Executive Committee Meeting 10-15-24

President's Report

Page 86 of 95

CITY PLANNING AND ARCHITECTURE

City Planning and Architecture

shortly after the disaster, Augustus B. Woodward , the first Chief Justice of the Territory of Michigan, helmed the reconstruction according to a plan inspired by the L'Enfant Plan for Washington, DC ( T p. 18) . From this time date the origins of Woodward Avenue —itself following an old American Indian trail—along with Jefferson, Grand River, Gratiot, and Michigan Avenues. Due to lack of consent from some landowners, only part of the project was ever completed. At that time, the city still consisted mainly of timber structures. The Era of the Automobile Subsequently, outside of its historic center, Detroit developed in line with the surveyors' orthogonal plan, common to American cities. In the last third of the 19th century, Victorian residences and imposing In the first half of the 20th century, it was the rapid expansion of the auto industry that shaped the city. Industrial complexes grew up around Milwaukee Junction , instructed by captains of industry who commissioned luxurious residences, while the population, which doubled every ten years, struggled to find places to live. In 1909, Woodward Avenue was the country’s first concrete roadway, and in 1915 the first “Stop” sign was installed administrative buildings in the Beaux-Arts style blossomed.

Often described as confusing for its size, the city of Detroit covers a surface area of 143 square miles (Manhattan, for example, is under 23 square miles), and together with the almost 6,000 square miles of its urban surrounds, the metropolitan area as a whole is known as Metro Detroit , making it the biggest city in the state of Michigan. Encircled by freeway loops all the way to the city center, the city infrastructure was clearly designed with the automobile in mind. Detroit's decline, which saw two-thirds of the city’s inhabitants leave, now looks somewhat spacious to anyone over from Europe, where the urban landscape is incredibly dense. All told, it is now oversized, and this is one of the many challenges the city faces today. The First Plans Founded by the French in 1701, Detroit was long centered upon a fort , surrounded by farms organized in rows (ribbon farms), a way of dividing up land in New France, consisting of long strips of land set along watercourses, back then the only routes of communication, here the Detroit River where it all started. Town planning only really began following the Great Fire in 1805 that razed the old colony to the ground. At that time, Detroit had around a thousand inhabitants. Arriving

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Jefferson Avenue and Financial District.

in Detroit. The siting of auto factories and their subcontractors in the heart of the city only lasted a short period and as early as the 1920s the introduction of production lines encouraged them to leave the center in search of space. The Financial District Takes to the Skies The automobile boom went hand in-hand with the city's extraordinary expansion: Downtown became studded with skyscrapers, following New York or Chicago, at the hands of architects such as Daniel Burnham and Louis Kamper. Yet it is above all Albert Kahn (1869–1942), a German-born architect (along with the members of his studio, including Wirt Rowland)

who is most closely associated with Detroit. Versatile and adaptable, his agency was responsible for both the Belle Isle aquarium and greenhouses, Edsel Ford’s house, the Fisher Building, the Packard plant, and the General Motors offices, stamped with an industrial style that remains its trademark. The 1930s crisis brought these constructions to a halt. Then came the war, marking the end of the city's embellishment. 8 Mile Detroit’s decline accelerated in the 1950s. The development of White suburbs was encouraged by the auto manufacturers, who promoted the purchase of two cars per household