Preview: Detroit Memories III

DETROI T MEMOR I ES Ⅲ

A Pictorial History o f the Early Yea rs and the 1950 s

Presented by

Acknowledgments

The following organizations have contributed greatly to this project:

FRONT COVER: The intersection of Joseph Campau Street and Edwin Street in Hamtramck, looking north along the west side of Joseph Campau, circa 1950. Businesses that are visible include Modern Men’s Shop, Kinney Shoes, Jack’s 5th Avenue Men’s Shop, Baker’s Shoes, Max’s Jewelry, Federal Furniture Company, Dave Stober [men’s clothes], Max’s Jewelry, Federal Department Stores, Respondek Rexall Drugs, A. J. Mackewicz, D.O.S., and the Campau Theatre. COURTESY DETROIT HISTORICAL SOCIETY / #2012.046.371

curated by Brad Fenison

Copyright © 2019 by Detroit Free Press

All Rights Reserved

ISBN: 978-1-59725-876-0

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission of the copyright owner or the publisher.

Published by Pediment Publishing, a division of The Pediment Group, Inc. www.pediment.com • Printed in the United States of America

Photos

Foreword

It is with the deepest respect for the past that we at the Detroit Free Press present this third volume of Detroit Memories.

While it’s not possible to recapture the past, it is within our reach to visualize and understand it. For each of us who comes to call Detroit home, the images from a year ago, a decade ago, a century ago help us frame the backdrop against which we color our own personal histories. It is our hope this series of coffee-table books inspire, entertain, and inform you in the process.

We are richly blessed in Detroit to have two excellent curators of the treasures from our past. The Detroit Historical Society and Detroit Public Library both have extraordinary archives of historic images of the Greater Detroit area and beyond. Without the help of these institutions, this publication would not have been possible. For readers’ information, reference numbers with each

photo are provided so you can dig a little deeper on each organization’s website if desired.

Of course, it is the people of Greater Detroit who give us the rich and satisfying history worthy of this chronicle. It is to them and their memories that this book is dedicated.

As Detroit journalist and historian Bill McGraw pointed out in introducing the first volume in this series, Detroit has a history of being a nose-to-the-grindstone city. Without that work ethic, the phenomenal growth and prosperity that characterized our city in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century would not have been possible.

Evidence of that nose-to-the-grindstone character is borne out in the pages of this volume as well with images of hard-working merchants, factory workers, and civil servants. Just look at clerk Henry Ruhlman in the doorway of the grocery store owned by Wayne County Treasurer

Bernard Youngblood in the circa-1800s photo on page 13 brought to us by Ruhlman’s family.

But Detroiters have also always known how to have a good time. For starters, check out the dapper crowd around the clubhouse at the Detroit Recreation Park, circa 1880, on page 10.

Or look at the band honing their musical talents in the 1950s in the page-140 photo brought to us by the J. Lodge family. That’s John C. Lodge on the keyboard. His greatgrandfather, John Christian Lodge, was an influential Detroit politician, serving as mayor from 1922 to 1923, 1924, and from 1927 to 1929, and spending more than 30 years on the Detroit City Council. See the expressway being dedicated in his honor in 1959 on page 154.

We hope you enjoy your journey into the past as you peruse the pages of this latest volume of Detroit Memories.

OPPOSITE: Lower levels of the David Broderick Building (Eaton Tower), located on Witherell Street at Woodward Avenue, circa 1956. The Meyer Jewelry Company store and Madison Theatre are on ground level. COURTESY DETROIT PUBLIC LIBRARY / #BH009958

The Early Years

This, the third volume in the Detroit Memories series, gives us an opportunity to take yet another look at the early years in our city’s history— defined here as the mid-1800s through the 1920s. Of course, by the time the photographer snapped the earliest photo in this chapter on August 2, 1861, the city was already more than 160 years old.

That early photo, courtesy of the Detroit Public Library, captures a crowd gathering at the Detroit & Milwaukee Railroad depot to welcome the Michigan First Regiment on August 2, 1861, after the Battle of Bull Run—the first major battle of the Civil War.

Transportation has always been important to Detroit, even before becoming known as the Motor City. The Common Council of the City of Detroit passed an ordinance on November 24, 1862, establishing the guidelines for obtaining a 30-year franchise, with exclusive

rights to build and operate streetcar lines within the city. The ordinance also stipulated that the streetcars not exceed six miles per hour, and prescribed the frequency (at least every 20 minutes) and hours of operation. It also called for a fare of five cents on each line and a franchise tax of $15 per car per year.

Detroit City Railway Company was incorporated on May 12, 1863, construction began on June 30, 1863, and the first two streetcars arrived on July 31, 1863, with city officials, a number of prominent citizens, and representatives of the press making that first trip over the line on August 1, 1863.

The photo on page 9 depicts a horse-drawn streetcar on the city’s first crosstown route, which ran between Fort Wayne and Elmwood Cemetery and was operated by the Fort Wayne & Elmwood Railway Co. starting in 1865.

Our city’s streetcar system reached its peak at the

end of the 1920s when roughly 30 lines stretched over 534 miles of track.

