seems clear that as urban agriculture grows in popularity as a way to re-activate Detroit's 4,484 acres of publicly owned vacant land, that Detroit's history can act as a guide.  Mayor Hazen Pingree has proven success.  Mayor Frank Murphy, whose 1931 Thrift Gardens program (modeled after Mayor Pingree's) has proven success.  In 2010, researchers at Michigan State University concluded that modern urban farming efforts "could supply local residents with more than 75 percent of their vegetables and more than 40 percent of their fruits—a boon for a city where many residents live in food deserts."

The difference between today's efforts and those of the past lies in their permanency.  Where in the past agriculture efforts subsided after economic conditions improved, today's urban farms may prove to be fixed in Detroit's landscape as economic conditions and population loses are unlikely to change.  But no matter what role urban farming plays in Detroit's future, Detroit's past contains stories of success that can be effectively used to silence today's critics and skeptics.

------------------------------------------------
1. Follow this link for more details on Mayor Hazen Pingree's "Potato Patch Plan."
2. Follow this link to Michigan State University's 2010 study Growing Food in the City: The Production Potential of Detroit’s Vacant Land (PDF)
3. Follow this link to more more information on Mayor Frank Murphy's "Thrift Gardens."

Sub-Station Revival

Detroit's Public Lighting Department was created through the vision of Mayor Hazen Pingree (1889-1897).  Setting its own prices for electricity, it was designed to keep the prices of privately owned power competitors honest.  Today, PLD owns over 30 substations scattered throughout the city. Intertwined within each neighborhood, these buildings are monuments to a once great City's need for power and each pays respect to classic institutional architecture. As you drive through the city, see if you can spot these hidden gems.

2731 Joy Road

6610 Raymond

13811 Joseph Campau

9945 Conner

 

75 E. Canfield



2934 Park (DTE Substation)

Highland Park Reservoir

The Highland Park Water Treatment Plant

A small, beautifully detailed brick building sits at the farthest most corner of Highland Park's southwest border.  As one exits the Davidson going west and rise to merge onto I-75, a quick glance to the right reveals an out of place elderly building with a hat of clay tile and trimmed by gutters coated with the light green patina of age. Large reservoirs of water collect behind. Like strands of gray hair, streaks of rust coat the white barbwire topped reservoir walls which at ground level resemble those found at a prison courtyard.  But these walls hold pools of water  pumped from an underground water system that begins at Lake St. Clair, runs across Grosse Point Farms, regains momentum at a small pumping station at Houston and Filbert Streets, and finally exits at the Highland Park Water Treatment Plant found at 13512 Dequindre Street.

Envisioned by Henry Ford as servicing 60,000 people and two mighty auto manufacturers, it today services a population of just under 17,000 and neither auto manufacturer.  The over grown shrubs, rusting fencing and motionless vehicles that sit within the complex reflect the decay of just another Highland Park institution. A reminder of a city that grew as fast as it currently declines.  If goes without saying that its future remains uncertain.

[UPDATE: It was announced on 12/4/12 that the plant has shut down indefinitely for repairs.  The City of Detroit is now supplying Highland Park's water.]


A 30" pipeline runs from a pumping station in
Grosse Pointe Farms to the Reservoir in Highland Park


Links to more information on the Highland Park Water Department:
1. Six Mile/Dequindre Housing Project at Discuss Detroit
2. A Visit to the Highland Park Water Treatment Plant at Highland Park Michigan Block Clubs


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

Antique Brick Show

Charles Terrace is coming down.

Buildings that structurally could live another 100 years are being scrapped, erased and disassembled.  But there is more than what can be seen that is being destroyed.  What is being carried off in dumpsters, mixed in with the shards of wood and metal, is the stigma of what life used to be at Charles Terrace.  All the negative images that materialize when you say "public housing" are being erased.  And from this clean slate a new housing development called Emerald Springs is being born.

From a clean slate comes a rebirth, returning the site's mission to the time where providing temporary housing for the most needy took first flight.

But before this new beginning, there is still time to remember the past.   Embedded in the salvaged brick are memories of two brick manufacturing companies and their long ago industrial might.

Powell & Minnock Brick

At the turn of the century, along the Hudson River in Albany county New York stood one hundred and thirty brick manufacturers. The ample supply of clay along the Hudson river shore bank made this the largest brick making region in the world, employing seven to eight thousand workers.  These brick manufacturers fed the insatiable appetite of New York City, the fastest growing city in the world.

But by the 1950s, the brick industry was consolidating and moving to new sources of raw material in the southern United States, diminishing the appetite for Hudson River brick.  Only 10 brick plants remained operating.  By the 1970s, this was reduced to 2 plants.  Finally, in 2001, the last plant, Powell & Minnock, ceased operations forever.

But in 1895, the Powell & Minnock brick Company opened its doors in an area just north of Coeymans (pronounced Quee-mans), NY between today's New York Route 144 and the Hudson River.  At its peak it would have an annual output of 50 million brick and ship products as far north as Canada, south to Delaware and west to Ohio.  Among the many projects supplied by P&M include New York City's 320 acre Co-op City and Detroit's own Charles Terrace.

