Black Bottom

[Detroit Stylin]

Good morning forumers.

I have a question. I'd like to embark on a social documentary project that entails potentially finding and photographing the remaining structures that once made up the Historic Black Bottom neighborhood of Detroit. Not Paradise Valley, we all know what sits on top of that now.

My question is, would anyone happen to know the boundaries of that area?

Thanks in advance.

[animatedmartian]

For the most part, it was pretty much directly south of Paradise Valley and thus met a similar fate. John R or Brush street was the western edge, Vernors or what is now Fisher Freeway was the northern edge, Gratiot and/or the northern half of Lafayette Park made the southern and eastern part of the neighborhood. There's pretty much zero historical buildings in that area or at least anything significant to the Black Bottom neighborhood. Ford Field [[specifically St. Antoine street) is where the main business district for the neighborhood would have been.

[Detroit Stylin]

So in effect...there is nothing left...

[Dexlin]

Yeah, there really isn't much left. All that's left in these specific boundaries are Ford Field, Brewery Park [[north of Gratiot/south of the I-75 spur), and then the huge interchange. You still have some historic buildings in the very southern corner of the triangle like the Beacon Street Detroit Edison Plant built in 1926, and a few other buildings around Gratiot and Brush, but nothing really Black Bottom specific.

That said, while not Black Bottom proper, the historic black neighborhood actually extended all the way down to the river as other ethnic groups moved out. Specifically, the area south of Gratiot between Randolph and St. Antoine to the river was the 3rd Ward, which include a mix of people. It's Greektown and Bricktown, today, but it was a mix of different people, and a revolving door and landing spot. It's where maternal grandfather's family originally settled when they moved up from Alabama in the 20's.

[EastsideAl]

Second Baptist at Monroe and Beaubien is really the major remaining piece of history from those days. And, I guess, the old Miller High School building off of Chene near Vernor. But there's really almost nothing left now. What little is left of the housing north of Vernor to Gratiot, east of Mt. Elliott, although it's really a different neighborhood, is almost all that remains of housing stock roughly similar to what was in Black Bottom.

[Hermod]

In 1961 when I was working downtown, the area from Randolph to St Antoine was already largely cleared by urban renewal.

[Pam]

Have you taken the Hastings Street tour?

http://www.paradisevalleyblues.com/t...tings0010.html

[Lowell]

I believe the 606 Horseshoe Lounge was the last remnant of Paradise Valley adjacent to Black Bottom. It was demolished as part of conversion of the Hudson's Warehouse as part of the Ford Field project.



http://www.detroityes.com/downtown/28horseshoe.php

[Detroitnerd]

It can get a little confusing. I've heard various parts of the near east side referred to as Black Bottom. But the tale goes that the near east side was called Black Bottom before any blacks lived there. It allegedly refers to the rich black soil of the east side.

Paradise Valley was the downtown area with fancy entertainment and classy clubs for Detroit's blacks. Hastings Street was the near east side neighborhood that stretched all the way uptown. It looked like 1870 along that street. If it had been preserved, it might look like the French Quarter today.

Of course, at the time, city planners had a "don't look back" attitude about the past. Clear it for freeway removal. Get rid of "blight."

[Neilr]

From the Waldheim book, Lafayette Park Detroit, a partial map of Black Bottom c. 1950. The Dequindre Cut RR line is on the right.

[Gpwrangler]

Is this related to the "black bottom cuts" place just off Mack?

[Danny]

No thanks to all white Detroit City Council and the Cobo Administration. Black Bottom along with Paradise Valley was totally destroyed. That cause black folks middle or poor to relocate themselves to other neighborhoods in Detroit east and west sides all the way to the suburbs. They have awaken the sleeping dragon.

[65memories]

According to Ken Coleman, author of the highly informative Million Dollars Worth of Nerve: Twenty-one People Who Helped to Power Black Bottom, Paradise Valley and Detroit's Lower East Side:
"Black Bottom, which refers to the neighborhood's black fertile soil, was populated by late nineteenth century farmers who were Irish, German and Romanian immigrants along with Russian and Polish Jews. The boundaries were generally defined by Gratiot Avenue to the north and Detroit River to the south; Brush Street and Grand Trunk Railroad to the west and east.
By the 1920's, however, Black Bottom was made up largely of low-income and working class African Americans. Detroit's black population exploded from 5,741 in 1910 to 120,066 in 1930, as thousands of Southern blacks migrated to the North in hopes of securing employment."