Trains and steamers also played a vital role in getting Detroiters to where they needed to go but it was the advent of the personal automobile that made Detroit the Motor City. Henry Ford began his automobile company in 1903 and formed the Ford Motor Co. On October 1, 1908, the Model T went on the market. In 1904, combined auto company workers in Detroit totaled 2,034. By the end of this chapter (in 1929) that number hit 205,000 workers.

Schools, main street businesses, factories, churches, and civic organizations all played a major role in Detroit’s growth and development in this stretch of time as well. All are represented in the following pages, as are the people that helped take our city into the twentieth century with a rate of growth and level of prosperity unparalleled among major American cities during this time period.

OPPOSITE: Large crowd on the embankment and in canoes as a concert band plays music under the gazebo in Belle Isle Park, circa 1907. COURTESY LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, PRINTS & PHOTOGRAPHS DIVISION, DETROIT PUBLISHING COMPANY COLLECTION / #LC-DIG-DET-4A22395

ABOVE: Crowd gathering at D&M Railroad Depot in Detroit to welcome the Michigan First Regiment after the Battle of Bull Run, August 2, 1861.

COURTESY DETROIT PUBLIC LIBRARY / #EB02C348.

ABOVE RIGHT: Lumber yard along the Detroit River near Clark’s Dry Dock, circa 1865.

COURTESY DETROIT PUBLIC LIBRARY / #DPA3904

RIGHT: Woodward and Michigan Avenues, known as “The Majestic Corner,” 1875.

COURTESY DETROIT PUBLIC LIBRARY / #DPA4591

Clark Avenue, Woodmere, and Delray horse-drawn streetcar No. 34, run by the Fort Wayne and Elmwood Railway, circa 1880.

COURTESY DETROIT HISTORICAL SOCIETY / #1961.180.001

Steamer City

“Tense silence, the scarcely audible thump of a sharpbladed ax biting through hempen bonds, a creaking of timbers, the splintering crackle of breaking glass, then an ear-filling, nerve-jarring volume of sound, ending in a mighty crash as the water displaced by the great mass of steel swept the opposite side of the slip.”

These were the words used by a reporter for the Detroit Free Press in describing the launching of the steamer City of Detroit III. More than 6,000 people turned out to see the vessel launched at the Wyandotte yard of the Detroit Shipbuilding Company on October 7, 1911.

More commonly known as simply the D-III, the vessel was designed by renowned naval architect Frank E. Kirby and built by the Detroit & Cleveland (D&C) Navigation Company at a cost of roughly $1.5 million. It was the most expensive, largest, and most opulent passenger freshwater vessel built to date.

“When you refer to the City of Detroit III as a leviathan, you are well within the bounds of conservatism, for … it is some boat,” the Free Press wrote. The five-story floating masterpiece had a 455-foot-long hull of steel and its paddle wheel was about 30 feet in diameter with eight-foot-wide paddles.

ABOVE: Launching ceremony for the steamer City of Detroit III in 1912.

COURTESY LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, PRINTS & PHOTOGRAPHS DIVISION, DETROIT PUBLISHING COMPANY COLLECTION / #LC-DIG-DET-4A16168

RIGHT: Steamer City of Detroit III, stairway to forward gallery deck, circa 1912. COURTESY LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, PRINTS & PHOTOGRAPHS DIVISION, DETROIT PUBLISHING COMPANY COLLECTION / #LC-DIG-DET-4A16203

FAR RIGHT: City of Detroit III pilot house and bridge, circa 1912. COURTESY LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, PRINTS & PHOTOGRAPHS DIVISION, DETROIT PUBLISHING COMPANY COLLECTION / #LC-DIG-DET-4A16207

Launching the steamer City of Detroit III, 1912.

COURTESY LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, PRINTS & PHOTOGRAPHS DIVISION, DETROIT PUBLISHING COMPANY COLLECTION / #LC-DIG-DET-4A16166

ABOVE: Refreshment stand in the zoological park, July 1942.

COURTESY LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, PRINTS & PHOTOGRAPHS DIVISION / #LC-USF34-110093-E

ABOVE LEFT: A worker cleaning wing parts with solvent at the Briggs Manufacturing Company auto body plant in 1942. The plant had recently converted from the manufacture of automobile bodies to essential war production.

COURTESY LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, PRINTS & PHOTOGRAPHS DIVISION / #LC-DIG-FSA- 8B02036

LEFT: Workers calibrating aircraft gyro horizon instruments at the Ternstedt Manufacturing Division factory in 1942. COURTESY DETROIT PUBLIC LIBRARY / #NA040268

OPPOSITE: Men assembling transmission and final drive on a M4 military tank at the Chrysler tank arsenal in Detroit, circa 1942. More than fifty percent of the mechanical work involved in these tanks was in the transmission and final drive. Chrysler Corporation not only made these for itself from the beginning, but also sold them to other tank manufacturers.

