Detroit's social engineering project: The Cass Corridor

[dookie joe]

Having grown up in the Cass Corridor, I often heard the legend that Detroit's leaders had set up that neighborhood to be a slum, and that city leaders didn't care about the crime there because the area was meant to be the red light district.

When I was a kid I believed the legend, but as I got older I dismissed it as "just street talk." But when I recently researched the matter for a book I'm writing, and it turns out the legend was true.

Here's what I found in the newspaper clippings:

Detroit's old Skid Row was a stretch of several blocks along Michigan Ave., roughly between downtown and Tiger Stadium. It had always been a source of concern for the city's leaders.

In the mid-1950s the city announced plans to tear down Skid Row, although it would be several years before the demolition actually began. City planners wanted the area razed to make way for “International Village,� an ambitious development plan which was to feature shops and restaurants representing different nationalities.

The City Council fretted endlessly about what to do with the riffraff who would be displaced after Skid Row was gone. The politicians wanted to contain the winos, prostitutes, drug addicts and other undesirables to one community, rather than having them scatter throughout the city. They discussed several potential dumping grounds, finally settling on an area north of downtown known as “Jumbo Road,� which at the time was near Third and Selden.

[[By the way, I contacted Cindy, the current owner of Jumbo's Bar, and the daughter of "Jumbo," who owned the bar for many years. I wondered whether Jumbo got his nickname because of the area in which he opened his bar, or vice versa. She wasn't sure, although she pointed out that her dad was a small man, which would make sense, I guess, in the odd way nicknames sometimes are bestowed. At any rate, that area once was called Jumbo Road.)

Just before the old Skid Row was to be demolished, the city councilmen set about transforming Jumbo Road into the Cass Corridor like a gang of bureaucratic Dr. Frankensteins. To lure the Skid Row residents, they voted to convert an old hotel on Brainard into a city-funded homeless shelter. They urged other social service agencies to move to the neighborhood. Blight laws limiting the number of pawn shops, motels and bars allowed in a given area were relaxed in that part of town.

Prior to this intervention, the Cass Corridor/Jumbo Road was a decent middle-class neighborhood. The residents understandably didn't want their community turned into a human dumping ground, and they launched protests against the city's plans. But their concerns could not stop the machine.

Police eventually stopped patrolling Jumbo Road in any meaningful way. After all, the city’s leaders wanted the neighborhood to be a place where vice flourished, so while there were a few gung-ho cops around [[like Bando), they generally weren’t concerned with what went on there. I know of a cop in the 1970s whose bosses told her, point-blank, to stop busting prostitutes and dope dealers.


So, in the early '60s old Skid Row was leveled. The pie-in-the-sky “International Village� scheme never got off the ground — but the herding of the city’s unwanted into one isolated community was a smashing success. The Cass Corridor was born.

How's that for a social engineering project? The city manufactured a red light district out of whole cloth!

[Detroitnerd]

Dovetails pretty neatly with the stories told by the "Mayor of the Cass Corridor." I'd add that the near west side was white and the near east side was black, which meant more G.I. Bill and housing assistance for near west-siders moving out of the city, making way for the skid row to move north.

[Long Lake]

I disagree with most of what you posted.

The Cass Corridor was hardly a "middle class neighborhood" in the 1960's. It has been a rough and poor part of town since well before WWII. The Cass Corridor has been "bad" since at least the Great Depression.

The part you posted about Michigan Ave. as the original Skid Row is true, but I doubt there was some grand "scheme" to move everything to the Corridor. Social service organizations benefit from clustering, and the old hotels in the Corridor were on their last legs, so the Corridor was a natural fit.

[Long Lake]

Dovetails pretty neatly with the stories told by the "Mayor of the Cass Corridor." I'd add that the near west side was white and the near east side was black, which meant more G.I. Bill and housing assistance for near west-siders moving out of the city, making way for the skid row to move north.

But the Near West Side was white well into the 1970's, long after the GI Bill was a factor in relocation. Even today, the Corridor and [[especially) the Briggs neighborhood are much whiter than the city as a whole.

And the Near East Side didn't have the same concentration of old welfare hotels. Brush Park was never built to the same density as the Corridor.

