Detroit's social engineering project: The Cass Corridor

[Fury13]

Interesting that Detroit's most densely populated area, one that was thriving and middle class in the '20s, went to being designated the new Skid Row. Seems like density was a negative in the eyes of the City Council of those days.

It's been said that the Cass Corridor, in terms of streetscape and density [[large apartment buildings, walkability, small lawns and zero-lot lines), is the closest thing we have in Detroit to NYC's overall "feel."

[dookie joe]

Interesting that Detroit's most densely populated area, one that was thriving and middle class in the '20s, went to being designated the new Skid Row. Seems like density was a negative in the eyes of the City Council of those days.

It's been said that the Cass Corridor, in terms of streetscape and density [[large apartment buildings, walkability, small lawns and zero-lot lines), is the closest thing we have in Detroit to NYC's overall "feel."

Here's something I wrote which speaks to the density/feel of the neighborhood. This is written from the perspective of a kid in the early '70s, when I lived with my family in an apartment building on the corner of Cass and Selden [[we moved to a house on Selden between Cass and Woodward a few years later). It's all true, although the names have been changed, and I actually made the number of siblings in my family smaller [[this exerpt is from a book I'm working on, and I eliminated a few siblings to make the story flow easier).



Crazy was normal in the Cass Corridor, Detroit’s infamous red-light district, where Sodom and Gomorrah, ‘70s style, thrived outside our second-story bedroom window.

Long-legged, high-heeled hookers prowled the sidewalk below, tempting passing motorists by flashing their boobs or lifting their skirts. These same women sometimes fixed us Kool-Aid and peanut butter sandwiches. It wasn’t easy to look a buddy’s mom in the eye knowing what she was, or wasn’t, wearing under her dress.

Mom and Grandma tried to give us a halfway-sane childhood but it was an uphill battle. Our apartment overlooked the busy corner of Cass and Selden. Our friends’ parents and older siblings were street people. Our building’s back porches were the gathering spots for adult gossip. Wherever we went, we saw and heard everything.

My family squeezed into Apartment #201, a two-bedroom unit in the sprawling Vendome Arms, just across Selden from Cass United Methodist Church. The twins and I shared one bedroom; Mom had the other and Grandma slept on a bed in the living room.

Mom was a clerk at a place called Minuteman, a day labor company near Tiger Stadium. Her job was to figure out which of the men slumped in the lobby were sober enough to clock a shift washing dishes or stacking boxes. On Saturdays she worked a few hours answering phones at a dentist’s office downtown. She also took classes three nights a week at nearby Wayne State University.

We didn’t know our dad. Mom left him when we were still in diapers. Shortly after they divorced he was sent to prison for killing an old lady during a robbery.

Single-parent households were common in the Corridor. Having a father doing time for murder wasn’t especially noteworthy, either.

Mom was working or in school most of the time, so Grandma “watched” us ― which during the summer meant she watched her game shows or went to church meetings while we roamed the neighborhood. We were free to explore under two conditions: we had to stick together if we strayed too far from the building, and had to be home by the time the street lights flickered on.

The curfew didn’t matter, though. If there was nothing on TV, our bedroom window offered a perfect crow’s-nest view of Cass Avenue. The night came to us.

The prime-time sidewalk shows featured a cast of pimps, hookers, tricks, winos, scam-artists, dope dealers and dope heads whose zany performances drew large audiences. Dozens of buildings like ours were jammed into the Corridor, and the sins and shenanigans could be observed from most window perches.

As the name implies, the Cass Corridor was like a narrow hallway, 14 blocks long but only 4 blocks wide. Thousands of apartment dwellers literally lived on top of each other, and not all of them were street people; our neighbors were a mishmash of nationalities, income levels and value systems.

The Corridor largely was populated by the families of white southerners who’d moved to Detroit in the ‘50s and ‘60s looking for auto factory jobs. A number of “Afro Americans” also lived in the neighborhood, and while some blacks and whites got along, the 1967 race riot was still fresh in most adults’ memories and there was plenty of leftover hatred on both sides.

