How the Warehouse District became Rivertown

[Henry Whalley]

As I recall, in early 1978 the group of drinking and eating establishments around Jacoby's began to call themselves Bricktown for marketing the area to the coming 1980 Republican National Convention. These included Galligan's, Sweetwater Tavern, and Detroiter around the block on Beaubien.

Then proprietors in the Warehouse District held several rebranding meetings in the spring of 1978 at the Brauhaus Restaurant on Woodbridge. Scattered between Schweizer's and Andrew's on Joseph Campau there were plenty of old brick streets, but Bricktown was already spoken for so they decided to brand it Rivertown.