  Royce Member Username: Royce Post Number: 2655 Registered: 07-2004 |
Just recently I took a look at the service drives of the Chrysler Freeway between Canfield and Mack Avenue and noticed that there are a number of public housing units. I have always seen them there, but I got to thinking, "Why did the city replace the businesses that lined Hastings Street (which the Chrysler Freeway replaced in that area) with residences, instead of rebuilding a portion of the business district along the service drives and putting the residences behind the business district?" I think businesses could have still thrived despite the freeway. If the service drives were widened a few more lanes, the service drives would act like one-way streets and function in the same manner as the service drives along the Lodge Freeway northwest of Wyoming, known as James Couzens, which is lined with commercial buildings. Again, looking at the area, a business district could have been preserved. The businesses along Hastings Street that wanted to stay in the area should have been given the chance to do so. The creation of the public housing units and nothing else in my opinion was a shortsighted decision on the part of Detroit government back then. What do you think? | ||
Cub Member Username: Cub Post Number: 537 Registered: 02-2007 |
Theres is your answer. LOL. (Message edited by cub on June 28, 2008) | ||
Mackinaw Member Username: Mackinaw Post Number: 5046 Registered: 02-2005 |
You raise a great question for hindsight-- but I don't think that was remotely considered at that time. There was no sense about how to plan ahead (other than how many highways were needed, and where the poor people could be grouped) or about what mixed-use development was at that time. The properties of traditional urbanism were being shunned. Preservation was irrelevant. The freeway could have been built in a low-impact fashion, and the existing buildings along/around Hastings St. could have remained adjacent to it, but instead, the most generously proportioned right of way for a highway was bulldozed, and adjacent neighborhoods were obliterated while they were at it. | ||
Detroitplanner Member Username: Detroitplanner Post Number: 1691 Registered: 04-2006 |
Royce, look at what happened to Grand River where the I-96 freeway cut it off from 1/2 the surrounding neighborhood (from roughly McGraw to Livernois). It ain't pretty. We can't worry about the sins of the past. We should however learn from them. NEPA and environmental justice laws are making such takings much more harder in the future. We have learned a few things about mitigation since those days, as well as what makes for a successful neighborhood. Large federal-aid project won't have those sorts of impacts again. Unfortunately, you do get lots of crap coming from local revenues or developers. The best we can do for those types of projects is to insist on higher quality. | ||
Jjaba Member Username: Jjaba Post Number: 6807 Registered: 11-2003 |
Royce, James Couzens Parkway was a wide blvd. with trees and plantings in the center. It was very wide. Without sloping landscaping but just retaining walls, they were able to squeeze in the expressway. East of Wyoming, the John Lodge went right through an existing neighborhood and took hundreds of houses. West of Wyoming, displacements were kept to a minimum, although the vibrancy of the retail is long gone today. Once the John Lodge "hits Eight Mile Rd.," it goes right over unobstructed farm lands out into the great beyond, Yeminsville. Not much displacement there, except some cows, chickens, and an occasional raccoon. jjaba, rode his bike out James Couzens to see the new Northland Center, 1954. | ||
Royce Member Username: Royce Post Number: 2665 Registered: 07-2004 |
^bump. | ||
Eastsidedame Member Username: Eastsidedame Post Number: 378 Registered: 12-2006 |
We can't worry about the sins of the past. We should however learn from them. Yeah, but apparently we don't. At the very least, we haven't had architecturally savvy leadership in a very long time. We need people in government who actually get it. Maybe all the wide open spaces are a good thing in disguise. At least we can work from scratch in a lot of areas in terms of planning a beautiful city again. | ||
Retroit Member Username: Retroit Post Number: 296 Registered: 04-2008 |
Eastsidedame, that last sentence was the most intelligent thing I've ever read on this forum! | ||
Townonenorth Member Username: Townonenorth Post Number: 52 Registered: 10-2007 |
The removal of this area was a combination of forces working together. The Wayne County master plan, laid out probably 1932, contained plans to widen Hastings Street as part of a superhighway. The blatant racism of the time forced overcrowding in the area, with escalated rents for homes and overcrowding. The Detroit Housing Commission, which was created in 1933, used a 3.2 million dollar grant from the Federal emergency Housing corporation for slum clearance and low cost Housing. They used the former site of the House of corrections as well, which had lain vacant for years, or so they said in the report. I'll have to someday scan this report I found years ago on this subject, the first report of the Detroit Housing Commission. | ||