[dookie joe]

Long Lake, I can get those old newspaper articles and show you that every word I wrote about how the Cass Corridor was set up is true.

We can debate back and forth about whether the Corridor was a decent neighborhood back then; I guess it depends on your definition of "decent." It certainly wasn't anything close to what it would become after the city's intervention.

While the quality of the old Corridor prior to the the city's action is debatable, the other stuff is cold, hard fact. The city did indeed fret about where to send the riffraff after Skid Row was demolished. There were several articles speculating where they would be sent. And then the city did indeed open a homeless shelter, encourage others to move there, and relax the blight laws in that area. Whether you "agree" with that or not is immaterial -- it's a fact.

[Detroitnerd]

But the Near West Side was white well into the 1970's, long after the GI Bill was a factor in relocation. Even today, the Corridor and [[especially) the Briggs neighborhood are much whiter than the city as a whole.

And the Near East Side didn't have the same concentration of old welfare hotels. Brush Park was never built to the same density as the Corridor.

I'm not arguing with the thesis, just adding a bit of information. Not the primary factor, for sure, but secondary or tertiary.

[dookie joe]

But the Near West Side was white well into the 1970's, long after the GI Bill was a factor in relocation. Even today, the Corridor and [[especially) the Briggs neighborhood are much whiter than the city as a whole.

And the Near East Side didn't have the same concentration of old welfare hotels. Brush Park was never built to the same density as the Corridor.

The Corridor of my youth was mostly transplanted southern whites. There also were lots of Chinese, Koreans, Asian Indians, American Indians, Pakistanis and black folks around. But it was mostly hillbillies, for lack of a better term!

[Long Lake]

The Corridor of my youth was mostly transplanted southern whites. There also were lots of Chinese, Koreans, Asian Indians, American Indians, Pakistanis and black folks around. But it was mostly hillbillies, for lack of a better term!

And the Briggs neighborhood still has a bit of that hillbilly flavor. You see it even today.

[Detroitnerd]

And the Briggs neighborhood still has a bit of that hillbilly flavor. You see it even today.

IMHO, the only thing that kept Detroit so populated after the war was immigration from the South, black and white.

[RickBeall]

Hi DetroitNerd,

Who is the "Mayor of the Cass Corridor"? I would like to read about him.

[Detroitnerd]

The "Mayor" of Cass Corridor is Allen Shurges. Not sure how you spell his name, though.

[RickBeall]

Why was or is he considered the mayor of the Cass Corridor? Could you tell us a little bit about him, or point to some information?

[Detroitnerd]

Well, as a working attorney and investor in the neighborhood, Allen is a regular still at Motor City Brewing Works. He was my landlord for a year when I lived on Willis. That year he was interviewed around Christmas-time for a segment on TV as "Mayor of the Cass Corridor." Used to have his law practice on Second Avenue. Not sure if he's still working, though.

[Detroitnerd]

Oops, the name is Allen Schaerges.

[RickBeall]

Great! Thanks for the info.

[softailrider]

Does anybody know who owns the newer brick house on 3rd a block or two up from Jumbo's? I'm refering to the house with the huge garage built to hold a bus or RV. It was built aroud 1980 or so. It stands out in the neighborhood, it's unlike any of the other structures there.

[Detroitnerd]

Ah, Jumbo's.

http://www.bing.com/maps/?v=2&cp=r1q...04&lvl=2&sty=b

[Downtown Lady]

This is fascinating to me, that this happened. Dookie Joe, what newspaper ran this story? In this day and age something as sinister as this would be done surreptitiously, so I'm amazed that the story was made public and reported in the paper. Or perhaps was it in the paper as an after-the-fact expose´?

Thank you for starting this thread, Dookie Joe.

[Jimaz]

I think the term "social engineering" had a more positive connotation back then. I think most people who advocated such things felt genuinely benevolent and were perhaps a bit naive. In today's more cynical world few people would want to bear the current stigma of "social engineer." Today it seems to mean someone who would callously use others to further their own ulterior motives.

The words, they keep on churning.

