1888 Detroit Map - with Hastings

[southofbloor]

That's a very deep statement you make about fire, worthy of further discussion. Do you think the role of fire is more significant than say, San Francisco or Chicago, cities that were destroyed by fire all at once?

These maps you linked to are beautiful. I zoomed in as far as possible so as to see the streets and markers. So much the same, so much different. So many streets gone, altogether. Hastings was a major street.

This Detroit is probaby the Detroit that my grandparents arrived at from the South, maybe around 1920.

I note that Antietam, near my home in Lafayette Park, looks much the same, with that sharp turn at Rivard. I always wondered about the name, was it named after the battlefield?

Thank you so much for posting these.

You're welcome - I was lucky enough to find the Baist's atlas at John King's fantastic bookstore. I get lost in it. I can send higher res if you would like.

I have wondered whether that area just north of Antietam is what Hastings Street generally felt like. Have always liked the spot at Jay and Orleans, and Service Street. Quirky urban meaty... Not sure about the origins of the name though.

Yes the whole fire thing - its disturbing how many times this town has either burned down, or set fires to others' properties as a weapon or warning, or set fire to itself as protest, or for insurance, or out of boredom, or to make a place safer, or entertainment. I've started working on a paper on it a few times but seem to end up dropping it - depressing. Lots of really disturbing material out there in the archives.

Lafayette Park - lucky lucky! The eastern redbuds must be beautiful about now.

[southofbloor]

What is slightly different [[not sure what you are referring to here)?

Different and convoluted route to the same place. Windsor and Detroit families often have strangely dissimilar patterns of immigration in some cases from the same american places of origin but are now connected in the same place.

[Brock7]

There are legible 600dpi black and white tiff images of Detroit maps from various years now available at the Internet Archive. On the left hand side of the following pages select the "All Files: HTTPS" link. From there download the file ending in "_tif.zip". I've included the file-names I know for some of the maps that can be found in the zip files, otherwise you might want to download the PDF versions of the books to locate the page number of various maps.

Atlas of Michigan 1873
http://www.archive.org/details/27465....001.umich.edu
[[1873 map of Detroit) 2746566.0001.001.umich.edu_0132.tif

Illustrated historical atlas of the county of Wayne, Michigan [[1876)
http://www.archive.org/details/39281....001.umich.edu
[[1876 map of Detroit) 3928152.0001.001.umich.edu_0056.tif
[[1876 map of Grosse Point) 3928152.0001.001.umich.edu_0013.tif

Atlas of the City of Detroit and suburbs [[1885)
http://archive.org/details/3929071.0001.001.umich.edu
These maps have footprints of buildings with many of the larger ones identified.

Detailed official atlas of the of Wayne County, Michigan [[1904)
http://www.archive.org/details/39281....001.umich.edu
[[1904 map of Detroit & Environs) 3928153.0001.001.umich.edu_0014.tif
[[1904 map of Gratiot & Grosse Point) 3928153.0001.001.umich.edu_0020.tif

Detailed official atlas of the of Wayne County, Michigan [[1915)
http://www.archive.org/details/39281....001.umich.edu
[[1915 West side of Detroit) 3928154.0001.001.umich.edu_0028.tif
[[1915 East side of Detroit) 3928154.0001.001.umich.edu_0033.tif
[[1915 map of Detroit) 3928154.0001.001.umich.edu_0030.tif
[[Private Claims) 3928154.0001.001.umich.edu_0014.tif
[[1915 map of Grosse Point) 3928154.0001.001.umich.edu_0046.tif

[Brock7]

...I never heard of Paton Alley; have to keep my eye open for that.

There's a Paton Street running from Gratiot to Clinton between Beaubien and St. Antione on the 1873 through 1885 maps. It's Raynor Street from the 1889 map on. The street is shown bounding the west of the old city cemetery, but isn't named on the 1853 map in Farmers book. The 1885 Atlas of Detroit shows Police Court on the nw corner of Paton and Clinton with Wayne County Jail behind it.

[EastsideAl]

From C.M. Burton's 1891 listing of Detroit street name changes:



Raynor St. still looks like a narrow alley today, but runs between the Frank Murphy Hall of Justice and the Wayne County Jail, ending across from the DPD headquarters, making it now a somewhat unlikely place for a riot.

[EastsideAl]

And here is a fascinating list of black churches and the names, addresses, and sometimes the professions of all the people designated as "colored" in an 1857-58 Detroit city directory:

http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~mi...directory.html

Almost all of them seem to be clustered just east of downtown near what today would be Greektown. Interestingly, the only person shown as living on Paton Alley is one James Johnson, who is listed as a "farmer".

