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http://www.thestar.com/Travel/article/420033
DETROIT, MICHIGAN
Motor City Magic
Detroit has taken some hits over the years, but it always seems to bounce back, thanks to its creative spirit and proud people
May 03, 2008 04:30 AM
Denise Balkissoon
Special to the Star
DETROIT, MICH.–Everybody in this storied border town has an opinion and a fierce local pride that they feel compelled to share.
It starts early on. As my cohort and I enter the U.S., a chatty customs agent regales us for a good 15 minutes on the techno talents of local musical legend Derrick May. A taxi driver insists we tour Boston Edison, the posh neighbourhood famous for Henry Ford's Motor City mansion.
A bartender at the fantastic Slow's BBQ restaurant tells us about Handmade Detroit, an up-and-coming arts and crafts collective.
And at Pronto, one of the city's oldest gay bars, a well-dressed young man named Darryl shares his tidy opinions on architecture: "The most beautiful houses are in Indian Village."
Yes, the brutal hand of history has left Detroit's formerly glamorous city centre bereft of the human energy needed to fill its imposing skyscrapers.
That doesn't override the city's equally imposing artistic and industrial accomplishments – of which we remind ourselves by rattling off its nicknames.
There's Motor City, of course: and this summer, Detroit is beefing up its auto-themed events to celebrate both the 100th anniversary of the founding of General Motors and the 100th anniversary of Henry Ford selling his first Model T.
There's "Detroit Rock City," thanks to bands like The Von Bondies and The White Stripes, and Motown for a playlist stocked with Marvin Gaye, the Jackson Five, Stevie Wonder and The Supremes.
It seems like every time Detroit has taken a hit, it surges impossibly back, and this cycle lends itself to colourful retelling by a population that is both gregarious and prideful.
Our best local guide is Bill Cooper, who has so many anecdotes and statistics on the tip of his tongue, we dub him Mr. Detroit. (FYI, Michigan residents use their hand to show what part of the state they're from. Ask someone and see).
He brings us to Cliff's Bells, a breathtaking art deco bar re-opened three years ago.
One of Cooper's favourite spots to spend an afternoon is the eight-year-old, 41,000-seat baseball stadium Comerica Park, which he considers an analogy for the city.
"It's beautiful and flawed," he says. "We spent $300 million on a ballpark that opened with a scoreboard so far to the left no one could read it."
But in extolling the park's virtues, Cooper offers up a Norman Rockwell painting: The stadium has a midway with a Ferris wheel and a merry-go-round, plus fireworks every weekend. Sunday afternoons, kids can get their faces painted free, then can run the basepaths after the game.
Mike Ilitch, owner of the Little Caesars Pizza empire and both the Tiger and the Red Wings hockey team, is another local with a surfeit of hometown pride that he's shown off in the 80-year-old Fox Theatre, which he restored to a heart-stopping level of ornate splendour after it, too, spent decades abandoned and picked over.
Treated as a hero in the city, Ilitch has made Tigers games a Michigan must-do, bringing out three million spectators to Comerica Park in 2007 alone.
Of course, it doesn't hurt that baseball is a local obsession – or, as Cooper puts it, "The Tigers and Detroit are one and the same."
He tells us how the Detroit Tigers mended a patch in the fabric of a city torn apart by racial strife. After the brutal race riots of 1967, white residents took off for the suburbs, while blacks were trapped in a hollowed-out downtown. The down-and-out stretch along 8 Mile (Eminem's `hood) gained national notoriety as the dividing line.
"Fast forward to 1968," he says. "The Tigers won the World Series and unified the city." Cooper wasn't even born yet but considers that World Series win his own.
The design of Detroit's city centre is a tribute to the wheels of the cars that once afforded it so much Roaring '20s dazzle – streets like Woodward Ave., Michigan Ave. and Cadillac Square radiate out like spokes, proffering gorgeous Renaissance buildings to the gods of commerce and industry.
Of course, many of those buildings have been underused for decades. Which makes them especially interesting to those fascinated by beautiful decay: The 79-year-old Leland Hotel has soaring ceilings, a ballroom with ornate crown moulding and a fireplace offset by massive chandeliers.
