1915 Detroit Map Showing Present and Proposed Street System

[jtf1972]

http://img21.imageshack.us/img21/601...pshowingpr.jpg

I wish this had been implemented. Connecting Mt. Elliot to Grand River would have transformed the near-east side. The criss-crossing network of streets may have helped stem the northward flow of commerce. I would still love to see some form of this implemented. If there is to be any new streets built, now is probably a better time than 1915 when it comes to logistics.

This comes from the 1915 Preliminary Plan of Detroit by Edward Bennett. There are many more interesting and excellent proposals that I have yet to make jpegs out of.

I'd love to find out why these proposals failed too.

It's things like this that get me down at the library looking through microfiche.

[Detroitnerd]

There was a plan from about that time for an extra radial street. In the article I saw, it was envisaged as "Norris Avenue."

[Joseph C. Krause]

Awesome!

Where can we find a higher-res version of this?

[Retroit]

I take it that's Norris Ave. between Woodward and Gratiot, a southward extension of Mound Rd.?

[Retroit]

Never mind, I figured it out. Mt. Elliot used to be called Norris Ave. where it now branches off northward at Conant.

[EastsideAl]

That's because it used to be the road to the town of Norris [[aka North Detroit), that was where Mt. Elliott and Nevada is today.

[EastsideAl]

That street plan looks a lot like Washington DC, or like some attempt to continue some part of Detroit's original Woodward plan [[which was based on Washington, after all) north of downtown.

[Retroit]

I can guess why this proposal failed: it would have required a tremendous amount of demolition, and I don't think the DEGC was around back then.

[EastsideAl]

There were a number of street improvement projects that did take place just after WWI, including the widening of several major streets, the cobbling-together of the crosstown Vernor Highway, and the building of Outer Drive.

[MichMatters]

If that system would have been implemented, it would have been much more difficult for Detroit to have declined and abandoned the way it was. It's much harder to abandon and clean-out a north-south grid with long and/or large blocks than more organic, less economical types of street system layouts where there are regular nodes of activity [[village/type center-type nodes) that are hard to detach from one another.

[Retroit]

MichMatters, please explain further. I don't understand. How is a triangular grid advantageous to a rectangular grid?

[DetroitPlanner]

If I am not mistaken the Buildings of Detroit has some history on this proposal. There were going to be wide BLVDs connecting the campus of Arts and Letters [[now Cultural Center/Midtown) with the Train Station and Belle Isle.

Retroit, look up Walter Christaller.

[dtowncitylover]

Has anyone read the book* entitled "1990". It has a second name attached to it, but it's too long to remember. It was written after the 67 riots as a plan for Detroit for 1990. I don't believe it was commissioned by city government, but just an urban planner's dream.

It is both and terrible and good plan. Terrible because it called for a "Mt. Elliot Expressway" extending from a longer Fisher Freeway. If anything, Mound or Van Dyke would be a freeway, and I believe Mound in the suburbs was built as so so that it could be designed into a freeway.

But on the other hand, the author set up areas of neighborhood improvement for the downtown and and near downtown core. For example, he had a plan called "East City" located in the Forest Park neighborhood. It would include shops and businesses and high rise apartment/condo buildings.

Overall, quite interesting.

*It's not quite a book, but rather a thick pamphlet, but it ain't a pamphlet either.

[MikeM]

Seems like the desire for more connectivity on the east side has always been in the plans:

http://atdetroit.net/forum/messages/6790/43221.html

[jtf1972]

If I am not mistaken the Buildings of Detroit has some history on this proposal. There were going to be wide BLVDs connecting the campus of Arts and Letters [[now Cultural Center/Midtown) with the Train Station and Belle Isle.

Retroit, look up Walter Christaller.

That's what I've just been reading up on. Additionally, a riverfront drive was proposed on the river from the Water Works Park on past the Gross Pointes. The drive would have been offshore, creating a recreational water area between the drive and the shore!

This I believe would have had massive implications for the region, as I believe it would have prompted a greater development in Macomb County than Oakland. Combined with the additional diagonal boulevards it would have made for a much different area than we see today. I would love to see what this Detroit would have been like.

[Retroit]

Retroit, look up Walter Christaller.

Well, I read a few articles about him, but I don't understand how a pattern that provides better accessibility would prevent expansion and abandonment.

But thanks anyway. I learned Christaller was a Nazis planner and wanted to use a hexagonal pattern for the lands they conquered. Maybe this plan could have been implemented in Detroit if we lost the war.

[jtf1972]

I'm not familiar with Christaller, but common sense would dictate that improved accessibility such as the boulevards from MCS to the DIA & then to Belle Isle would be a feature that would make an artificial sort of boundary [[like a reef) that would help hold the inner city together more so than a series of avenues that stretch on until they ran into cheap farmland being bought by real estate developers.

Bennett had a great hand in the planning of modern-day Chicago. What he did seems to have worked there. The series of parks and "natural" convergence areas cannot be discounted as to what they would have meant for the city.

Wait until I post his Campus Martius proposal...

