A reflection on the importance and historical significance of street names - from a report written by Silas Farmer in 1882 to the Detroit Common Council [source]:
"With a genealogy dating from the dawning of the sixteenth century, we would do well to give special heed to our historic past, and strive to preserve its memories in our street names as well as in our story. Street names approach immortality. Governments change, political parties die, officials and constituents pass into oblivion, buildings are burned, pavements uprooted, but well-chosen street names usually live as long as a city stands. A street name is more valuable and a more perpetual memorial than a monument of bronze or granite. They may be destroyed or defaced, but street names live though a city is burned. Everything tends to perpetuate and preserve them - land titles, business notices, social facts, city records, and in fact almost all the details of municipal government unite to fasten them in the memory and hand them down to the future. There are no other names in connection with the life of a city that are so frequently used as the names of its streets; and no other names are so frequently thought of and talked of by both residents and strangers. We are compelled to know and memorize them, and everything combines to repeat and reiterate them. As an instrumentality for preserving the remembrance of individuals and facts, they have no equal."