Danny Member Username: Danny Post Number: 7457 Registered: 02-2004 |
The Detroit City Council, who were mostly white at the time wants to put the Chrysler FWY. through Paradise Valley which at the time was a thriving African American community in Detroit's lower east side. It's their racial instinctive mind to wipe out the black presence in Detroit by means of slum clearance. Blacks have to relocate themselves (via the Jews) to the west Side and other parts of the east side So Did the Hastings Street Business District have to be destroyed? YES FOR THE SECURITY OF WHITE FOLKS IN DETROIT AND ESCAPE FROM BLACK FOLKS IN DETROIT. NO FOR THE BLACK FOLKS WHO ARE STRUGGLING IN THEIR GHETTOHOODS IN DETROIT. It's totally unfair and unjust. Blacks today now took over Detroit since 1975 and white folks escape to the suburbs just to get away from black folks. It's was all part their plan. | ||
Bulletmagnet Member Username: Bulletmagnet Post Number: 1373 Registered: 01-2007 |
This happens all the time in Grosse Pointe. | ||
Royce Member Username: Royce Post Number: 2709 Registered: 07-2004 |
Townonenorth, thanks for the info. Bulletmagnet, what happens all the time in GP? | ||
56packman Member Username: 56packman Post Number: 2375 Registered: 12-2005 |
Royce--read up on the condemnations for freeway construction in New York under Robert Moses. Detroit isn't unique. | ||
Fishtoes2000 Member Username: Fishtoes2000 Post Number: 622 Registered: 06-2005 |
Another related question is do we need the 375 leg from Gratiot to Jefferson? Why can't that be re-designed as an at-grade boulevard? It would increase accessibility in that area, improve economic development along the boulevard, and provide a much grander entrance to downtown. This may be a better location for restoring Paradise Valley as well. | ||
Fishtoes2000 Member Username: Fishtoes2000 Post Number: 623 Registered: 06-2005 |
BTW, this was not my idea but one that was raised during a planning ideas session as referenced here, http://www.crainsdetroit.com/a pps/pbcs.dll/section?category= blogs&template=kramer#35101133 97870020109 | ||
Royce Member Username: Royce Post Number: 2713 Registered: 07-2004 |
Fishtoes2000, I have looked at Jefferson where it turns into I-375 and wondered is it necessary to have Jefferson stretch even wider to get access to the freeway from that point. There is no way of crossing Jefferson from St. Antoine street(next to SS. Peter and Paul Church). All pedestrian traffic is literally dead in that area. As you mentioned, Fishtoes2000, it would be nice to have the freeway come up at Lafayette and just continue as a boulevard to Jefferson. At Jefferson there could be a left turn lane for cars wanting to connect to I-375 north. I don't think this would do anything to create a commercial district since there are established building already in place along the freeway, but like I mentioned above, Jefferson at St. Antoine would be more pedestrian friendly. | ||
Fishtoes2000 Member Username: Fishtoes2000 Post Number: 624 Registered: 06-2005 |
I think the planner's thoughts were by combining the expressway and service drive lanes, you might free up some real estate for commercial development. This was just an estimate based on the aerials and not by any real measurement. Yes, I agree about that pedestrian dead area. That intersection is quite hostile for anyone not riding in a large metal motorized cocoon. | ||
Detroitplanner Member Username: Detroitplanner Post Number: 1755 Registered: 04-2006 |
Royce, do some reading about Robert Moses, he was the king of these types of projects. It is an interesting read. He started out as a very liberal civil servant working on parkway projects and over time he was elavated to running all of the parks, freeways and housing in New York State. That was planning's focus in those days. It is very different than today where all cultural and environmental resources are documented through the NEPA process. In addition, we have public participation now. Then public participation meant taking of their properties and them getting off it or the bulldozers would do them in. | ||
Detroitnerd Member Username: Detroitnerd Post Number: 2757 Registered: 07-2004 |
Read THE POWER BROKER. It's a great book explaining the rise and fall of Robert Moses. | ||
Ray1936 Member Username: Ray1936 Post Number: 3443 Registered: 01-2005 |