Immigrants from India, Pakistan, China, Korea and the Philippines were part of the mix. Some were students at nearby Wayne State; others worked at the Detroit Medical Center, a group of hospitals just across Woodward Avenue.

Detroit’s small Chinatown was located at Cass and Peterboro in the southern end of the Corridor, where people spoke Cantonese and celebrated Chinese New Year each winter with fireworks and a colorful parade of dragons and silky dancers.

Native Americans lived in the neighborhood, too, mostly Mohawks and Chippewa. There also were Wayne State students; art school dropouts; leftover hippies; and senior citizens who stayed indoors after the sun went down.

The adults in the Corridor generally socialized within their own groups — Hindus didn’t hang with hillbillies, and professors didn’t pal around with pushers. But there were no such boundaries when it came to kids, at least not during the school year. The children of prostitutes, nurses, mack-daddies, mechanics, dopers and plumbers were our classmates at Clarence M. Burton Elementary School on Cass, down the street from the Gold Dollar Show Bar, which advertised, “Female Impersonators Nightly.”

Some of my friends came from prosperous, wholesome households, but I never felt like my family was broken. Several Burton students were poor and being raised by their moms, and some of them even had a parent in the penitentiary like I did. Amy Pelletier, my puppy-love girlfriend since the end of 5th grade, had it worse than anyone — her mom went to prison for killing her dad.

Such dysfunction was shrugged off. Crazy was normal. Arthur Hanson’s mother would turn tricks on Cass right outside the school but nobody held that against him. Arthur was hilarious; he had a knack for flicking spitballs at Mr. Morgan without getting caught. The tiny white paper wads would be stuck to the back of Morgan’s hair, and whenever he’d turn to write on the blackboard the whole class would crack up.

At the other end of the scale was Raju Pareek, whose father was a big-shot at Wayne State. Raju’s family may have had money, but he was as low-down as any of us. He’d swipe his older brother’s Hustler and Swank magazines and show them to us on the playground. Who cared if his dad was a professor or a pimp?

Outside school, our neighborhood’s socioeconomic, ethnic, and ethical hodgepodge was made even more interesting by the steady flow of suburbanites ― kinky lawyers, horny engineers, respectable dope fiends ― who’d venture into the Corridor with money in their pockets and a Jones calling. Whatever they wanted was easy to find: smack, coke or weed; a guy, girl or he-she.

Most of them came for the girls. The Corridor was renowned for its prostitutes and on Fridays and Saturdays the Johns’ cars would line up for blocks down Cass, a brazen, open-air sex bazaar right outside our window.

A few hookers lived in our building, and we’d overhear them laughing about the weirdoes from the suburbs. One guy, a regular, liked to get naked and have oranges thrown at him. The girls said it was an easy $20 ― plus, they joked, he supplied the oranges.

Another trick would pay girls to pee on him and then burn him on the balls with a match ― and it had to be a match, too; a lighter wouldn’t do.

[[more)

[dookie joe]

If Mom and Grandma weren’t home we’d taunt the customers from our window:

“We got your license plate number! We’re gonna call your wife!”

Usually, they’d pretend not to hear, but every once in awhile someone would cuss or flip us the bird — precisely what we were hoping for. We’d giggle all night about some guy snarling, “Fuck you kids!” out of the side of his mouth.

Although most strangers came to the Corridor horny, some were just hungry. The neighborhood was situated between downtown and Wayne State, and at lunchtime business people and college students would fill the Chinese restaurants ― Chung’s, Forbidden City and the Double Dragon ― and Mario’s, which served the finest Italian food in all of Michigan [[or so they said; we couldn’t afford to eat there). There was even a Polynesian restaurant just south of Chinatown called Chin Tiki, which had wooden front doors that were carved into replicas of evil-looking tribal masks.

Thousands of outsiders attended concerts, Ice Capades and other events at the Masonic Temple, a hulking stone structure across the street from Cass Park. The park was full of sleeping bums on most nights but whenever there was something going on at the Masonic the police would kick them out. The cops always disappeared after the shows, conceding the park to the bums until the next occasion.

