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I think I discovered this site in the early 2000's. It led me to the engineers who designed the plan for demolishing the J.L. Hudson Company, who sold me a couple of mementos of the building where my...

I remember going from Clinton Township around 1961 with my Cub Scout pack to the Harper YMCA for swimming and a meal in a room that was elaborately decorated as a log cabin. I wonder if that still...

There are now 2 speed-camera bills in the Michigan legislature. The work-zone bill has passed the state House, with support from both parties. HB 4132 was the work of the construction unions, and...

There are any number of systems of place names, all with different standards. Mapmakers do anything they want to make their maps useful in guiding people to named places. Sadly, Disco is no longer...

These are all good comments. I had not seen the table of granters before. I suspect that there was some state spending for the Q Line hidden in the cost of paving on Woodward and reconstructing the...

I had wondered where MTM's Detroit PCC had got to, since it wasn't on the Selfridge spur. Now I know. Some background from my fuzzy memory:

Some [[all?) of Detroit's PCC cars were sold to Mexico...

There was a Lincoln dealership on Jefferson, probably close to downtown. I don't know if it survived long enough to add Mercury. Its facade was replicated by the Lincoln Motor Car Foundation on a...

I got a laugh out of Ilitch's man saying he would "void" the "citations." They were void to begin with. I hope nobody paid money to Olympia.

I love seeing the name Michigan Central applied to this project. Almost as much as I love seeing MC Depot revived as its centerpiece. This is a great old railroad name forgotten by all but...

I recall a William F. Buckley, Jr. review of Hair, in which he commented on the performance by "Mr. Loaf." Didn't know he was in the Detroit performance.

I saw most of the downtown Grands Prix [[note high-toned French spelling!) but only went to one practice session on Belle Isle. The downtown races were really dramatic. I remember the scenes...

The "Aero Gardens" image is fascinating. I had not seen it before. It is a tangible artifact of the plan to make the Grand Trunk Western a Detroit equivalent of the Burlington "triple-track...

The governor recently signed HBs 4540 and 4541, which add provisions to the state Vehicle Code to control vehicle and bicycle traffic around the Q Line. The law took effect immediately Here's...

When I saw plans for the access routes to the parking lots, I was appalled at how much of the north side of downtown has been given over to parking for the three stadia. Even the street layout is...

The end of Delray was probably inevitable.

If anyone's keeping tabs on towers outside Detroit, I'm told the one along the MCRR in downtown Kalamazoo is surplus to MDOT's high-speed Amtrak line. ...

This is gorgeous. The builder gets triple points if he somehow replicated the DC-powered controls that required the operator to anticipate the inertia in the car to bring it to a stop at exactly the...

The Whaling Wall.

Here's some sources for people who want to know more about the end of WWII.

The history of the Manhattan Project is summarized in "Enola Gay" by Gordon Thomas and Max Morgan Witts. This is very...

They've already got Rivethead, Middlesex, and Once in a Great City, so there's not much to add.

A good companion to Once in a Great City is the recent book by the woman whose mother was a...

This article answers a question I've wondered about: reporters in the mainstream media do indeed scout Detroit Yes for stories.

This is a great forum for hashing over ideas about Detroit, and...

I don't mind losing the Cobo name, but I haven't the faintest hope of remembering TFC, or FCT, or THC or -- what was that again?

I've read the bill a couple times now, and the Senate Fiscal Agency analysis, and much of the press coverage, and I have these tentative observations:

There is no protection against redlining of...

This episode pisses me off mightily, although it doesn't specifically affect Detroit. It doesn't look like the victims are going to be made whole for the costs they suffered.

This scandal taught...

I remember the new word a friend created when I brought Altes home to a college apartment and he exclaimed, "Altes? That's subGoebel!"

I also remember it as tasteless, but cheap. This would have...

There is a lot of history to planning efforts in southeast Michigan, with not a lot to show for it.

I know that the first use of a computerized traffic model was for metropolitan Detroit, in the...