COURTESY DETROIT PUBLIC LIBRARY / #NA032356

The 1950s

Alot happened in Detroit and around the state and the country in the decade of the 1950s. If the ’90s were “gay” and the ’20s were “roaring,” a case could be made that the 1950s were frantic. At least such a case was made by Free Press editor and columnist Judd Arnett when he looked back on the decade in his column on December 27, 1959.

“The majority of my colleagues who labor at the back tier of desks in the Free Press newsroom think so,” said Arnett. “The Frantic ’50s” won in a walk over “The Fabulous ’50s” and “The Fortunate ’50s.”

While the start of the Korean War made for many front page headlines in 1950, there was plenty of state and local news as well including a statewide recount that overturned election results when Detroit-born Gerhard Mennen “Soapy” Williams was running for reelection to a second two-year term as Michigan’s governor. The counting and recounting kept residents throughout the state in suspense for weeks.

The Chrysler strike that began on January 25, 1950, ended in early May after 100 days, but not before setting a record as the most costly in history. The total cost was estimated at more than one billion dollars.

In 1951, Detroit celebrated its 250th birthday, which began with official ceremonies in City Hall on January 1, 1951, and reached its climax on July 28 with the visit of President Truman and the most colorful parade in Detroit’s History.

Another strike that same year caused even more Detroiters grief when the city’s public transit system came to a screeching halt as its Department of Street Railways workers walked off the job on April 21. The city was caught flat-footed and the strike lasted 59 days.

Changes and developments in the automotive industry seemed to come at a frantic pace in the 1950s as well.

In addition to dealing with strikes and labor issues, the biggest industrial accident in history happened just 20 miles down the road when the GM plant in Livonia burned

on August 12, 1953. Consolidation in the industry also took place as independent manufacturers struggled to compete with the big three (Ford, General Motors, and Chrysler). Nash-Kelvinator Corporation and Hudson Motorcar Company merged to create American Motors in 1954. In the same year, Detroit’s Packard Motor Car Company purchased the larger Studebaker Corporation of South Bend, Indiana. The introduction of compact cars and the death of old makes and models also marked this decade.

The 1950s also saw vast Civic Center development with the start of construction of the convention hall in 1957 under Mayor Albert Cobo. Cobo became the city’s first mayor to die in office on September 12, 1957, three years before the convention center that would bear his name opened in 1960. The Free Press, which endorsed Cobo in all three of his mayoral campaigns, called the city’s decision to name the center after him “an exactly right memorial” in an editorial obituary.

OPPOSITE: An elevated view of Campus Martius, circa 1951. The view looks northward along Woodward Avenue and shows the busy Campus Martius area. Michigan Avenue can be seen intersecting Woodward Avenue on the left side of the photo with Monroe Street and Cadillac Square intersecting from the right. Businesses that are visible include Hudson’s, Kern’s, Bond Clothes, Sam’s, Crowley Milner’s, United Shirt, Crawford Clothes, and the Family Theatre. COURTESY DETROIT HISTORICAL SOCIETY / #2012.045.603

ABOVE: The new 1954 Packard touring sedan, Packard Motor Car Co., East Grand Boulevard.

COURTESY DETROIT PUBLIC LIBRARY / #EB01E529

ABOVE RIGHT: Bill Graves and workers with last Packard automobile at body drop, East Grand Boulevard plant, September 15, 1954. Graves is holding left rear fender. The car shown is a Fifty-Fourth Series, Model 5406, eightcylinder touring sedan (body-type #5452) with air conditioning.

COURTESY DETROIT PUBLIC LIBRARY / #NA032468

RIGHT: Presentation of the Silver Cup at Detroit, 1954. Included in the picture in the front row, from left: Mrs. Anna Thompson Dodge, mother of Horace; Suzy Mulford, daughter of John Mulford (pouring champagne into the Silver Cup Trophy); Horace Dodge, peeking around his wife; Gregg Dodge; Jack Bartlow in his racing gear, driver of the winning boat.

COURTESY DETROIT HISTORICAL SOCIETY / #2014.039.010

OPPOSITE: Crowd in front of Fox Theatre waiting for the showing of The Egyptian, 1954.

COURTESY DETROIT PUBLIC LIBRARY / #BH023760

ABOVE: Thaddeus K. Wronski, organizer and director of the Detroit Civic Opera Company, April 1959.

COURTESY DETROIT HISTORICAL SOCIETY / #2014.002.203

ABOVE RIGHT: Theodore Jr., Ernestine, Cheryl, and Theodore Wright Sr. at their home, circa 1959.

COURTESY CHERYL WRIGHT-BRADLEY / THEODORE M. WRIGHT SR.

RIGHT: Students from Winterhalter and McKerrow schools performing at a West District music festival in May of 1959. Deborah Duval is in the front row, fifth from the left.

COURTESY PRIVATE COLLECTION OF DEBRA GATES

OPPOSITE: The demolition of part of the Highland Park Ford Plant, with the powerhouse in the background, circa 1959. One of Henry Ford’s favorite haunts during the ’teens was the powerhouse of his company’s Highland Park plant.

COURTESY DETROIT HISTORICAL SOCIETY / #2012.022.236