Another Shorpy look at Detroit: 1916

[Ray1936]

Old Hotel Pontch, Old county building, Campus Martius, Soldier's and Sailor's Monument, etc, etc. How stunning it was!

http://www.shorpy.com/node/9674?size=_original

[mikefmich]

**sigh**
Love looking, sometimes hate to be reminded of what has gone.

[Patrick]

We gonna throw a partay at the Hotel Metropole!

[Guideboat]

What is the monument with the elk [[or is it deer)? I have never seen that before.

[scubashelley]

I think, from the quote and from what I've found it's statue put up by the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks in 1910. I believe the quote on it says "The faults of our brothers we write upon the sand, their virtues
upon the tablets of love and memory"

[ja!mz]

Very cool elks monument....my grandfather had a grocery store at 3rd and abbot during this time, I which I had found out more of is history before most of my family died off

[Danny]

At least the buildings between what it used to be the Hotel Pontchartrian and and future Vinton Building is still there and running.

[gnome]

A googling of elks 1910 detroit, revealed that those bpoe folk invaded motown for their national convention in July of 1910. IIRC, the bpoe hall was located next to the original oprea house on Monroe.

I would imagine that the great monument we see in the Shorpy pic was a temporary structure made of staff and plaster ... just like the White City built for the '93 Chicago Columbian Exposition.

[DetroitPlanner]

**sigh**
Love looking, sometimes hate to be reminded of what has gone.

Things change. Surely you can't be missing the polluted air. Remember things can't stay constant. Detroit still looks more like the City it was in the 1930's than New York or Chicago does. Without change we would not have riverwalks, but we would still have 'colored waiting rooms' and we would be living in tennament appartments with no windows.

Everything has to be put into perspective.

[drjeff]

When did the old Hotel Pontch cease to exist? Cool building.

[Crystal]

The copious amounts of emissions from smokestacks in so many of these old photographs never cease to amaze me. We in the present day really cannot appreciate the soot, ash, sulfur, particulates, stench, and other air quality problems present in these old photographs.

In some ways we have it *much* better today than in the romantic olden days.

[Whitehouse]

At least the building that replaced Pontchartrian still has a lot of class. Some class of the hotel rubbed off on it. I like it. I really hate the vacant lots of Cadillac building and Monroe.

[Mikeg]

Here's two more old photos taken in Detroit that appeared over the weekend on Shorpy:

Space Cadets: 1905
Bo Peeps: 1905

Both photos were taken on the steps of the Saints Peter and Paul Academy at 64 Parsons St. in Detroit. At that time, it was a co-ed grade school and a high school for girls. [source]
Perhaps one of your grandparents or their siblings are in those photos!

[Ray1936]

Today's Shorpy photo shows the "Railroad Station on Grosse Isle". I never knew there was a RR line on that island. Anyone know about it?

http://www.shorpy.com/node/9696?size=_original

[muskie1]

I have seen a submerged rail bed on some charts of the river always wondered about this myself. I know years ago before dredging alot of the river down there was shallow with numerous rapids.

Today's Shorpy photo shows the "Railroad Station on Grosse Isle". I never knew there was a RR line on that island. Anyone know about it?

http://www.shorpy.com/node/9696?size=_original

[Cushkid]

The free bridge to the island was once a railroad bridge, I believe that the line crossed the island and then cars were loaded on a ferry and went over the river to Canada.

[Mikeg]

Here's the story behind the Canada Southern Railroad's operations on Grosse Ile.
1904 map:

[Ray1936]

Mike, you never fail to amaze me. Great history lesson.

[Mikeg]

Mike, you never fail to amaze me. Great history lesson.

Ready for some more?

The next photo in Shorpy's Grosse Ile series is "Summertime:1900" showing an old log cabin in the middle of a potato field at "Rio Vista".

"Rio Vista" was the name shipping tycoon William Livingstone gave his home [[and presumably the entire property). The home was the Anthony Dudgeon House, which was designed by Gordon W. Lloyd and built in 1859 at the northwest corner of Grosse Ile Parkway and East River Road
[map] [ref. book]

[mikefmich]

Things change. Surely you can't be missing the polluted air. Remember things can't stay constant. Detroit still looks more like the City it was in the 1930's than New York or Chicago does. Without change we would not have riverwalks, but we would still have 'colored waiting rooms' and we would be living in tennament appartments with no windows.

Everything has to be put into perspective.

Isn't so much that things are gone in Detroit, it's more a matter of how they went. Wasn't just the buildings in that photo either, it was a viable and bustling downtown district that I knew in my youth.

[dtrrman]

Here's the story behind the Canada Southern Railroad's operations on Grosse Ile.
1904 map:

The line was owned by the Michigan Central Railway's subsidiary the Canada Southern Bridge
Co. The line ran from Slocum Junction on the mainland across the Trenton Channel onto Grosse Isle across another bridge to Stony island and then onto carferries over to Gordon, ontario[[now Amherstburg) It operated prior to the railroad tunnel and then was discontinued when the tunnel was finished. The Canada Southern RR was leased by the Michigan Central which was in turn leased by the New York Central Railroad.