[DetroitBoy]

It can get a little confusing. I've heard various parts of the near east side referred to as Black Bottom. But the tale goes that the near east side was called Black Bottom before any blacks lived there. It allegedly refers to the rich black soil of the east side.

Paradise Valley was the downtown area with fancy entertainment and classy clubs for Detroit's blacks. Hastings Street was the near east side neighborhood that stretched all the way uptown. It looked like 1870 along that street. If it had been preserved, it might look like the French Quarter today.

Of course, at the time, city planners had a "don't look back" attitude about the past. Clear it for freeway removal. Get rid of "blight."

These two videos talk more about it and the urban renewal project to build Lafayette Park. it mentions some of the clubs there including the one above in the previous post.

http://youtu.be/0XWSWcDCCLM

http://youtu.be/2YBa6duxxhk

[Detroit Stylin]

Ill check those out. I guess I'm a little late on wanting to document that area, but I actually thought BB stretched up to the GM plant near the boulevard on whats left of Hastings....

[EastsideAl]

Roughly, Black Bottom was south of Gratiot, and Paradise Valley was north of Gratiot. The western, original, part of Black Bottom, from Hastings [[Chrysler Fwy.) to the Dequindre railroad cut [[which contained some of Detroit's oldest remaining houses), was almost entirely destroyed for "urban renewal" in the early '50s, After sitting empty for several years, it was eventually replaced by Lafayette Park.

The remainder of that neighborhood east from the cut to Elmwood Cemetery, which had been predominantly African-American for many years, was torn down within my memory in stages throughout the '60s and was replaced with the various phases of Elmwood Park.

The original black neighborhood in Detroit though was a little closer to downtown than what we now think of as Black Bottom. Around Beaubien, Lafayette, and Monroe. Second Baptist is still there today [[the oldest African-American congregation in the Midwest, founded in 1836). The nasty 1863 race riot happened here as a white mob rampaged down Beaubien from the jail to Lafayette, burning buildings and assaulting people along the way.

Although the huge wave of poor black immigrants from the south in the 1910s & 20s poured into the Black Bottom area, this older and more middle-class community near downtown would mostly move to the other side of Gratiot, into the lower reaches of what would become Paradise Valley. For many decades there was a core of black community institutions [[including "colored" YMCA and YWCA branches) in that area along Adams, Elizabeth, Columbia, etc. from Brush to Hastings [[pretty much all of that land is now under the stadiums). Soon more black people began moving up Hastings into what came to be called Paradise Valley, and over into what we now call Brush Park [[which would mostly have been considered part of Paradise Valley in those years). Except for what's left of the Brush Park area itself, the rest of that neighborhood has long since been obliterated as well.

[Dexlin]

Right, the original [[early-to-mid 1800's) black settlement was in the 3rd Ward in what is today Greektown/Bricktown, and basically everything east of St. Antoine and north of Gratiot was an expansion of the neighborhood that came during the Great Migration. Paradise Valley was basically the end phase of the ethnic neighborhood, even though because of its popularity it is in hindsight considered the "center" of the neighborhood.

[Detroit Stylin]

Right, the original [[early-to-mid 1800's) black settlement was in the 3rd Ward in what is today Greektown/Bricktown, and basically everything east of St. Antoine and north of Gratiot was an expansion of the neighborhood that came during the Great Migration. Paradise Valley was basically the end phase of the ethnic neighborhood, even though because of its popularity it is in hindsight considered the "center" of the neighborhood.

So the structures in Bricktown along congress and larned are probably all that remains of what was once Black Bottom now

[Neilr]

If you are interested in the history of Black Bottom, Detroit the Black Bottom Community, [[Arcadia Publishing Co., 2009) is a profusely illustrated, very readable history of that time and place in Detroit's history.

http://www.amazon.com/Detroit-Bottom...ttom+community

[65memories]

As is Coleman's book, recently published, mentioned earlier in this thread.

[milt721]

This is the Black Bottom I know. [[Kidding, kidding)

https://goo.gl/maps/Y8YO8