[Jason]

That's pretty cool. It's too bad that wasn't implemented. One of the things that I like about radial plans is that imo they naturally provide very logical spots for different parts of neighborhoods. I don't think the monotonous conditions grids make lend themselves very well for making good neighborhoods.

[jtf1972]

Ideal Treatmen for Campus Martius, Cadillac Square and the foot of Woodward Ave

http://img97.imageshack.us/img97/757...tmenforcam.jpg

[Gistok]

Putting major boulevards and thoroughfares thru neighborhoods does indeed have an impact on keeping a city vibrant. At least it did in mid 19th century Paris.

When Emperor Napoleon III ordered his prefect Baron Haussman to raze 40% of medieval Paris in the 1850s, it had several effects...

1) removed the narrow cramped mediaval streets that used to be barricaded [[such as in Les Miserables) during times of revolution [[a wide boulevard could allow for straight cannonfire)

2) it forced the the poor people of Paris to the outskirts of the city, where they still are today... thus only the well-to-do could afford to live within the old city. This is why when we hear of civil strife today in Paris, it's always in the suburbs.

3) it afforded the building of grand buildings, especially at the intersection of broad squares and circles.

Now mind you, this was socially unacceptable in the 20th and 21st century... but in the 19th century poor folks had no rights.

[DetroitPlanner]

Well, I read a few articles about him, but I don't understand how a pattern that provides better accessibility would prevent expansion and abandonment.

But thanks anyway. I learned Christaller was a Nazis planner and wanted to use a hexagonal pattern for the lands they conquered. Maybe this plan could have been implemented in Detroit if we lost the war.

The Hexegonal pattern is very similiar to Woodard's original pattern, and is based upon heiracrchal markets. For example people are willing to travel a longer distance for some commodities, but will not travel that far for a loaf of bread. If you are able to keep the markets in a convienent geography people will have no reason to expand their market area, and will reinforce the pattern.

This is all very much a model that changes over time, when you start to introduce category killers like Meijer's or even the opportunity to bank or shop by internet, you will skew the patterns. It should be no surprise that a german became a Nazi during the war, heck even the Pope was a nazi at one time. Either join em or end up like the Jews and Poles.

[DetroitPlanner]

Putting major boulevards and thoroughfares thru neighborhoods does indeed have an impact on keeping a city vibrant. At least it did in mid 19th century Paris.

When Emperor Napoleon III ordered his prefect Baron Haussman to raze 40% of medieval Paris in the 1850s, it had several effects...

1) removed the narrow cramped mediaval streets that used to be barricaded [[such as in Les Miserables) during times of revolution [[a wide boulevard could allow for straight cannonfire)

2) it forced the the poor people of Paris to the outskirts of the city, where they still are today... thus only the well-to-do could afford to live within the old city. This is why when we hear of civil strife today in Paris, it's always in the suburbs.

3) it afforded the building of grand buildings, especially at the intersection of broad squares and circles.

Now mind you, this was socially unacceptable in the 20th and 21st century... but in the 19th century poor folks had no rights.

Or it could result in the exact opposite as what happened in Detroit when the freeways were introduced.

[Danny]

Early Detroit neighborhoods from the 1860s to 1920s were designed to be an easy walkabout areas to create more predestrian life. Most the streets were small like alleys; one way streets full of tunnels of trees meant to horse drawn carriages. When the proposal of the electric cars came into use, most the neighborhood streets were expanded. The result was more buildings have to be either moved or being town down. More lawnscapes were shunken. Woodward Ave. used to a small two lane main street filled with small victorian mansions for a full line of lumber, merchantile and iron/stove barrons from Grand Circus Park to open farmlands some of the historical homes are still there from W. and E. Warren Ave. to New Center Area. Woodward Ave. from The Jefferson Ave. to McNichols St. was one of example for electric street car expansions. You see Woodward Ave. today as a 4 lane traffic area for cars and city and suburban busses. The electric street cars that used to run the Woodward Ave. in the middle of the street were torn down after 1955 when the DSR cars were sold to Mexico City, Mexico.

[Detroitnerd]

There were a number of street improvement projects that did take place just after WWI, including the widening of several major streets, the cobbling-together of the crosstown Vernor Highway, and the building of Outer Drive.

Don't forget the extension of Myrtle [[now MLK) all the way to Woodward.

[EastsideAl]

Don't forget the extension of Myrtle [[now MLK) all the way to Woodward.

Yes, but that didn't happen until the late '60s/early '70s. Using mostly old Stimson St.

If you go through the records, as I did when I was looking into the history of Vernor Highway. You'll see that there was a lot of city planning going on in the 1910s, in response to national trends, the city's growth, and the rise of the automobile. But a combination of entrenched interests [[like all the people holding real estate in the path of development), a lack of money, political problems, and WWI, really slowed the process of actually doing anything. By the early '20s automobile congestion had become a huge problem, and the city was growing through a patchwork of subdivisions faster than the roads could keep up. So most of the previous large-scale planning was thrown out the window and major streets were widened, one-way streets were created, and traffic was routed on new crosstown routes [[like Vernor) put together out of mostly pre-existing streets. Soon enough, planning for the freeways would begin.