[dookie joe]

This is fascinating to me, that this happened. Dookie Joe, what newspaper ran this story? In this day and age something as sinister as this would be done surreptitiously, so I'm amazed that the story was made public and reported in the paper. Or perhaps was it in the paper as an after-the-fact expose´?

Thank you for starting this thread, Dookie Joe.

You're welcome.

The stories ran in the News and Freep in the late '50s and early 60s. The process was all quite open. It wasn't reported as an after-the-fact expose' or anything; these were stories like those that would arise from any other City Council meeting.

As I said, the city council members fretted for a long time about where to put the people who would be displaced after Skid Row was razed. Several locations were suggested. When they settled on the Cass Corridor, or Jumbo Road, there was a hue and cry from the residents, who didn't want to see their neighborhood turned into a dumping ground for derelicts.

If memory serves, the Avon Hotel on Brainard was the one the city wanted to convert into a homeless shelter. And the city also relaxed its blight laws in that area.

Long Lake's skepticism notwithstanding, the city did indeed set up the Cass Corridor to be the new Skid Row, if the contemporary press clippings are accurate.

[dookie joe]

I think the term "social engineering" had a more positive connotation back then. I think most people who advocated such things felt genuinely benevolent and were perhaps a bit naive. In today's more cynical world few people would want to bear the current stigma of "social engineer." Today it seems to mean someone who would callously use others to further their own ulterior motives.

The words, they keep on churning.

For accuracy's sake, "Social Engineering" is a term I used. I don't recall the phrase being in any of the stories I read.

But your point is correct. What's the old saying? The worst kind of tyrant is the one who thinks he's doing good, because he sleeps like a baby at night, secure in the knowledge that his actions are just. A regular ol' mean tyrant might someday have second thoughts.

[Lonyo exit]

That text you "cited" reads nothing like a news article.

How about this - scan and post the actual articles and we can make a judgment for ourselves.

[dookie joe]

That text you "cited" reads nothing like a news article.

Um...that's because it wasn't a news article; it's something I wrote. Had it been from a news article, I would have said, "this is a reprint from a news article." Rather, I said, "here's what I found from newspaper clippings." I thought that was fairly clear. I wasn't "citing" anything; I was rehashing what I'd read.

How about this - scan and post the actual articles and we can make a judgment for ourselves.

Wow, I didn't think I was in a court of law where I had to document all claims.

However, I'll be happy to scan the articles. I won't be getting to it until next week, however. Since you're the one who's insisting I do this, please PM me on Monday and remind me.

As a sneak preview, however, I will reiterate the cold, hard facts, without an ounce of editorialization:

When the city was preparing to demolish Skid Row for the International Village project, the council members expressed concern about where to put the bums and other Skid Row residents who would be displaced after their neighborhood was razed. City officials insisted they didn't want them scattered to the four winds throughout Detroit, so they decided to try to find a neighborhood to contain them.

After several suggestions they settled on the Cass Corridor. As part of their plan, they wanted to convert the Avon Hotel on Brainard into a homeless shelter. The council also voted to relax blight laws in that part of the city.

The people who lived in the community protested because they didn't want their neighborhood to be the city's dumping ground for derelicts.

Those are the facts. Since you insist, I'll be happy to prove them, as long as you send me a reminder via PM Monday, because I get pretty busy at work [[I'm on vacation this week, and work is the only place where I have access to a scanner).

And, just so we're clear on what is and isn't a fact: The parts I wrote in the original post about the cops not patrolling, and the term "social engineering" were all my own editorializations, based on common sense and what I saw growing up and heard from older people. But the rest of it is cold, hard fact.

As I said, I'd always dismissed the oft-repeated notion that "The Corridor was set up to be the city's red light district" as a mere paranoid street conspiracy, and was surprised to find out that it actually is true.

[RickBeall]

A question might be, was the Cass Corridor social engineering a success? Were there losers? [[Sounds like there were, the people originally living around Jumbo Road).

Flint is doing some social engineering to encourage people to move from some areas to others. Have they figured out how to do it without creating losers? I know Flint's purpose is a little different from Detroits in the 1950's. But what are the simularities and differences? Could Detroit benefit from some social engineering now?

[dookie joe]

Good questions, Rick. I think Detroit could indeed benefit from some social engineering, and lots of it!