Beniteau Street in Detroit

When I saw that the young landlord from California was shot and killed on Beniteau Street this week-end, I started to think that perhaps that street might be somehow cursed. Recall that Ayanna Jones died last year just a block away in a complicated pay-out from a thug shooting at Beniteau and Mack Ave.

When i was a child, my family lived in an upper flat in my grnadmother's house on Beniteau just a few houses north of Mack Ave. My grandmother and her mother lived downstairs and they were remmants of the French-canadians who had settled in an area once known as St. Clair Heights that was annexed into Detroit [[I don't know when).

I don't remember a lot about those years. I recall a candy store on Mack ave. where she would buy little white bags of the nonpareil candies that she loved. We went to Sunday mass at St. Bernard church and went to church festivals and dinners in the basement of the church. My grandmother canned jars of pears from back-yard trees and she said that the trees were a legacy of my french ancestors, who loved pears.

But something is lost in the mists of time. On the same block, and maybe next door, a Belgian family named Callewaert lived. I think that sometime in the 1970's a son of that family was murdered on Belle Isle, which he was visiting with his girlfriend or wife.

I can't find out anything about this memory which is linked with Beniteau Street - now maybe a curse place.

Anyone else have knowledge?

There was another story where some DJ from somewhere around Metro Detroit moved into this same apartment building and was thrown out the 3rd floor window a few years back. Pretty much all his personal possession disappeared and nobody saw nothin'!

Interestingly, if you go by the stretch between Mack and Warren, it has held up pretty good. Almost looks like Hamtramck. A street like that is not really the norm for the lower east side. However it sounds like its got its share of fucked up people.
As someone pointed out in another thread, it isn't really the vacant areas of Detroit that have the biggest crime problems, its the denser ones filled with people with their own problems.

SWAMP: The late Neal Shine, the Free Press writer/editor/publisher, grew up on Beniteau near Kercheval and wrote about it a lot in his Sunday columns in the 1980s and 90s. If you're really serious about researching the street, I would find myself a library with a good data base and do a subject search on the Free Press from those years.

SWMAP: I just Googled "neal shine and beniteau" and discovered he lived on Beniteau until he was 8 then moved to nearby Lycaste. I would still check out his columns.

That landlord shooting is a remarkably sad story.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by SWMAP

I can't find out anything about this memory which is linked with Beniteau Street - now maybe a curse place.

Anyone else have knowledge?

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My mother's parents, Belgians, built an alley house on Beniteau across the street from Foch Junior High. It too had a flat upstairs and the long front yard was used to raise vegetables. They sold it about 1952. Nothing bad ever happened to them while they lived there. My grandmother was very picky about renters. She preferred people with government jobs because they had a steady income. If they were good renters, she would lower the rent to keep them.

The name Callewaert sounded familiar so I went through some funeral cards and found one for Augusta, married to John, Callewaert 1966 and Gustaf Callewaert 1944. I wondered if those names rang a bell with you? Gustaf was the "beloved husband of Irma Popelier" which sounds like the Belgian French Benitieau you mention.

Thank you for looking for those Callewaerts. The name that rings a bell is Jerome Callewaert.
And, Carey, thanks for the information about Shine. I have one of his books somewhere. I can look that up.

As to Beniteau - so changed. so sad. my grandmother's house is gone. It was a big brick with wide porches upstairs and down. The windows in front were of leaded glass. What madness takes a house and neighborhood that most of the people in the world would envy and trashes it, destroys all its amenities and civilization? Now murderous.

some poster will admonish say that we ran away and should have stayed and things would be different. But my father was a G.I. and to get a G.I. loan he had to take out a mortgage on a new-built house [[aim to get men back to work after the war), so he bought a house in the east-side suburbs. My grandmother and great-grandmother died. The Beniteau house was sold.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by SWMAP

When I saw that the young landlord from California was shot and killed on Beniteau Street this week-end, I started to think that perhaps that street might be somehow cursed. Recall that Ayanna Jones died last year just a block away in a complicated pay-out from a thug shooting at Beniteau and Mack Ave.

When i was a child, my family lived in an upper flat in my grnadmother's house on Beniteau just a few houses north of Mack Ave. My grandmother and her mother lived downstairs and they were remmants of the French-canadians who had settled in an area once known as St. Clair Heights that was annexed into Detroit [[I don't know when).

I don't remember a lot about those years. I recall a candy store on Mack ave. where she would buy little white bags of the nonpareil candies that she loved. We went to Sunday mass at St. Bernard church and went to church festivals and dinners in the basement of the church. My grandmother canned jars of pears from back-yard trees and she said that the trees were a legacy of my french ancestors, who loved pears.

But something is lost in the mists of time. On the same block, and maybe next door, a Belgian family named Callewaert lived. I think that sometime in the 1970's a son of that family was murdered on Belle Isle, which he was visiting with his girlfriend or wife.

I can't find out anything about this memory which is linked with Beniteau Street - now maybe a curse place.

Anyone else have knowledge?

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This is? :

http://wrbw.membercenter.worldnow.co...oits-east-side