[southofbloor]

Interesting - a number of buildings listed as burned in that 1863 article were barns.

[marshamusic]

You're welcome - I was lucky enough to find the Baist's atlas at John King's fantastic bookstore. I get lost in it. I can send higher res if you would like.

I have wondered whether that area just north of Antietam is what Hastings Street generally felt like. Have always liked the spot at Jay and Orleans, and Service Street. Quirky urban meaty... Not sure about the origins of the name though.

Yes the whole fire thing - its disturbing how many times this town has either burned down, or set fires to others' properties as a weapon or warning, or set fire to itself as protest, or for insurance, or out of boredom, or to make a place safer, or entertainment. I've started working on a paper on it a few times but seem to end up dropping it - depressing. Lots of really disturbing material out there in the archives.

Lafayette Park - lucky lucky! The eastern redbuds must be beautiful about now.

Yeah, John King's - a book lover's heaven. Love it.

Are you meaning south of antietam? North would be basically Gratiot. You mention that lovely area of Jay and Orleans. Yes, that is such a peaceful, lovely little corner. The church has been there for a long time, but that beautiful reddish brick home for nuns is a more recent building. I love the "hills" the uneven topography of that raised area adjacent to Parc Lafayette.

In LP, we do have a co-op member who was a resident of LP in the "old days". I've heard him talk about the beauty of that area back in the day [[but it was not a "corner" as it is now; those were just residential streets.

Someone [[Rick Beall, I think) posted recently that Hastings would look much like Hamtramck's residential strip, and I agreed. I remember Hastings, when I was a small child, and it was a hustlng, bustling commercial area.

I think that an even closer approximation would be Greektown [[the storefronts, not the casino, of course), if you would pack those shops tight, on both sides of the street.

Which makes sense, given our earlier discussion in this thread, about the proximity of an enclave of blacks in the old Greektown area, which really was part of Hastings/Black Bottom.

As to LP in the spring - yes, it is glorious here now. The first burst of blooms are fading, and there will be another round of colors soon. I'll try to post some photos.

[marshamusic]

And here is a fascinating list of black churches and the names, addresses, and sometimes the professions of all the people designated as "colored" in an 1857-58 Detroit city directory:

http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~mi...directory.html

Almost all of them seem to be clustered just east of downtown near what today would be Greektown. Interestingly, the only person shown as living on Paton Alley is one James Johnson, who is listed as a "farmer".

EastsideAL, thanks for this list; I'm sure it will prove important to me as I write about this area. Yes, a fascinating look at history.

btw, especially in the COGIC [[Church of God in Christ) denomination in Detroit, the old churches were often known colloquially by their street name; perhaps to make them more easily identifiable to congregants just moving up from the South.

My church, Zion Congregational COGIC, founded in about 1920, was originally called "Clinton Street", and old folks in the church still refer to the old "Clinton Street" days.

When the church moved to 2135 Mack Ave., just east of the Dequindre railroad tracks, the church became colloquially referred to as – yes “Mack” [[as in, I’m going over to Mack for Friday night prayer).

I'll have to listen for that name "Raynor Street", when the old ones talk about the history. Thanks for that photo, it's hard to imagine residents and storefronts where that concrete corridor of the court is now.

[marshamusic]

Here are links to high-resolution images of the Detroit street map that appeared in the 1889 Polk Detroit City Directory:

Map - west of Woodward [[2.7 MB)
Map - east of Woodward [[2.7 MB)
Street Guide Index: A to J [[0.6 MB)
Street Guide Index: K to Z [[0.6 MB)

Thanks! Great images - The streets are crystal clear.

[EastsideAl]

I'll have to listen for that name "Raynor Street", when the old ones talk about the history. Thanks for that photo, it's hard to imagine residents and storefronts where that concrete corridor of the court is now.

It is hard to imagine, but here it is:



An undated photo from the Burton Historical Collection labelled "View of Paton Street". The view is from Clinton St. looking north towards Gratiot. It looks to be from the 1870s or 80s. By the 1890s the Recorders Court building would be on the right.

