High Street - Detroit

[BillyBBrew]

Where was High Street located in Detroit? I've noticed many prominent socially recognized people lived there around the turn of the century and kept forgetting to ask where it was.

Thanks!

[jtf1972]

High Street was one block north of Montcalm, right where the I-75 service road is. It ran East from Woodward to Gratiot.

[BillyBBrew]

Thank you! I figured it had been eradicated by a freeway.

[jtf1972]

So much has been...

[BillyBBrew]

So the Northbound service drive would have been Vernor? It makes sense that High Street was part of Brush Park.

[detroitbob]

I believe High Street was what is now the South side Fisher Service Drive...the name changer to Vernor prior to the xway. St. John's Episcopal and Chapel was originally addressed on High St.

[BillyBBrew]

The street rename makes sense. I had always been told the SB Service Drive was Vernor. Thanks Bob

[Fury13]

And the northbound Fisher Freeway service drive, west of Woodward, was Duffield.

[jtf1972]

I'll have to check on the exact location of Vernor when I get home [[and after some sleep, as I'm at the second job tonight!)

Here is an 1873 map with great resolution that you can zoom in on. I find old maps fascinating...

http://www.davidrumsey.com/luna/serv...troit,-1873--C

Take a close look at 9th St & Michigan Ave., aka "The Corner"

[EastsideAl]

High Street was renamed as Vernor sometime in the early 20th century. Vernor Highway was an amalgamation of various pre-exisiting streets to make a single cross-town highway.

In so far as I know, those streets were, from east to west, Waterloo, German, High, Dix, and Ferndale. The piece of W. Vernor that goes past Michigan Central and through the infamous tunnel under the tracks was built to link the High St. and Dix Rd. portions.

The formerly High St. portion of Vernor was destroyed to build the Fisher Fwy. [[I-75) in the late '60s. For many years there was still a couple of rows of old Vernor/High St. victorian houses left standing on the south service drive of the freeway, including famous Detroit jazz venue the Rapa House.

[gnome]

It figures that High Street would be not too far afield from Plum Street .

thanx for the link jtf, that David Ramsey site is fantastic, and EastsideAl, great info ... I love this site, there are so many experts here.

[EastsideAl]

An interesting thing about that 1873 map is that it fills in a couple of more pieces of the Vernor Hwy. puzzle, namely George St. and Oak St. extending from High St. west of Woodward. These streets had been renamed W. High St. by the time of the 1897 map I have access to.

I also forgot to say above that German St. on the east side, that formed the part of Vernor that runs from Gratiot to just short of Mt. Elliott, was later also called Cleveland St.

[casscorridor]

I like the 1893 map better. its a better representation of the extent of the "old detroit" and you can see how much the city grew in only 20 years, and thats before the huge boom in the early 20th century. The name "North End" [[neighborhood directly north of New Center) makes sense now, because it actually was at the north end of the city.

Also, I can not find Vernor Ave on this map and the Michigan Central Station does not exist yet.

Another interesting thing is how the name "9th St" changes to "Trumbull St." I'm sure there is a lot of other examples of street names changing.

But probabaly the saddest part of looking at these old maps is that there are no freeways to be found. Too bad that still isn't true. The freeways destroyed the urban fabric of our city. It is really interesting to see what streets existed where the freeways are now. Such as Hastings St which is now I-75. Could these streets not one day be rebuilt and the freeways removed?

[mwilbert]

If people had a lot more foresight than they do, then maybe fewer freeways would have been built--however now people have seen the results of building lots of freeways through cities, and they still build them, so I doubt it. Some people just like freeways. On the other hand, if the city fathers had seen the results on Detroit in particular, they might have been a bit less enthusiastic.

There is no reason to build new streets in Detroit--we need fewer than half the streets we have now.

[EastsideAl]

A little bit more on High St.'s conversion to Vernor Highway. The building of what was then called the "Dix-High-Waterloo" highway, by joining these streets together [[along with Cleveland St. and some other smaller streets) and widening them, had been planned since 1919 or so and was approved by voters in 1925. This was the same vote that approved the widening of Woodward, Gratiot, and Michigan that created so much architectural disruption and gave those streets the very wide dimensions we see now. All of this was to handle what was expected to be an enormous increase in automobile traffic as the city's population exploded and many more people bought cars and commuted to work in them. Sort of the original attempt at freeway building.

At some point after the planning was done the entire Dix-High-Waterloo project was rennamed Vernor Highway. Construction seems to have been complete or nearly complete by 1928, when the street is shown in the Polk's City Directory under its new name [[although the old names still appear in several other listings in the book).

It seems that for some reason the east side [[Waterloo) section was not widened very much, because at some point this portion of Vernor was made one way eastbound and Charlevoix was made one way westbound to handle the traffic load. Although my father remembers both being two way streets during his childhood in the 1930s. Of course, as was posted above, the High St. portion was torn out for the Fisher [[I-75) in the '60s, and about 20 years later the expansion of the Chrysler Jefferson Ave. plant cut off Vernor and Charlevoix between St. Jean and Connor. That left Vernor existing in the 3 discontinuous sections we have today.

I would love some filling in of this history by those who may know more.

[kathy2trips]

That left Vernor existing in the 3 discontinuous sections we have today.

That can be death to a street, not to mention a neighborhood and /or business district.

[meadowbrook]

I'm casually looking for the location of an old saloon that was on the corner of High and Third Street from the 1880s-1910s; it appears to be on the NW corner, according to the Detroit renumbering guide, but I haven't looked at Sanborn maps or anything. I guess based on what others have said, that would now currently be square in the middle of the freeway. I was hoping the north side of Fisher Fwy was High so the bar would have been close to the Antique mall.

Was Duffield School located near?

[EastsideAl]

Was Duffield School located near?

No. Duffield School was on Macomb between Chene and Joseph Campau. The current Duffield school building [[1922) sits on the stub that remains of Macomb east of Chene and houses the Bunche Preparatory Academy.

[xdet]

My grandparents lived on High Street while grandpa was Charles Gauss's chauffeur, here's the 1920 Census. So I wonder where this address would be today...or was that all torn down?

The census went around Cass, it would seem. Here's a list of people on High Street in that area, my grandparents, the Rentz's.

Grandpa as Chauffeur, photo taken on High Street-

[Hermod]

This was the same vote that approved the widening of Woodward, Gratiot, and Michigan that created so much architectural disruption and gave those streets the very wide dimensions we see now.

One reason those streets are so wide was that each had to accommodate double track streetcar/interurban tracks and safety islands in addition to the automobile travel lanes.

[xdet]

High Street area, with notes-


The photo-


Another from the back of 135 High Street, later changed the address to 469 [[I think it was) but same location.

[CassTechGrad]

High Street from a 1901 Detroit map.

[stasu1213]

I'm glad to see the there's a small strip of Hastings left. Had East and West Vermor ever connected or came close to one another

[Hamtragedy]

High Street from a 1901 Detroit map.

Hey CT, just below your indicator was Tiger Stadium in its earliest incarnation. Michigan, Trumbull and Cherry street. Not sure which way the diamond was facing in the early days, but I know it was switched so that the first base line ran along Michigan, as most of us know it....including my Grandfather in the 20s, who used to wait at the fence on Cherry street [[left field) to chase, what was at that time was a rarity, any ball that was hit over the fence.

[CassTechGrad]

Based on the information in the picture below, was the diamond facing the same direction at both Bennett Park and Navin Field? I’m confused.