Hastings Street Before I75

[Detroit Stylin]

Never saw Detroit like this before. I never realized Hastings St was that dense....


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[EastsideAl]

The caption may say something about Hastings and Macomb, but that is a picture of Jefferson. You can see the DuMouchelle antiques auction building in the foreground [[with the same sign!) and Christ Church in the background.

Hastings was dense with businesses, but it was more low rise. Like this:

[Detroit Stylin]

The caption may say something about Hastings and Macomb, but that is a picture of Jefferson. You can see the DuMouchelle antiques auction building in the foreground [[with the same sign!) and Christ Church in the background.

Hastings was dense with businesses, but it was more low rise. Like this:

Ok now that makes sense......

[Cincinnati_Kid]

The caption may say something about Hastings and Macomb, but that is a picture of Jefferson. You can see the DuMouchelle antiques auction building in the foreground [[with the same sign!) and Christ Church in the background.

Hastings was dense with businesses, but it was more low rise. Like this:

Great pic, EastsideAl. Wish I could see more like this of Black Bottom. Remember my Dad talked about it all time.

[FormerDetroiter]

Knox Furniture was at 3667 Hastings.

[313WX]

Detroit had density levels just slightly below Philadelphia in its prime.

You just wouldn't be able to tell that now because most of Detroit's neighborhoods that did have 20,000-30,000 density levels were either bulldozed over or have reverted back to nature.

[Lowell]

Picture of Hasting Street from today aka 'Hastings Street after I75'. Full circle. All that's missing are the people.

[Detroit Stylin]

Wow smmfh. What were they thinking...

[canuck]

We ned to see more pictures and evidence of Black Bottom and Paradise Alley neighborhoods of Detroit. The presence of black owned and supported businesses, the residential components, and the alliances between ethnic and social groups have to be preserved and enhanced for future reference. Collective memory is important. We need to tell our kids that in the past, our forebears overcame difficulties through diligent steps toward redress.
This exercise is more important in the Native and AfroAmerican communities than most because many people would rather forget or ignore their history of iniquity.

[EastsideAl]

Hastings St., before and after



From one of David Lee Poremba's Arcadia books.

[animatedmartian]

What's weird about this area is not only did the freeway cut through, but all the housing was demolished and replaced with all those garden apartments and townhomes. The churches are really only the reference points that survived the entire time. Seems like such a massive amount of redevelopment that hardly even paid off.

[Honky Tonk]

There's a very small section of Hastings Street, complete with street sign, on the West I-75 service drive, near West Grand Blvd.

[Hermod]

Wow smmfh. What were they thinking...

Very, very liberal and progressive social engineering. Clear the slums and build public housing for the slum dwellers. Even dedicated by Mrs FDR. Kind of like the thinking that the savages that make DDOT buses hell will be so awed by the grandeur of the magic streetcar that they will become model citizens.

[SyGolden48236]

Very, very liberal and progressive social engineering. Clear the slums and build public housing for the slum dwellers. Even dedicated by Mrs FDR. Kind of like the thinking that the savages that make DDOT buses hell will be so awed by the grandeur of the magic streetcar that they will become model citizens.

But Hermod, the $140 million dollar M1 Hipster Hauler will completely transform the city overnight and all of the crime will be a thing of the past. Drink the Kool Aid, trust in the choo choo.

[canuck]

Very, very liberal and progressive social engineering. Clear the slums and build public housing for the slum dwellers. Even dedicated by Mrs FDR. Kind of like the thinking that the savages that make DDOT buses hell will be so awed by the grandeur of the magic streetcar that they will become model citizens.

Yep. Subtle.

'Fraid a one thang though. What if we build that great big barn at Kercheval and all them zoo animals 'cide to come home to roost?

Sorta defeats the purpose don't it?

[Honky Tonk]

The caption may say something about Hastings and Macomb, but that is a picture of Jefferson. You can see the DuMouchelle antiques auction building in the foreground [[with the same sign!) and Christ Church in the background.

