1915 Detroit Map Showing Present and Proposed Street System

[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.

[Detroitnerd]

Whoa. Can we write a People's History of Detroit?