The building at the extreme left is the Police Court, and directly behind it, out of view, is the Wayne County Jail. The jail was brand new in 1863, having opened on New Years Day [[although there has been a jail at this site since 1847), and was the focal point of the beginning of what became the 1863 riot. It was here or very nearby that guardsmen, protecting a prisoner [[a tavern-keeper named William Faulkner, who was accused of being both a rapist and a Negro, although he may have been neither) from a mob reportedly whipped into a frenzy of anger by incendiary reports in the Free Press, opened fire on the crowd killing a German immigrant. What followed was a burning and beating rampage by the incensed mob through the nearby black neighborhood and spreading into other areas, which was not quelled until federal troops arrived late in the evening.

http://www.umich.edu/~historyj/pages...l_Rhetoric.pdf

[Kathleen]

Go back to EastsideAl's post #9 in this thread for some info on the German influence on the east side of downtown. Schweizers Place east of the Ren Cen, the old Stroh Brewery, Harmonie Park, Historic Trinity Lutheran Church are some of the remants of the large German population. detroit1701.org has a nice history on the Harmonie Club here.

My grandfather [[b. 1891 and baptized at St. John-St. Luke) lived on Hastings St. between [today's] Monroe and Lafayette. His father was Irish and his mother was German. The neighborhood was German; his best friend's dad owned a bar on Lafayette. As a young boy, he used to hang out at the Dodge Brothers garage at the corner of Hastings and Monroe!! The family moved east over near Water Works Park sometime in the 1910s.

[southofbloor]

It is hard to imagine, but here it is:



An undated photo from the Burton Historical Collection labelled "View of Paton Street". The view is from Clinton St. looking north towards Gratiot. It looks to be from the 1870s or 80s. By the 1890s the Recorders Court building would be on the right.

The building at the extreme left is the Police Court, and directly behind it, out of view, is the Wayne County Jail. The jail was brand new in 1863, having opened on New Years Day [[although there has been a jail at this site since 1847), and was the focal point of the beginning of what became the 1863 riot. It was here or very nearby that guardsmen, protecting a prisoner [[a tavern-keeper named William Faulkner, who was accused of being both a rapist and a Negro, although he may have been neither) from a mob reportedly whipped into a frenzy of anger by incendiary reports in the Free Press, opened fire on the crowd killing a German immigrant. What followed was a burning and beating rampage by the incensed mob through the nearby black neighborhood and spreading into other areas, which was not quelled until federal troops arrived late in the evening.

http://www.umich.edu/~historyj/pages...l_Rhetoric.pdf

Thanks for this. Jeez it looks so peaceful.

There is an essay to be written about 1863 and what was done to the black community in this location. I'm kind of afraid of that can of worms but someone needs to intelligently talk about it. Its interesting and difficult, but important in understanding the current divisions in this city and what happened in later years.

Free Press, March 8, 1963 "A Bloody Riot"

http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/freep/of...BBLOODY%2BRIOT.

[marshamusic]

It is hard to imagine, but here it is:



An undated photo from the Burton Historical Collection labelled "View of Paton Street". The view is from Clinton St. looking north towards Gratiot. It looks to be from the 1870s or 80s. By the 1890s the Recorders Court building would be on the right.

The building at the extreme left is the Police Court, and directly behind it, out of view, is the Wayne County Jail. The jail was brand new in 1863, having opened on New Years Day [[although there has been a jail at this site since 1847), and was the focal point of the beginning of what became the 1863 riot. It was here or very nearby that guardsmen, protecting a prisoner [[a tavern-keeper named William Faulkner, who was accused of being both a rapist and a Negro, although he may have been neither) from a mob reportedly whipped into a frenzy of anger by incendiary reports in the Free Press, opened fire on the crowd killing a German immigrant. What followed was a burning and beating rampage by the incensed mob through the nearby black neighborhood and spreading into other areas, which was not quelled until federal troops arrived late in the evening.

http://www.umich.edu/~historyj/pages...l_Rhetoric.pdf

Wow....Thanks for this pic EastsideAl!

So that's Clinton street, back in the day. [[now, I'm trying to figure out how the caption is saying that it's looking north onto Gratiot, as Clinton ran East and West.. but anyway...

The pic is around 1890; that's 30 years before my family's church would have been there - around 1920.

When did they start paving the downtown streets?

[webband1]

Wow....Thanks for this pic EastsideAl!

So that's Clinton street, back in the day. [[now, I'm trying to figure out how the caption is saying that it's looking north onto Gratiot, as Clinton ran East and West.. but anyway...

The pic is around 1890; that's 30 years before my family's church would have been there - around 1920.

When did they start paving the downtown streets?

Marsha - the picture is taken standing in Clinton St, looking up Patton, towards Gratiot. Clinton is the street in the immediate foreground that runs across the picture, while Patton is the street running away from the camera.

[marshamusic]

Marsha - the picture is taken standing in Clinton St, looking up Patton, towards Gratiot. Clinton is the street in the immediate foreground that runs across the picture, while Patton is the street running away from the camera.

