Why does Detroit have no row houses or brownstones?!

[Magnatomicflux]

Also jtf1972.... ....again, I don't mean to go off topic, sorry everyone, but looking at this photo, I'll assume it's from the 20's......we clearly had the rug pulled from under us with the depression. Man....Windsor looks like a frickin' joke! HA!

Attachment 8012


By the looks of things, Detroit was doing everything right. Windsor seems pretty stangnant....did we want it that way? Maybe. We worked and played in your city back then, no need to go all crazy here. In Windsor, you might notice the diagonal line cutting across the city. That's the Essex Terminal Railway.....and the city limits. Actually......there's 3 diagonals, all are railways and the city is bordered by all of them. We didn't do much building past there untill after WW2. If you compare this with a google maps shot....we havn't done too much in the past near century, and that's not really a good thing.



I should note, that regarding the farmland...Essex county has traditionally been Ontario's agricultural heartland. We're not going to eat up topo much of it if we can help it.

[Zacha341]

Thanks for the cool photo. Really tripped out to not see the Ambassador Bridge which was built in 1930!

Also jtf1972.... ....again, I don't mean to go off topic, sorry everyone, but looking at this photo, I'll assume it's from the 20's......we clearly had the rug pulled from under us with the depression. Man....Windsor looks like a frickin' joke! HA!

Attachment 8012

By the looks of things, Detroit was doing everything right. Windsor seems pretty stangnant....did we want it that way? Maybe. We worked and played in your city back then, no need to go all crazy here. In Windsor, you might notice the diagonal line cutting across the city. That's the Essex Terminal Railway.....and the city limits. Actually......there's 3 diagonals, all are railways and the city is bordered by all of them. We didn't do much building past there untill after WW2. If you compare this with a google maps shot....we havn't done too much in the past near century, and that's not really a good thing.

I should note, that regarding the farmland...Essex county has traditionally been Ontario's agricultural heartland. We're not going to eat up topo much of it if we can help it.

[Fury13]

The boom for Detroit was 1915 to 1929 with another boom 1941 to 1954.

By 1954, the city was "built out" and the suburban explosion began north of 8 Mile and west of Telegraph.

Very well delineated, Hermod. Most people don't realize that there were two boom periods here -- the initial auto-related expansion beginning in the teens, and then the WWII "Arsenal of Democracy"/postwar growth.

The point is that there were rowhouses [[attached housing) in Detroit; however, it was a predominant style in the period just before the city's first boom, so there weren't that many [[per capita) built. Frame two-family flats were cheaper to put up [[and buy or rent), post-1915, to accommodate the influx of blue-collar workers.

As the city aged, redevelopment and attrition took away most of the attached housing from the 1870-1910 period.

[izzyindetroit]

Detroit started to become a city of single family homes after the fire of 1805. The use of single family construction was due to the 5000+ square foot lot design in Woodward's plan along with vast expanses of land. What resulted was very little construction of row houses. Later and still today having little concentration of housing units, has become an acute problem with Detroit's ability to effectively create viable mass transportation.

[kathy2trips]

There some beautiful examples in Detroit; wooden ones are predictably rare. My Favorite Detroit Row Houses: First ones that come to mind are the brick beauties on Leverette between 10th & 11th. So beautifully maintained, like stepping back in time. Like many great vintage buildings, don't forget to look up at the roof-line detail.

[Carey]

Not to be a stickler for details, but didn't Detroit's boom begin about 1900? The population went from 285,000 to 465,766 between 1900 and 1910, and Ford and GM came into existence during that 10 years, along with many other auto -- and other -- firms,