Hastings was dense with businesses, but it was more low rise. Like this:

I'm getting a brim like those guys have!

[Hermod]

I'm getting a brim like those guys have!

The one on the left has really got "pegged" pants.

[Honky Tonk]

The one on the left has really got "pegged" pants.

I don't remember the term "pegged". I guess today is teach Honky Tonk day. I'm so damn sorry I never got to experience Hastings Street. I hear there was some great Jazz and night life back in the day.

[Detroitnerd]

Very, very liberal and progressive social engineering. Clear the slums and build public housing for the slum dwellers. Even dedicated by Mrs FDR. Kind of like the thinking that the savages that make DDOT buses hell will be so awed by the grandeur of the magic streetcar that they will become model citizens.

The public housing dedicated by Mrs. Roosevelt was not at the same time as the dramatic slum clearance policies that created Lafayette Park and I-75 and I-375.

[SWMAP]

My childhood home was in the Jefferson-Chalmers neighborhood. Shopping was a pleasure on the beautiful, dense Art-Deco retail strip on Jefferson. Now almost all gone, destroyed, torn down and replaced with cheap, bland boxes. So life just goes on and things change.

The music critic Susan Whitall wrote this description of Hastings St. in her biography of Little Willie John:

"All the bad people lived on the east side," Berry Gordie once remarked. Good and bad lived on adjacent corners, at least. Aretha Franklin's father's church, The New Bethel baptist Church, was in a converted bowling alley on Hastings, just steps away from the hustlers and the ladies of the evening. Singer Wilson Pickett's father's house backed up on the Hastings, and Pickett remembers looking out of his father's back yard onto the strip, shivering at the thought of it decades later. "It was a dangerous place," Pickett said. ... There were nightclubs with top-notch music on every block of Hastings, but also women in every doorway - prostitutes plying their trade. It was that aspect of the boulevard of sin, which led city fathers to bulldoze it in the name of urban renewal in the late 1950's, carving a concrete canyon for the interstate highway I-75 out of the former pleasure zone."

[Hermod]

The public housing dedicated by Mrs. Roosevelt was not at the same time as the dramatic slum clearance policies that created Lafayette Park and I-75 and I-375.

It was the same thing. Build "nice" public housing, move the poor out of the rat-infested slum, then demolish the slum. The unintended consequences were that the public housing rapidly became a new slum.

[Hermod]

I don't remember the term "pegged". I guess today is teach Honky Tonk day. I'm so damn sorry I never got to experience Hastings Street. I hear there was some great Jazz and night life back in the day.

It was the "sagging pants" of the day. When a new suit or pair of slacks was purchased, a visit to the local sewing shop would taper the leg and constrict the cuff until it could barely be pulled on over the bare foot. It became popular about the same time as the over sized "zoot suit" sport coat and the long key chain on the belt to spin like a propeller. The pegged pants kept in style after the zoot suit had passed from the scene.

[Hermod]

Like these pictures:
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[Lowell]

It was the same thing. Build "nice" public housing, move the poor out of the rat-infested slum, then demolish the slum. The unintended consequences were that the public housing rapidly became a new slum.

Housing was only a small part of the problem. So new housing was not a solution in and of itself. Because other issues were not similarly improved - job opportunities, better schools, public transportation and public safety - the projects were doomed to failure. In fact all those other issues got worse.

And behind that was the elephant in the room - racism - that de facto locked most of the tenants out of living in other parts of the metro, getting bank loans, and on and on. Some make the argument that those were intended consequences.

[swingline]

But Hermod, the $140 million dollar M1 Hipster Hauler will completely transform the city overnight and all of the crime will be a thing of the past. Drink the Kool Aid, trust in the choo choo.

A nice attempt at snark. Too bad nobody is actually making the ridiculous claims you have made up. Keep up the trolling though.