Sometimes a carload of lost suburbanites would wind up in our end of the Corridor and the petrified occupants would ask directions to the Masonic Temple. If they seemed cool we’d tell them how to get there, but if they acted stuck-up we’d send them across Woodward to the east side of Detroit ― which was sort of like sending them to the Bermuda Triangle.

The east side was No Man’s Land. Street names were different over there [[Myrtle Boulevard inexplicably became Mack Avenue), but the divide cut deeper than that. East and west simply didn’t mix. East-siders didn’t venture across the moat and neither did we. It was a Detroit tradition.

Woodward formed a powerful eastern demarcation line, and to the west we were cut off by the Lodge Freeway, beyond which loomed the Jeffries Projects, a group of high-rises where white kids tread at their own peril. The Fisher Freeway, which separated the neighborhood from downtown, formed the Corridor’s southern barrier; while Wayne State University to the north was heavily patrolled by its own campus police force ― and those cops made sure troublemakers stayed out.

So the Cass Corridor was indeed an isolated corridor, cut off from the rest of the world by real, imagined or enforced boundaries. It was our own little boxed-in crazy playground.

[Downtown Lady]

Wow, Dookie Joe -- that is so compelling! I can't wait to read your book.

[Downtown Lady]

Dookie Joe, in the newspaper clippings that you found, did anyone protest the proposed Cass Corridor plans on the grounds that this red-light district was being established near Cass Tech and Burton?

[Cooper]

Dookie Joe -- Thanks for sharing the excerpt. I look forward to buying the book!

[RickBeall]

Great and compelling writing Dookie!

[donpablo]

Good stuff dookie joe! I have a few personal crazy stories myself from the corridor but i think i need to keep them to myself

I sure miss the food co-op when it was on cass though. Both of my daughters attend Burton now but it moved over off Trumbull and I-75. It is a great school, originally back in '04 some of you here suggested it too me and i'm glad you did.

[Lowell]

Terrific description DookieJoe!

Your demographic description is spot on -- poor white, largely southern, a colorful international mix from everywhere and poor black.

As you highlight, what can't be sensed today, particularly in the south end, is how densely populated it was. The place was bustling. It is so people-less today by comparison. There were so many apartments, small businesses, corner stores, restaurants, bars and people on the sidewalks.

Chinatown district though fading was vibrant and one often had to wait to get a table. Nearby downtown was lively and the streets around Hudson’s still got crowded in the holiday season.

You are also correct about the blind-eye prostitution with its predominantly white hookers that flourished, especially along 3rd. Bars like Jumbos, the Sweetheart, Willis Show Bar and Anderson's Garden were established prostitution solicitation venues. They were winked at / bought out. Everybody knew it and nothing was done about it. The streets around them were packed with the cars of their patrons from the outer reaches of the city. It was the city’s biggest open secret.



The north end was youth culture / art bohemia / counter culture / hippies / students drawn there by the cheap accommodations and studio space, art and excitement yet close to the great resources of the DIA, University, theaters, libraries and other cultural institution. It was ablaze with parties, mind altering drugs, communal households, anti-war and other protests, radical politics, art and intellectual ferment.

It was also mean, tough, violent and on its way down. While there was relatively little damage from the 67 riot the decline was rapid. When the police finally decided to do something about street crime, their answer was STRESS which did little more than sour race relations. Crime incidence is so mild by comparison today.

It became a dumping ground for social service agencies. The city's allowing this far-out-of-proportion dense clustering lends credence to your theory. As you point out this was drawing people with problems from all over the city as the agencies sprung up. And their problems came with them driving away stable residents.

Still I loved the corridor. It started with crazy late-sixties college summers when I lived there and worked at the Rouge. "By days I made the cars, by night I made the bars." It was fun, wild and creative. It still is, just different now and far tamer.