Ok thanks; I wanted to be sure. Also, I was getting confused because I kept looking at that wonderful map that MikeG posted above and I didn't see Patton; already forgetting that the name changed to Raynor by the time of that map.

All of this is amazing; thanks everyone.

[RickBeall]

Concerning the rich soil of Black Bottom, I remember reading that the early Detroit area was viewed as a malarial swamp. It was a major cause of death in the early Detroit fort. I lived in a couple places in Hamtramck, and have always been surprised by the deepness of the black soil. In my current back yard off Conant, the black earth is at least 2 feet deep.

I think the swampland and subsequent rich land extended inland many miles. I think Sterling Heights still has these huge drainage ditches the size of river beds.

When you are on I-75 South taking the East exit to the Davisdson, there is a sharp bend and a natural artesian well which continually tries to drip from the wall onto the curb. The city has an ongoing battle keeping it "bottled up". A couple years ago they ignored it too long. I saw a mini van behind us spin 180 degrees when that little tongue of slime tickled his wheels on that tight turn.

Lot's of water in the area. That video of the "ghost rivers" was fascinating! I love the idea of daylighting them.

And if we are talking about water, then using my "literary" muscle [[Greek 4 elements echo [insert sound effects here]) , I bring back the fire you talked about earlier in this thread.

Fire in Detroit is still very much alive. You of course have the arson and the fires set in the past on Devils night, but in Hamtramck our house insurance is sky high because the business owners [[I suspect the foreign business owners) view insurance as a mere loan to the bank, which they withdraw if the business fails. It must be part of the business plan, when a fruit market fails in Hamtramck, those neat piles of oranges, bananas and red apples burst into flame. I have seen several fruit markets and many other business erupt in flame when the business fails. And I pay the bills.

So that is our legacy fire and water. And black earth. Another Greek element! The ironic thing about dirt is that you think of it as giving life, but it is made up of the corpses of dead things. Dirt is nothing but dead things. Of course there is sand and little bits of inorganic rock and pebbles in it. But the main body of it, the thing that gives it its "dirtness", is dead stuff.

The older geology of Michigan and Detroit is fascinating also. The entire age of Dinosaurs was scraped off the face of Michigan and deposited in Ohio. The glaciers then deposited soil and rock from Canada here. Rocks not native to a region are called glacial eccentrics.

Just as successive waves of immigrants washed through Hastings Street, the very soil and rock of the area was also an immigrant.

I think a lot of the Detroit area was a hilly sort of formation called "knob and kettle", and it took a generation of immigrant workers with horses and carts to smooth it all out as we know it today.

If the white-knuckled, terra-forming hand of man relaxes, loses its grip, how will Detroit look in 100 years or 400 years? Will the Savoyard Creek daylight itself?

Or, due to global warming, will the 4th Greek element, Air, sweep in and turn us all into just another layer of sediment?

Maybe nothing will be left but the records from Joe's Record Shop, still spinning ... somewhere.

[Danny]

Detroit's Old Black community resides at Black Bottom from Hastings Street to Dequindre Cut Railway since late 1830s representing 1% of the population while the rest of Detroit was 97% white.

By 1910 Black families [[ the first wave educated ones) came to Detroit to work in factories and set up shop. Hastings St. become Paradise Valley. The hub of great black businesses.

Black Bottom was destroyed by eniment domian orders of Detroit City Council and mayor to install Lafayette Housing area. Paradise Valley was demolished by eniment domian orders of Detroit City Council and mayor to build Chrysler [[I-75) FWY.

[RickBeall]

This article mentions Hastings Street as a jazz street, and has a picture of John Lee Hooker and Little Sonny in in that famous spot in front of Joe's Record shop.

http://jbblues.blogspot.com/2013/05/...ut-theres.html

[Hermod]

Detroit was low and marshy. North of Detroit was an almost impassible marsh. In northern Oakland County, the "toe" of the glacier deposited large amounts of gravel. All of those cities in southern Oakland and Macomb Counties were made possible by draining the swamp with large drains [[such as the Chicago drain along Chicago road) and mining the gravel in the north of Oakland County to fill and firm the land. There are a lot of damp and leaky basements between 8 mile and 14 mile. The early settlers [[from New York) in the Clinton River valley couldn't get through the swamps north of Detroit and came up Lake St Clair and followed the Clinton River west to found Utica and Rochester.

[marshamusic]

Thanks Hermod! so where was this water coming from? It seems that inland is elevated. I'm here at Lafayette Park and can see the gradation downward towards the river.