Clippert & Sons

At the turn of the century, Detroit was also reaping rewards from the demand for brick. In the 1890s, there were two dozen brick yards within or near Detroit.  Brick making centered in Springwells Township, in the vicinity of Michigan Avenue and Lonyo, due to the exceptional quality of its "blue clay."  They employed some 750 workers and made nearly 100 million bricks per year.  However, the work was available for only part of the year, from April to mid-October. It's workers, mainly German and Polish immigrants, were force to live in "appalling poverty". The State of Michigan concluded: “The inmates of our houses of correction and our prisons are better fed, more comfortably clad and housed than these people are.” (pg. 3)

Clippert Brick opened its doors in 1880 with George Clippert becoming president of the company in 1899.  Clippert owned three brick yards in southwest Detroit along the Michigan Central Railroad near the current Dearborn and Detroit border at Wyoming and Southern Avenues.  It was one of the oldest brick operators in Detroit when the company dissolved in 1989.




Clippert Brickyard is at #64
#57-#64 are Springwells Township Brickyards 1890-1905
link

Believed to be the original Clippert Brickyard Office
at Southern Avenue and Wyoming Street

The Dorais Park Velodrome

View from the top of Dorais Park's Derby Hill

It seems incredible, but buried in an overgrown, under maintained Detroit park, sits a velodrome.  Quoting from the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, velodrome comes from the French word vélodrome meaning a track designed for cycle racing.  As an amateur cyclist, I couldn't believe what I had stumbled upon in the middle of one of the most blighted neighborhoods in Detroit. Sure, I'd watched a few cycle races during the Olympics trying to comprehend the sports unique strategies and incredible speeds.  But to set foot in an actual velodrome?  If I didn't have pictures I wouldn't believe it.  Here, at the corner of Mound Road and Outer Drive, sits a velodrome with a history for having trained some of our nation's most distinguished cyclist.  Names that include Frankie Andreu, former 7-Eleven and U.S. Postal Service racer and two-time Olympian John Vande Velde.



The Dorais Park Velodrome

Built by Michael Walden, a legendary cycling and track coach, it was completed the same day that Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon in 1969.  It was built on land donated by the Chrysler Corporation whose 35 acre assembly plant looms just a few wheel rotations across Mound Road.  The land is part of Dorais Park, which because it contains one of the city's few hills, was site for Detroit's 1956 soap box derby and some of the city's best winter sledding.  It's named after former University of Detroit Mercy football coach Charles "Gus" Dorais, a member of the college football hall of fame.

Sledding on Derby Hill in the 1930s.

(Soap Box Track and flagpole in background)



Derby Hill in 2012
(Note the flagpole still standing in the background)

250 meters around with 45-degree banks and a concrete surface, it was home to the 1969 U.S. National Track Championships.  For 21 years it would serve its purpose as a world class training facility. But it would host its last race, the Michigan State Championship, in the summer of 1990.

A group of good Samaritans known as the "Mower Gang" rediscovered the track in 2010.  Though the concrete racing surface is cracked, and littered with graffiti, racing returned to the Dorais Park Velodrome on October 16, 2010.  For a brief moment, racers circled the track on small motorcycles, mopeds and bicycles, bringing the dormant spirit of the Velodrome back to life.  Time will only determine how long the track's renaissance will continue.

Home to the Stars

Just off Joseph Campau Street, just before you past under the Grand Trunk Western railroad, at the edge of Hamtramck's Veterans Memorial Park, sits an old rusting grandstand.  The non-descript structure sits fenced in among the weeds and overgrown trees as Dan Street curves to avoid crossing the railroad.  It appears like just another poorly maintained urban ball field.

But from 1930-1933, this was the home to Detroit's entry into the National Negro League: the Detroit Stars.  It was built by John Roesink to replace Mack stadium which burned to the ground after a fire started to dry the infield spread to the main grandstand, injuring hundreds of fans.

A racially tolerant Hamtramck Polish community and a street car connection to Hasting Street's "Black Bottom", the heart of Detroit's Black community, instantly gave the Detroit Stars a new home. Ty Cobb threw out the first pitch at Roesick Stadium, when it opened in 1930.  Babe Ruth is said to have always paid a visit when in town.  It was also home to Detroit's first night baseball game (18 years before the Detroit Tiger's Briggs Stadium) when the legendary K.C. Monarchs paid a visit on June 28, 1930. 

But its life was short lived.  Completed just as the Great Depression began, the team, the Owner and the League would end up bankrupt by 1933.

Walking among the bleachers I can image the roar of the crowd on a Turkey Stern base hit, the shouts of a peanut vendor and the PA announcer reading off the starting lineup.

Walking the adjacent grass field one can find hints of the old pitcher's mound.  Standing on the high ground, I can imagine Satchel Paige throwing one of his trademark "bee balls" (because it would "be where I want it to be.") or Josh Gibson calling for a high and tight fastball or Cool Papa Bell racing around the bases stretching a double to a triple.

Walking along the concrete back to my car, I can hear the sound of player cleats clicking their way  to the locker rooms.  I imagine which boarded up doorway led to the player's showers.

It seems appropriate that in July of 2012, the field was finally designated an historic site.  I hope improvements follow.  Improvements that make clear Roesick Stadium's nearly forgotten history.

One House at a Time

 

The scope has been defined and now work is about to begin on these beautiful historic Detroit homes.

 

Yeat Built: 1915 (1923 sq.ft.)

Year Built: 1917 (2447 sq.ft.)

Year Built: 1915 (1652 sq.ft.)

Year Built: 1917 (3033 sq.ft.)