Detroit, Michigan, USA
Created | Updated Apr 4, 2002
Detroit is the largest city in the state of Michigan, located on the Detroit river between between the Great Lakes Huron and Erie. A geographical oddity, because of a bend in the river, puts Windsor, Ontario, Canada directly south of downtown Detroit.
History
The city of Detroit was founded on July 24, 1701 by Antoine de la Mothe, Sieur de Cadillac, as a fortified post to defend New France and prevent the native americans of the interior from trading with the English. He traded in furs and encouraged the indians to settle there, and in eight months there were six thousand people living around the fort.
Lumber, silver, coal, and steel which were shipped on the great lakes formed the basis for Detroit's economy, until a new industry which needed, steel, coal, and skilled workers began...
today, Detroit is known as the "motor city" because of its' importance in the automobile industry and "motown" because of artists like Diana Ross and the Supremes, Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, and the Jackson 5, who brought a new kind of music to the world.
Culture
The area boasts a number of beautifully rennovated theaters built in the gaudy and grand 1920's, notably the Fox, which today hosts live performers more often than movies, and the DFT, which plays an art and foreign film program. The DSO's Orchestra Hall dates from 1919.
Located in Dearborn, between downtown and the airport, the Henry Ford Museum & Greenfield Village is the most popular tourist destination in the area. Old Mr. Ford collected historical buildings, including Edison's Menlo Park laboratories and the Wright brothers bicycle shop, which he moved to Dearborn and makes for a nice afternoon's walking tour through american history. The museum has a large collection of railroad trains, industrial powerplants (including the earliest known steam engine, a fixed powerplant used for pumping out a mine in Wales), electrical generators, agricultural machinery, the chair Abraham Lincoln was sitting in when he was killed, and of course automobiles, including the one JFK was riding in on that fateful day in Dallas. The museum is also home to a technical high school named the Edison Institute, which allows students a hands-on approach to history. The metro area is the home of several first-rate universities, including Wayne State, which has the largest medical school in the country, UD-Mercy, Oakland, and Kettering (formery the GM Institute).
Sport
In the 1960's, the Detroit Tigers were a world class baseball team. Today, with a new stadium named after a bank, they can still occaisionally play a very good game. The Detroit Lions football team is also moving to a new stadium downtown. Recently, the most popular spectator sports have been hockey, with a team called the Red Wings, and basketball, with the eponymous Pistons. Sailing and other watersports are popular, on the many small lakes in the area. Bicycling is also a growing sport in Detroit, with the conversion of railroad tracks to biking trails.
Life in the big city
Detroit is a city of inconsistent extremes. Big manufacturing is still here, but many of the plants have moved to outlying areas, and the need for masses of skilled laborers is not as great. There are wonderful cultural areas downtown, centering on Wayne State and the Detroit Institute of Arts, with Diego Rivera's mural, a socialist commentary on the modern industrial world, championed and paid for by Edsel Ford. If you make a wrong turn taking the bridge to Canada, you can end up in Mexicantown, with wonderful, friendly restaurants, or driving down horrible, pothole-ridden streets by factories with broken windows, in a post-apocolyptic industrial wasteland. Gotham City was never this dark. At the same time, people are friendly, midwestern, and open, and if you move here you will make friends easily, find that the cost of living is low, houses are cheap, and the quality of life is really pretty good. They wear t-shirts that say, "Detroit: where the weak are killed and eaten" while going out to eat at wonderful restaurants in Greektown, and then dancing afterwards at an alternative club owned by the Scottish heritage society. Large ethnic populations have given their flavor to the metro area, which can be seen in wonderful restaurants and festivals - Poles in Hamtramack, Lebanese in Dearborn, Greek and Mexican downtown.
Do come to Detroit, you will be surprised. The city is undergoing a resurgence, and it is no more dangerous than any other city in the USA, just a bit more direct!