[marshamusic]

There are legible 600dpi black and white tiff images of Detroit maps from various years now available at the Internet Archive. On the left hand side of the following pages select the "All Files: HTTPS" link. From there download the file ending in "_tif.zip". I've included the file-names I know for some of the maps that can be found in the zip files, otherwise you might want to download the PDF versions of the books to locate the page number of various maps.

Atlas of Michigan 1873
http://www.archive.org/details/27465....001.umich.edu
[[1873 map of Detroit) 2746566.0001.001.umich.edu_0132.tif

Illustrated historical atlas of the county of Wayne, Michigan [[1876)
http://www.archive.org/details/39281....001.umich.edu
[[1876 map of Detroit) 3928152.0001.001.umich.edu_0056.tif
[[1876 map of Grosse Point) 3928152.0001.001.umich.edu_0013.tif

Atlas of the City of Detroit and suburbs [[1885)
http://archive.org/details/3929071.0001.001.umich.edu
These maps have footprints of buildings with many of the larger ones identified.

Detailed official atlas of the of Wayne County, Michigan [[1904)
http://www.archive.org/details/39281....001.umich.edu
[[1904 map of Detroit & Environs) 3928153.0001.001.umich.edu_0014.tif
[[1904 map of Gratiot & Grosse Point) 3928153.0001.001.umich.edu_0020.tif

Detailed official atlas of the of Wayne County, Michigan [[1915)
http://www.archive.org/details/39281....001.umich.edu
[[1915 West side of Detroit) 3928154.0001.001.umich.edu_0028.tif
[[1915 East side of Detroit) 3928154.0001.001.umich.edu_0033.tif
[[1915 map of Detroit) 3928154.0001.001.umich.edu_0030.tif
[[Private Claims) 3928154.0001.001.umich.edu_0014.tif
[[1915 map of Grosse Point) 3928154.0001.001.umich.edu_0046.tif

Thank you very much Brock7 for these maps. I've looked at them a lot over the last few days, and I'm bookmarking this whole thread.

[Hermod]

Thanks Hermod! so where was this water coming from? It seems that inland is elevated. I'm here at Lafayette Park and can see the gradation downward towards the river.

The entire lower peninsula has rivers flowing to the great lakes from the center of the state. Once south of the Clinton River valley, there is little grade to the land, so the rivers [[many now underground in the sewer system) were slow and tended to have very marshy and boggy "valleys".

[Mikeg]

Thanks Hermod! so where was this water coming from? It seems that inland is elevated. I'm here at Lafayette Park and can see the gradation downward towards the river.

Rainwater and snow melt will soak into the ground where it becomes groundwater - unless it is diverted into storm drains from hard-surfaced roads, parking lots, etc. - in which case it flows directly into the surface waterways.

Dig a deep enough hole in the ground and eventually water will seep in and fill the bottom of the hole. This is the top of the water table or more specifically the top of the first layer of groundwater. Where I live in Shelby Twp., the top of the first layer of groundwater is about six to eight feet below ground level and this groundwater sits on a hard silty layer of soil that begins at about 30 feet below ground level. A homeowner can sink a shallow well into this first layer of groundwater and pump out a modest amount of water for sprinkling their individual lawn or garden. My condominium association had to drill through the first layer to reach a deeper groundwater layer at 115 feet before we could find sufficient groundwater to pump 50 gallons per minute to irrigate our large landscaped areas. This second and deeper layer of groundwater does not necessarily intermingle with the first layer and in some places if does not exist at all. You can go a mile in any direction from our condo association and find entirely different groundwater and subsurface soil situations.

A first layer of groundwater will usually have a lateral flow that takes it towards a natural waterway. However the rate of flow is very slow, often only one or two hundred feet per year.

Depending upon recent precipitation amounts and the types and depths of underlying soils, the first layer of groundwater can sometimes be found very close to - or at - the surface of the ground. If there are obstructions to the flow of the groundwater created by denser soils beneath it or between it and a natural waterway, a marsh or swamp will form at the surface.

The early farmers in Macomb County [[and elsewhere) built the first dirt roads in the swampy areas by digging two parallel ditches and throwing the muck towards the middle, where it was leveled out to form the roadbed of the "highway". They then cleared the trees from their property and installed field tiles in buried trenches that drained the groundwater towards the ditches, which were designed to carry the water towards the nearest creek or river. The system of field tiles and ditches had the effect of lowering the top of the groundwater beneath their fields and allowed them to travel and plant crops in what had previously been marshy terrain.

[jtf1972]

http://www.change.org/petitions/city...-service-drive

Bring Back Hastings Street!