[dookie joe]

Thanks for the kind words, everybody. Downtown Lady, I don't recall if the protests specifically mentioned the schools. When I get the clips next week I'll post 'em here.

[dookie joe]

Lowell, that's what made the Corridor unique. It wasn't just your run-of-the-mill bad neighborhood: You had so many people from different walks of life all crammed together. And you're right: There were always people milling around outside.

As far as the art scene you mentioned at the north end of the hood, I was a bit young to know what that was all about, although when I got older I found out what a vibrant, thriving scene it had been. As a kid, though, we just saw those folks as "hippies" -- harmless to be sure, but not really a part of our circle. I remember a lot of them hanging out at Cobb's Corner, which had jazz bands.

[bartock]

That was a great read. Thanks for posting the excerpt, dookie joe.

[Lowell]

Joe, I spanned both ends of the Corridor during he early 70's. After I came back from my Peace Corps service, I got a live-in gig managing two former mansions, by then carved up into miserable little living units. One was on Henry, where I lived, the other directly behind it on Ledyard. The latter is still there, just east of the Michigan Chronicle. It was the former home of a lumber baron.

Cobb's corner was one of my frequent haunts and the Willis Gallery a few doors down was the hub of the art community, where many Detroit artists myself included, first exhibited. It was at Cobb's where I first met John [Honest John?] Thompson, then a bartender, who could probably also lay claim to the mayor of Cass Corridor title. A street waif who was sheltered by a minister at the black stone church [name escapes me right now] on Cass, he now owns the bar, as he openly puts it, that his mother hooked from. I believe it was Elmer's.

The 'mayor' Alan Schaerges [pronounced shur' -ges [hard g]] was a Vietnam vet who went to law school after his return and has always been heavily involved in the North Cass Community Union that has done much to stabilize that neighborhood, brought on the Dally in the Alley and more. He was also instrumental in establishing the Vietnam vets facility in the old Greenfield Restaurant on Woodward. He both lives in a beautifully restored house on W. Willis near the Lodge and owns his office building on Second.

Stephen Goodfellow's [another corridor artist & Willis Gallery alumni] wonderful Tribes of the Cass Corridor site http://corridortribe.com/ is filled with lore, particularly of the north end.

[Hornwrecker]

There are a few pics of the Corridor from the 70s at http://dlxs.lib.wayne.edu/cgi/i/image/image-idx?c=vmc

{Do a search for "Cass Corridor" and also for "skid row", for pics of the Mich and 3rd area.}

[dookie joe]

Below are some of the articles I talked about. I can't upload any more, since I reached my limit of five. But these should tell the story for those who were skeptical. You'll see that the city did indeed worry about where to put all the displaced Skid Row residents; Mel Ravitz was the leader of this movement. Then, you'll see how the city did indeed get federal funding and convert the Avon Hotel into a flophouse.

Everything else is there in the clips for those of you who wish to research the issue. I suggest going through the microfilm at the Detroit Public Library. It's all there.

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[dookie joe]

Cobb's corner was one of my frequent haunts and the Willis Gallery a few doors down was the hub of the art community, where many Detroit artists myself included, first exhibited. It was at Cobb's where I first met John [Honest John?] Thompson, then a bartender, who could probably also lay claim to the mayor of Cass Corridor title. A street waif who was sheltered by a minister at the black stone church [name escapes me right now] on Cass, he now owns the bar, as he openly puts it, that his mother hooked from. I believe it was Elmer's.

I think you're right -- it was Elmer's. I'd confused it with the Selden Bar. Part of Honest John's also used to be the Selden BBQ, if I remember correctly. But that's going back 3 decades, so I'm not positive.

And the minister you speak of was Rev. Louis Redmond, from Cass United Methodist Church. I knew him and his family well; our house on Selden was right across the street from where he lived.

My vote for "Mayor of the Cass Corridor" is a guy named Rabbit, who haunted the depths of the neighborhood for 40-some-odd years.

[Lowell]

Good idea Hornwrecker!