Getting back to the original question, my response would be, "It seemed like a good idea at the time." To extend Jjaba's description of James Couzens, Southfield was also a delightful boulevard with many trees from Seven Mile down to Allen Park (Seven to Eight Mile was an aberration, it swung all traffic to the center for reasons unknown). The freeway that they subsequently built is about as ugly a road as you'll see. | ||
Detroitnerd Member Username: Detroitnerd Post Number: 2758 Registered: 07-2004 |
Hastings Street was the oldest housing stock in the city. Mostly owned by absentee landlords, the owners let their properties kinda fall apart. Also, since the areas around Hastings Street had restrictive convenants forbidding black renters, there was intense crowding. Families sometimes lived in ONE ROOM in an apartment, paying higher rents because of the bottled-up demand. Because the housing stock was so old and the residents were so poor, it was an early site for dabbling in experiments to alleviate urban blight by, um, knocking it down and starting over. In the 1930s, I believe, they razed the west side of Hastings Street between Mack and Wilkins to build squat, low projects. The freeway came later, and what is now the southbound service drive of I-75 was then Hastings Street proper. Even the projects were torn down later, to make way for the fenced-off development that now sits between Mack and Wilkins. Why did the freeway happen to Hastings Street? Theories abound. At the time, it was usually enough to say "we're getting rid of urban blight." At the time, nobody was going to protest demolishing the most ramshackle neighborhood in the city. The preservation movement didn't get off the ground until the 1960s. Also, black Detroiters didn't have the county and state level political power to demand an alternate route be found. That's why the powers that be found it expedient to route the freeway through their main neighborhood. There were cases where white communities demanded alternate routes and got them, but African-Americans didn't have the political pull to put up a political fight. Now, there's another theory that also plays into this: Hastings Street didn't have high-level political power, but it was a "strong community." Bottled up in the tiny ghetto, everybody knew one another. The most prosperous doctor or lawyer shared the community with the neighborhood's poorest denizens. Class differences didn't mean you lived apart from other classes. This gave the Hastings Street neighborhood a kind of people power: All classes lived together, more conscious of their shared heritage than income levels. The prohibition against racist covenants, combined with ramming the freeway through Hastings Street, had the effect of dispersing the black community throughout Detroit. Well-to-do blacks moved to the "villages" on the west side or up in pleasant Conant Gardens. Working-class and poor blacks lived where they could. So, whether it was planned that way or not, the freeway and the attendant dispersal had the effect of separating Detroit's African-American community along class lines. Some theorize that this was the intent of razing Hastings for the freeway. People who ascribe to this theory usually call it "spatial deconcentration." But, whatever the reason for it, it destroyed Detroit's most historic neighborhood. Hastings Street was jam-packed back in the day. Tool south along the I-75 service drive from Mack and you'll count something like 8 or 10 fire hydrants. They're all that remain, testifying to the apartment buildings, movie houses and bars that used to be there. It's now the best fire-protected service drive in the whole United States, I bet.  | ||
Eastsidedame Member Username: Eastsidedame Post Number: 416 Registered: 12-2006 |
But, whatever the reason for it, it destroyed Detroit's most historic neighborhood. Hastings Street was jam-packed back in the day. Does anyone have any photos or links to pix Hastings in it's heyday? On another thread, there was a photo of firefighters at the Felician Sisters' Mother House in 1969. A grand old Second-Empire building it was, too. I seem to remember a lot more Victorian and Pre-Civil War buildings when I was a kid (60s & 70s) in Detroit. Galena IL, too poor to tear down their old buildings renovated them and now welcome A MILLION TOURISTS A YEAR. Food for thought, at least. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G alena_Historic_District | ||
Royce Member Username: Royce Post Number: 2718 Registered: 07-2004 |
Good post, Detroitnerd. Also, 56packman and Detroitplanner, thanks for the info on Robert Moses. I'll check him out. (Message edited by royce on July 25, 2008) | ||
Pam Member Username: Pam Post Number: 4316 Registered: 11-2005 |
This is from the "Detroit Links" list on this site: http://www.paradisevalleyblues .com/tour/hastingsindex.html | ||
Detroitnerd Member Username: Detroitnerd Post Number: 2767 Registered: 07-2004 |
Pam: That's a great photo tour. That's where I learned about those fire hydrants, in fact! |
