Before Detroit became shorthand for the automobile industry it had grown into the 13th largest city in America with more than 285,000 people in 1900, first through fur trading and then on the manufacture of tobacco and varnish and shoes and pharmaceuticals and, most fortuitously, carriages and bicycles that would lay the foundation for production of cars in the 20th century.
In 1701, the French officer Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac, along with fifty-one additional French-Canadians, founded a settlement called Fort Ponchartrain du Détroit, naming it after the comte de Pontchartrain, Minister of Marine under Louis XIV. France offered free land to attract families to Detroit, which grew to 800 people in 1765, the largest city in the Americas between Montreal and New Orleans. After Great Britain ceded the Northwest Territory to the United States in 1796 under the Jay Treaty Detroit was named the capital of the Michigan Territory.
Through the 1800s Detroit grew into a thriving hub of commerce and industry. Then in the spring of 1896 Henry Ford built his own horseless carriage. In 1901 Ford challenged Alexander Winton and his world champion “Bullet” at Grosse Pointe race track outside Detroit. Three cars lined up for the ten-mile race but only Ford and Winton left the line. Winton led Ford for 8 miles but sputtered badly as the Ford racer puttered past. Newspapers the next day anointed Ford as “top rank of American chauffeurs.” In 1903 Ford and eleven others pooled $28,000 to start the Ford Motor Company. At the time the population of Detroit was inching towards 300,000. By 1930, after decades as the fastest growing city in America, the population was north of 1.5 million and no other city in America was as identified with a single industry as Detroit was with automobiles.
It was also the golden age of building on Detroit’s streets. The more enthusiastic called the city the “Paris of America.” Every year seemed to bring a new “biggest” or “tallest” this or that. Detroit has not been shy about tearing down historic structures but many skyscrapers remain from that era that have long formed one of America’s most prominent skylines. Our walking tour of the area south of Campus Martius Park will find many of these heritage buildings in the Financial District and surrounding neighborhoods and we will start in a park space that itself was run over in the rush to the automobile in the early 1900s but recently re-emerged...
When the District of Columbia was designated to be the nation’s capital there was no city. Building started from scratch based on a street plan drawn up by Pierre Charles L’Enfant that sent broad avenues radiating through circles and plazas. When Detroit was named the capital of the Michigan territory in 1805 before the new government could get up and running the entire settlement burned to the ground so it too was starting from scratch. Justice Augustus B. Woodward based his street grid for Detroit on L’Enfant’s plan for Washington. Woodward ran all his streets from the central hub of Grand Circus Park.
Standing in Grand Circus Park one can turn and see the breadth of Detroit history from a post-Civil War era church to skyscrapers crafted in the early days of the automobile to the modern sports stadiums. But we are here to walk and so our walking tour will head down Augustus Woodward’s spokes and circle Grand Circus Park more or less following his radial street plan...
The main thoroughfare extending away from the River was Woodward Avenue and it has been the town’s major artery for more than 200 years. The land beyond the downtown area was parceled out in ribbon farms that ran north away from the Detroit River. A typical ribbon farm might be 250 feet wide and up to three miles long. Some of the owners of these farms included Lewis Cass and Elijah Brush, names that resonate in Detroit today.
The areas along the east and west sides of Woodward Avenue did not begin developing until after the Civil War the more well-to-do in the town began to buy up land and build houses away from the bustle of the city. Streetcar lines were established in the 1860s to serve these new “commuters.” Commercialization began rearing its voracious head early in the 20th century, much of it related to the new automobile industry. Not all the neighborhoods were devoured but as the people began settling further north, this became “Midtown.”
After World War II educational and cultural institutions began holding sway over this area which continues to this day. The mixed-use community today includes churches, mansions, middle class homes, hotels and apartment buildings, schools, clubs, utility buildings but we will start our walking tour of Midtown at the museums...
The first capital of Michigan in 1835 was Detroit. But a provision in the state Constitution required that after a period of twelve years the government be moved to a more central location. There were concerns about Detroit being too close to British Canada and subject to invasion like what happened twenty years earlier in the War of 1812. And outside of Detroit there was grumbling about the new state’s largest city having too much power if it was the capital as well.
So in 1847 there was jockeying among the likely candidates in the central part of Michigan to be awarded the state capital by the Legislature. Ann Arbor was in there pitching. And Jackson. And Marshall. One constituency that wasn’t represented was Lansing, where there were less than 20 people living around a sawmill. There was no obvious choice, however, and after months of wrangling an exasperated Michigan House of Representatives picked Lansing. When the decision was announced there was open laughter at what was believed to be a prank. But it was no joke.
The people of Lansing, named by settlers of a Tomkins County town in New York that was named for Revolutionary War hero and legal author John Lansing, readied themselves to be the capital city. Heck, Lansing wasn’t even the county seat of Ingham County and it remains the only capital city in America in a county that isn’t the county seat. Even with the designation as the capitol of Michigan, the city wasn’t incorporated until 1859, with 3,085 inhabitants. In those early years Lansing was never sure it would actually stay the capital of Michigan until the legislature set aside over a million dollars to build a new capitol in 1872.
By that time Lansing had developed along three villages: a Lower, the oldest part; an Upper, and a Middle, where the government grew. The government triggered growth but Lansing developed an industrial base in its own right. There was dense timber stands to harvest and agricultural implements to build, especially wheelbarrows. But nothing kick-started Lansing like Ransom E. Olds, one of America’s foremost automobile pioneers credited with constructing the world’s first practical automobile. With Olds building more cars than anyone in the world in the first years of the 1900s, some 200 manufacturers established themselves in the area. A town that entered the new century with 15,000 people entered the Depression thirty years later with 80,000.
As Lansing reinvented itself through the remainder of the 20th century education and healthcare and banking played a larger role in the economy. Few towns have been as active in urban development. An expanding government hungry for land cleared large swaths of homes and suburban exodus and highway construction claimed dozens of more blocks. Few landmarks remain that have witnessed it all happen and many are clustered around the Michigan State Capitol and that is where we will begin our walking tour...