Here is an interior shot of the Willis Gallery, Bradley Jone [RIP] on the left, Ellen Phelan back left and, I think, Nancy Mitchnik back right. The other two I have forgotten.


Cobb's Corner bar sign. Whatever happened to Robert Cobb?


This was the old convention hall, located south of the where the Cass Cafe is today on the same block. A big WSU graduate housing block sits on the site today. It was where the auto shows used to be held in the 20's. Later Vernor's owned it, they were behind it on Woodward at the time. By the late sixties it was unused and became studio space for a lot of artists.


The Common Ground for the Arts was another, nicer artist colony located in a building just north of Cobb's Corner.

[Lowell]

This shot could have been right in front of the Willis Gallery which would have been to the left of the David Shale Gallery. Cobb's Corner would be at the far corner.


Old pic of Burton Elementary with Street underpass entrance.

[Lowell]

Thanks for taking the time to post the clips Joe. Point made!

Yes, Rabbit would be a 'mayoral' candidate. Maybe Bill Tyler too, the always-drunk poet who supported his habits by selling xeroxed copies of his poems for a quarter also comes to mind. His passing was noted by one of the papers where his reported last words were a Cass Corridor classic -- Wine, get me some wine.

[dookie joe]

Thanks for the pix, Lowell! That pic of the tunnel across from Burton brought back some memories, although the flivvers and flappers are a little before my time!

I love Tyler's last words. I'm guessing the wine he'd have chosen for his last drink would've either been Mad Dog 20/20 or Wild Irish Rose!

[RickBeall]

I think I almost bought a poem from Bill Tyler, I only offered him a nickel for it and he walked away in a huff.

[esteban]

It's a good question. Who ought to carry the title, "King of the Cass Corridor"?
My two cents worth:

Must be alive. Yes, there have been past kings, but "The King is dead! Long Live the King!"

Amongst others, Alan Schaerges and [[Honest?) John Thompson have been suggested. IMHO both have excellent pedigrees. Might I suggest that the candidate, by virtue of age takes the title of "King" while younger candidates in waiting be considered under the title "Prince of the Corridor"?

...And what about Queens & Princesses of the Cass Corridor? Although perhaps too young to be a queen, Sharon Newton would definitely be my candidate for a Princess of the Corridor, but I can't for the life of me decide who my queen candidate would be.

Anyone have any amusing thoughts on this subject? How could we decide on a Regent, and how many candidates are there out there? ...And ought there not be a coronation?

Hell, let's go the whole hog. Have the Cass Corridor secede from the Union and become a kingdom, complete with national anthem [[Ought to include the words "Jack Daniels") and judicial system based upon the whims of the residing King or Queen.

On an aside, Stella Paris, or "Stella" as she was affectionately known, the undisputed Queen of Greektown has passed away at the ripe old age of 94.

[IrishSpartan]

IMHO, the only thing that kept Detroit so populated after the war was immigration from the South, black and white.

I strongly disagree with that statement. The northeast area of Detroit was heavily Italian, German, Polish, and very Catholic with LOTS of kids. Many of those neighborhoods contained famlies with 4-5 kids and 8-10 was not that uncommon. I'm sure the west side Catholic schools like St.Mary's of Redford contained several families that could field a baseball team as well.

[IrishSpartan]

Um...that's because it wasn't a news article; it's something I wrote. Had it been from a news article, I would have said, "this is a reprint from a news article." Rather, I said, "here's what I found from newspaper clippings." I thought that was fairly clear. I wasn't "citing" anything; I was rehashing what I'd read.



Wow, I didn't think I was in a court of law where I had to document all claims.

However, I'll be happy to scan the articles. I won't be getting to it until next week, however. Since you're the one who's insisting I do this, please PM me on Monday and remind me.

As a sneak preview, however, I will reiterate the cold, hard facts, without an ounce of editorialization:

When the city was preparing to demolish Skid Row for the International Village project, the council members expressed concern about where to put the bums and other Skid Row residents who would be displaced after their neighborhood was razed. City officials insisted they didn't want them scattered to the four winds throughout Detroit, so they decided to try to find a neighborhood to contain them.

