underground tunnels

[shinhiryuu]

Im new here so let me start off by saying hi, i usally use the datacity foruns but you guys look like history buffs. I went by a house and took a personal tour in indian village and the lady there showed me an underground tunnel, that was sealed off, that she said lead to the detroit river. When i was looking at homes i saw a tunnel under the ones on grand blvd that lead from one house to another. So my question, not being a detroit native, is this common?

[jt1]

Im new here so let me start off by saying hi, i usally use the datacity foruns but you guys look like history buffs. I went by a house and took a personal tour in indian village and the lady there showed me an underground tunnel, that was sealed off, that she said lead to the detroit river. When i was looking at homes i saw a tunnel under the ones on grand blvd that lead from one house to another. So my question, not being a detroit native, is this common?

My guess [[and it is nothing more than a guess) is that a home in Indian Village with a tunnel may have been involved in boot legging during Prohibition

[gazhekwe]

Depending on when the house was built, tunnel could be related to underground railroad or bootlegging, or who knows? The Detroit River was one porous border. This is from an article about the Purple Gang:

"With the Detroit River less than a mile across in some places, and 28 miles long with thousands of coves and hiding places along the shore and among the islands, it was a smugglers dream," wrote Nolan. "Along with Lake St. Clair and the St. Clair River, these waterways carried 75 percent of the liquor supplied to the United States during Prohibition."
Cargo was towed beneath boats, old underground tunnels were built, sunken houseboats hid underwater cable delivery systems, and even a pipeline was built. Between Peche Island and the foot of Alter Road, an electronically controlled cable hauled metal cylinders filled with up to 50 gallons of booze. A pipeline was constructed between a distillery in Windsor and a Detroit bottler.

http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/g.../purple/1.html

[shinhiryuu]

From my understanding on the houses on grand, they were used for families to share servants, is this true?

[DetroitPlanner]

From my understanding on the houses on grand, they were used for families to share servants, is this true?

If families were cheap enough to share servants, why on earth would they outlay an expensive tunnel system? If they were that cheap I doubt they would even have servants!

[jt1]

If families were cheap enough to share servants, why on earth would they outlay an expensive tunnel system? If they were that cheap I doubt they would even have servants!

They had their servants dig the tunnels.

[shinhiryuu]

Ahahahaha, so true. Hummm, would be interesting to pick apart someone's brain that lived in those houses in that era. Wouldnt it be cool to interview Ford, not about cars, but about places he lived? Indian village, why he moved from his mansion on jefferson, did he feel he betrayed detroit by moving to grosse pointe, just stuff you know?

[p69rrh51]

The tunnels are all over town. Mostly prohibition era. At one time there was a tunnel between the Fisher mansions in Palmer Woods. My favorite is the tunnel on Harbor Hill in Grosse Pointe. Originally John Dodge's property the tunnel blew up after filling up with methane gas in the 1970's. I have a feeling this has been discussed before on here.

[p69rrh51]

Ahahahaha, so true. Hummm, would be interesting to pick apart someone's brain that lived in those houses in that era. Wouldnt it be cool to interview Ford, not about cars, but about places he lived? Indian village, why he moved from his mansion on jefferson, did he feel he betrayed detroit by moving to grosse pointe, just stuff you know?

Edsel and the other home owners on Jefferson were being forced out due the commercialization of Jeff. His father owned Gaukler Pointe but had been basically told never to move to GP. Edsel purchased the land and built his estate. Also all of his friends were living in GP.

[shinhiryuu]

Edsel and the other home owners on Jefferson were being forced out due the commercialization of Jeff. His father owned Gaukler Pointe but had been basically told never to move to GP. Edsel purchased the land and built his estate. Also all of his friends were living in GP.

Ohhhh good infooo! Thanks! I went to the lmfao concert last night and they were talking about their history here and gordey berry was their grandpa, pretty cool

[shinhiryuu]

Do you know why ford was told not to move there?

[p69rrh51]

Do you know why ford was told not to move there?

He managed to piss off the Grosse Pointers and had been black balled from the Detroit Boat Club so he went to Dearborn. There are a couple books that go in depth into the point in time.

[shinhiryuu]

He managed to piss off the Grosse Pointers and had been black balled from the Detroit Boat Club so he went to Dearborn. There are a couple books that go in depth into the point in time.

Can you recommend a good one?

[SWMAP]

I went to a smallish Catholic school on the east side and there was a tunnel from the church to the powerhouse. Then I taught at a school on the west side. Same thing. I think people were used to tunneling. It seemed efficient.

[p69rrh51]

Can you recommend a good one?

I cannot remember the titles but there are a few decent books on amazon including a couple on his anti semitism should make for interesting reading for a couple days. In general he was a total jackass!

[DetroitPlanner]

He managed to piss off the Grosse Pointers and had been black balled from the Detroit Boat Club so he went to Dearborn. There are a couple books that go in depth into the point in time.

You sure its got nothing to do with the size of his estate in Dearborn at the time? It was bigger than any of the Grosse Pointes and closer to his boyhood home, Greenfield Village, and Rouge factories.

[SWMAP]

I have been around the Ford story for a long time and I never heard that Henry I was "black-balled" from Grosse Pointe. He appeared to consider himself a west-sider. He was even buried in a little church-yard on the west side that was near the property that had been his family farm.

What would have been the motivation for the Grosse Pointers to 'black-ball' him? Would the Fishers have thought themselves better? The Dodges?

[EastsideAl]

I grew up in Indian Village and the Indian Village area, and I've had family in the area dating back to the 1800s. I hate to say it, but I think someone was "greening" you [[as we used to say) about a tunnel from an IV house to the river. From any house in the Village a tunnel like that would have required tunneling under at least one major roadway [[Jefferson) and a couple of hundred yards of someone else's property.

A lot of houses in Indian Village though, like many large houses built before the advent of widespread electric refrigeration and supermarkets, have deep cold storage areas that are built underground. In pre-Depression days most homes of even the upper middle class had servants and cooks [[my great-grandmother was one of them), and food was typically delivered in large amounts by wagon or truck from downtown. That food had to go into a cool, dark place where it would keep. The best way for such a space to be built, from the standpoint of both access and cooling efficiency, was as a long narrow corridor underground.

The Indian Village house I spent my teenage years in had one of these that went out under the porch and under part of the front yard. We used to call it a "tunnel," but it was really just a cellar, and if you went far enough back into the darkness it did come to an end about 40-50 feet in.

Now, this is not to say that there weren't tunnels between houses, etc. some places in Detroit and the Detroit area. Or that some tunnels weren't used for the movement of illegal alcohol. And it's certainly not to say that illegal liquor wasn't stored in many of these cold storage cellar spaces, because it absolutely was. And, of course, a number of places had extra underground storage areas built, better-concealed ones, to hide the then-illegal booze.

With the repeal of Prohibition though, the rise of refrigerators and "shelf-stable" foods, the end of the common employment of servants and the coming of supermarkets, most of these storage areas fell into disuse. And now we are so far removed from the realities of those times that most folks today can't think of any other reason for the existence of long, narrow, dark underground spaces than "secret tunnels." And, anyway, stories of "secret tunnels" certainly seem a lot more alluring than "root cellars." But, when investigated, most of the romantic and lurid tales of "tunnels" around here turn out to be, in reality, old cold storage cellars.

[jt1]

What would have been the motivation for the Grosse Pointers to 'black-ball' him?

Especially given their mutual dislike of the Jewish.

[p69rrh51]

Especially given their mutual dislike of the Jewish.

What else he was new money and an asshole they did not like either!