It also has buckets to catch leaks and tragically water-stained wallpaper. It gives off a faded grandeur reminiscent of Havana, Cuba.
Those who prefer their treasures shiny will be happy to know that Comerica seems to have got the urban renewal ball rolling. Another newly polished spot is Campus Martius park, a green patch in the centre of the wheel's spokes that's well traversed by baseball fans in search of that sloppy, chili-laden postgame treat, the Coney Dog at the Coney Island diner.
One of the city's greatest architectural treasures, the Book Cadillac hotel is undergoing an ambitious, $180-million-conversion into a luxury Westin.
The playboy Book brothers who owned the Cadillac lost it during the Great Depression, and it changed hands countless times, growing more and more decrepit until its shuttering in the mid-80s. Like so many of the city's landmarks, it spent decades being broken into and picked over, much of its gorgeous marble and stonework now part of locals' personal artifact collection.
So why reopen it now? The answer is baseball. John Ferchill, the brain behind the Westin project, made his name building luxury hotels in formerly deadbeat strips of Cleveland and Pittsburgh.
"We noticed that new ballparks dramatically changed a city's demographics," says Ferchill. "In Cleveland, it created a whole generation of people, of kids, who are downtown all of the time."
And there's hope that just might happen here. Most of the 67 condominiums slated for the Cadillac's top floors have been sold, including a three-level penthouse with a 30th-floor balcony looking out over the Detroit river.
Other revamped architectural wonders have been remade into art galleries. The splendid, massive, Beaux Arts space known as the Detroit Institute of Arts is the country's fifth-largest museum: a Diego Rivera mural celebrating the city's factories is one of the most important 20th century works in the United States. Just down the street is a former car showroom that's now the hip Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit.
"Artists have always been outsiders who like to colonize areas that aren't popular," says the MOCAD's director, Marsha Miro. "Detroit is really on the fringe, nothing is perfectly packaged, it isn't over. That cultivates a lot of artistic energy."
Just about every Detroit bar has adorned its walls with local photos and paintings and, in my humble opinion, a lot of it is really good.
Of course, beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
Denise Balkissoon is a freelance writer based in Toronto.
DETROIT, MICHIGAN
Motor City Magic
Detroit has taken some hits over the years, but it always seems to bounce back, thanks to its creative spirit and proud people
May 03, 2008 04:30 AM
Denise Balkissoon
Special to the Star
DETROIT, MICH.–Everybody in this storied border town has an opinion and a fierce local pride that they feel compelled to share.
It starts early on. As my cohort and I enter the U.S., a chatty customs agent regales us for a good 15 minutes on the techno talents of local musical legend Derrick May. A taxi driver insists we tour Boston Edison, the posh neighbourhood famous for Henry Ford's Motor City mansion.
A bartender at the fantastic Slow's BBQ restaurant tells us about Handmade Detroit, an up-and-coming arts and crafts collective.
And at Pronto, one of the city's oldest gay bars, a well-dressed young man named Darryl shares his tidy opinions on architecture: "The most beautiful houses are in Indian Village."
Yes, the brutal hand of history has left Detroit's formerly glamorous city centre bereft of the human energy needed to fill its imposing skyscrapers.
That doesn't override the city's equally imposing artistic and industrial accomplishments – of which we remind ourselves by rattling off its nicknames.
There's Motor City, of course: and this summer, Detroit is beefing up its auto-themed events to celebrate both the 100th anniversary of the founding of General Motors and the 100th anniversary of Henry Ford selling his first Model T.
There's "Detroit Rock City," thanks to bands like The Von Bondies and The White Stripes, and Motown for a playlist stocked with Marvin Gaye, the Jackson Five, Stevie Wonder and The Supremes.
It seems like every time Detroit has taken a hit, it surges impossibly back, and this cycle lends itself to colourful retelling by a population that is both gregarious and prideful.
Our best local guide is Bill Cooper, who has so many anecdotes and statistics on the tip of his tongue, we dub him Mr. Detroit. (FYI, Michigan residents use their hand to show what part of the state they're from. Ask someone and see).
He brings us to Cliff's Bells, a breathtaking art deco bar re-opened three years ago.