After several suggestions they settled on the Cass Corridor. As part of their plan, they wanted to convert the Avon Hotel on Brainard into a homeless shelter. The council also voted to relax blight laws in that part of the city.

The people who lived in the community protested because they didn't want their neighborhood to be the city's dumping ground for derelicts.

Those are the facts. Since you insist, I'll be happy to prove them, as long as you send me a reminder via PM Monday, because I get pretty busy at work [[I'm on vacation this week, and work is the only place where I have access to a scanner).

And, just so we're clear on what is and isn't a fact: The parts I wrote in the original post about the cops not patrolling, and the term "social engineering" were all my own editorializations, based on common sense and what I saw growing up and heard from older people. But the rest of it is cold, hard fact.

As I said, I'd always dismissed the oft-repeated notion that "The Corridor was set up to be the city's red light district" as a mere paranoid street conspiracy, and was surprised to find out that it actually is true.

I came across an old Free Press article from July 1966 giving an account of a Detroit Police Department Vice Squad raid in the Cass Corridor and downtown for prostitution, which included the Avon Hotel on Brainard. I had a few relatives that lived in the Cass Corridor from the 1930's- late 1960's. and lived through the changes over the years. I will list the hotels the Detroit Free Press mentioned.

Avon Hotel 660 Brainard
Balmoral Hotel 4451 Third
Aderna Hotel 3515 Cass
Edison Hotel 140 Sibley
Wardcliff Hotel 1751 Third
Whitfield Hotel 1246 Library
Columbia Hotel 130 W. Columbia
Clayton Hotel 211 W. Vernor

[IrishSpartan]

Terrific description DookieJoe!

Your demographic description is spot on -- poor white, largely southern, a colorful international mix from everywhere and poor black.

As you highlight, what can't be sensed today, particularly in the south end, is how densely populated it was. The place was bustling. It is so people-less today by comparison. There were so many apartments, small businesses, corner stores, restaurants, bars and people on the sidewalks.

Chinatown district though fading was vibrant and one often had to wait to get a table. Nearby downtown was lively and the streets around Hudson’s still got crowded in the holiday season.

You are also correct about the blind-eye prostitution with its predominantly white hookers that flourished, especially along 3rd. Bars like Jumbos, the Sweetheart, Willis Show Bar and Anderson's Garden were established prostitution solicitation venues. They were winked at / bought out. Everybody knew it and nothing was done about it. The streets around them were packed with the cars of their patrons from the outer reaches of the city. It was the city’s biggest open secret.



The north end was youth culture / art bohemia / counter culture / hippies / students drawn there by the cheap accommodations and studio space, art and excitement yet close to the great resources of the DIA, University, theaters, libraries and other cultural institution. It was ablaze with parties, mind altering drugs, communal households, anti-war and other protests, radical politics, art and intellectual ferment.

It was also mean, tough, violent and on its way down. While there was relatively little damage from the 67 riot the decline was rapid. When the police finally decided to do something about street crime, their answer was STRESS which did little more than sour race relations. Crime incidence is so mild by comparison today.

It became a dumping ground for social service agencies. The city's allowing this far-out-of-proportion dense clustering lends credence to your theory. As you point out this was drawing people with problems from all over the city as the agencies sprung up. And their problems came with them driving away stable residents.

Still I loved the corridor. It started with crazy late-sixties college summers when I lived there and worked at the Rouge. "By days I made the cars, by night I made the bars." It was fun, wild and creative. It still is, just different now and far tamer.

In the 1950's and 60's their were still several of the old ethnic bachelor uncles in the area. I'm referring European immigrants in this instance. I had a relative who lived down there in various apartment buildings from the 1930's-1971. He was an Irish Catholic immigrant that kept in contact with the family but wanted his own independence[[i.e. not sharing an upper flat with family members). My uncle often lived in apartment buildings throughout the corridor with other old Irish immigrant types as neighbors, and socialized in those types of bars as well.