Park Blvd Canyon

[Gistok]

I was just comparing some of my pictures of the harlevoix with the Shorpy picture, and I noticed they removed those cornices. Why would they have ever done such a thing!

The removal of cornices in Detroit was due to the fact that some 82 year old woman [[in the wrong place at the wrong time) was whacked on the head by a chunk of cornice from some building in the city in the 1950s and died. So the Detroit Common Council passed an ordinance for buildings to either secure the cornices or remove them. Guess what most building owners preferred?

That was during the "look at all the trouble we went thru so you won't have to look at all that old stuff" 1950s... when the tops of the Broderick Tower, David Whitney Building, and Michigan Mutual Building also got a "lobotomy"... and the first few floors of the United Artists and Lafayette Building also got "modernized". And of course some buildings such as the Boulevard Building [[NE corner of Woodward/Grand Blvd.) got a complete facade-ectomy.

[kathy2trips]

The removal of cornices in Detroit was ... So the Detroit Common Council passed an ordinance for buildings to either secure the cornices or remove them. Guess what most building owners preferred?

That was during the "look at all the trouble we went thru so you won't have to look at all that old stuff" 1950s...a complete facade-ectomy.

Gistok: You're amazing. Thanks for the choice information...and for "facade-ectomy".

[Gistok]

Gistok: You're amazing. Thanks for the choice information...and for "facade-ectomy".

LOL.... you're most welcome....

I've been wondering....

...with a hail of bricks coming down on the Clifford side of the United Artists Building in the 1980s [[wrecking a few cars parked there in the process, and forcing the closure of that stretch of Clifford for quite some time).... and with the stuff that has fallen off of the Broderick Tower.... the sudden collapse of the building next door to it... the bricks falling off the Wurlitzer Building.... and the "dropsy" of other masonry in the city....

... the biggest mystery is that no one has gotten killed or injured in recent years.