RIP Greektown: Laikon Closing

[stromberg2]

Greektown in general and Hellas in particular are what drew me to Detroit when I first started hanging out up there. Greektown was just such a bustling little enclave, always crowded but always fun. Now...how many of the stores/restaurants are even greek??? It was before my time, but I've read that detroit used to have a chinatown...needless to say I've never seen any sign that it used to exist

Go to Peterboro and Cass in the Corridor...that's were Chinatown was.

Stromberg2

[EastsideAl]

Go to Peterboro and Cass in the Corridor...that's were Chinatown was.

Stromberg2

Well, yes, there was a "Chinatown" there, but that was Detroit's second Chinatown. The original Chinatown, which was a neighborhood where Chinese people actually lived, was on the streets around Third and Second south of Michigan Ave.

This 'slum' was cleared, along with old 'Skid Row' along Michigan Ave. and large parts of old Corktown, in the 'urban renewal' efforts surrounding the building of the nearby Lodge Freeway in the late '50s and early '60s. The elements of that community that the city found 'less desirable', i.e. chronic alcoholics and Chinese, were encouraged by the city to move to the already declining Cass Corridor area.

Many Chinese businesses and some Chinese residents took the city up on its offer, and "Chinese themed" kiosks, phone booths, and signs were put in. But the idea never really 'took.' The Chinese residents mostly soon scattered from this less family-friendly area, and most of the businesses eventually closed. By the late '70s all that was left was Chung's restaurant at Cass and Peterboro and a small Chinese senior center behind it where old men played mahjong all day.

Some shots of Chinese New Year in Detroit's original Chinatown, from WSU's Virtual Motor City site:

[poobert]

Well, yes, there was a "Chinatown" there, but that was Detroit's second Chinatown. The original Chinatown, which was a neighborhood where Chinese people actually lived, was on the streets around Third and Second south of Michigan Ave.

This 'slum' was cleared, along with old 'Skid Row' along Michigan Ave. and large parts of old Corktown, in the 'urban renewal' efforts surrounding the building of the nearby Lodge Freeway in the late '50s and early '60s. The elements of that community that the city found 'less desirable', i.e. chronic alcoholics and Chinese, were encouraged by the city to move to the already declining Cass Corridor area.

Many Chinese businesses and some Chinese residents took the city up on its offer, and "Chinese themed" kiosks, phone booths, and signs were put in. But the idea never really 'took.' The Chinese residents mostly soon scattered from this less family-friendly area, and most of the businesses eventually closed. By the late '70s all that was left was Chung's restaurant at Cass and Peterboro and a small Chinese senior center behind it where old men played mahjong all day.

Some shots of Chinese New Year in Detroit's original Chinatown, from WSU's Virtual Motor City site:

Interestingly those pictures looking eerily similar to Chinatowns in other major cities in North America, except for the lack of automobiles and neon signs.

Had we not bulldozed this organic neighborhood - and countless others like it - we very well could still have a thriving Chinatown like other cities. Instead we have aged, ugly superblock developments and vast abandonment, while most of our Asian population lives in equally vulgar ticky-tacky subdivisions in Oakland county.
You could take a written history of Metro Detroit for the past 70 years and just change the title to either "how to destroy a great city" or "Urban Planning 102: Everything you shouldn't do"