One of Cooper's favourite spots to spend an afternoon is the eight-year-old, 41,000-seat baseball stadium Comerica Park, which he considers an analogy for the city.
"It's beautiful and flawed," he says. "We spent $300 million on a ballpark that opened with a scoreboard so far to the left no one could read it."
But in extolling the park's virtues, Cooper offers up a Norman Rockwell painting: The stadium has a midway with a Ferris wheel and a merry-go-round, plus fireworks every weekend. Sunday afternoons, kids can get their faces painted free, then can run the basepaths after the game.
Mike Ilitch, owner of the Little Caesars Pizza empire and both the Tiger and the Red Wings hockey team, is another local with a surfeit of hometown pride that he's shown off in the 80-year-old Fox Theatre, which he restored to a heart-stopping level of ornate splendour after it, too, spent decades abandoned and picked over.
Treated as a hero in the city, Ilitch has made Tigers games a Michigan must-do, bringing out three million spectators to Comerica Park in 2007 alone.
Of course, it doesn't hurt that baseball is a local obsession – or, as Cooper puts it, "The Tigers and Detroit are one and the same."
He tells us how the Detroit Tigers mended a patch in the fabric of a city torn apart by racial strife. After the brutal race riots of 1967, white residents took off for the suburbs, while blacks were trapped in a hollowed-out downtown. The down-and-out stretch along 8 Mile (Eminem's `hood) gained national notoriety as the dividing line.
"Fast forward to 1968," he says. "The Tigers won the World Series and unified the city." Cooper wasn't even born yet but considers that World Series win his own.
The design of Detroit's city centre is a tribute to the wheels of the cars that once afforded it so much Roaring '20s dazzle – streets like Woodward Ave., Michigan Ave. and Cadillac Square radiate out like spokes, proffering gorgeous Renaissance buildings to the gods of commerce and industry.
Of course, many of those buildings have been underused for decades. Which makes them especially interesting to those fascinated by beautiful decay: The 79-year-old Leland Hotel has soaring ceilings, a ballroom with ornate crown moulding and a fireplace offset by massive chandeliers.
It also has buckets to catch leaks and tragically water-stained wallpaper. It gives off a faded grandeur reminiscent of Havana, Cuba.
Those who prefer their treasures shiny will be happy to know that Comerica seems to have got the urban renewal ball rolling. Another newly polished spot is Campus Martius park, a green patch in the centre of the wheel's spokes that's well traversed by baseball fans in search of that sloppy, chili-laden postgame treat, the Coney Dog at the Coney Island diner.
One of the city's greatest architectural treasures, the Book Cadillac hotel is undergoing an ambitious, $180-million-conversion into a luxury Westin.
The playboy Book brothers who owned the Cadillac lost it during the Great Depression, and it changed hands countless times, growing more and more decrepit until its shuttering in the mid-80s. Like so many of the city's landmarks, it spent decades being broken into and picked over, much of its gorgeous marble and stonework now part of locals' personal artifact collection.
So why reopen it now? The answer is baseball. John Ferchill, the brain behind the Westin project, made his name building luxury hotels in formerly deadbeat strips of Cleveland and Pittsburgh.
"We noticed that new ballparks dramatically changed a city's demographics," says Ferchill. "In Cleveland, it created a whole generation of people, of kids, who are downtown all of the time."
And there's hope that just might happen here. Most of the 67 condominiums slated for the Cadillac's top floors have been sold, including a three-level penthouse with a 30th-floor balcony looking out over the Detroit river.
Other revamped architectural wonders have been remade into art galleries. The splendid, massive, Beaux Arts space known as the Detroit Institute of Arts is the country's fifth-largest museum: a Diego Rivera mural celebrating the city's factories is one of the most important 20th century works in the United States. Just down the street is a former car showroom that's now the hip Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit.
"Artists have always been outsiders who like to colonize areas that aren't popular," says the MOCAD's director, Marsha Miro. "Detroit is really on the fringe, nothing is perfectly packaged, it isn't over. That cultivates a lot of artistic energy."
Just about every Detroit bar has adorned its walls with local photos and paintings and, in my humble opinion, a lot of it is really good.
Of course, beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
Denise Balkissoon is a freelance writer based in Toronto.