<![CDATA[ <font size=-3>This presentation was designed to be viewed with a
frames-compatible browser; the back links in the upper right-hand corner of each page will not function
properly without frames; use the BACK button in your browser instead.</font> <br> <a href
="detroit2.html">View high-res image,</a> or <a href ="detroit3.html">modern panorama</a>. Use the scroll
arrows to pan left or right and up or down in the picture. <br><A href =
"http://www.walshcol.edu/cgi-bin/imagemap/~moran/detphot/pano.map"> <center><img src="campco.gif"
width=830 height=343 align=center ISMAP></a> <center><h2><b>The City That Was</b></h2><font size=4
color=FF0000>The panoramic photo of 1906 Detroit loading above will take about 30 seconds at 14.4. When
you click on points of interest in the image, text and images will appear here. Use the BACK button on
your browser to return to this page. Each picture within the pages can also be clicked on to provide
more-detailed, higher-resolution photos.</font></center><font color=FF0000><p> <em>The Detroit pictured
here has been washed away in a tide of technological and social change more rapid, perhaps, than any in
human history. Click on the photo above, read the <a href="#overview">overview</a>, and witness the
transformation of Campus Martius from grand civic plaza to post-Industrial urban backwater.</em></font>
<p>If you wish to comment on this presentation, <a href=mailto:moran@www.walshcol.edu>click here.</a>
<p>All of the people in the panorama will eventually have their own pages, but I need stories of actual
1906 Detroiters to use for each person. Please send me a story of a family member or other person that
you know of that <em>could have been</em> in this 1906 picture. <a
href=mailto:moran@www.walshcol.edu>Click here</a> to send me a story. <P>Index of completed pages:<ul>
<li><a href="air.html">1906 Air Quality</a>; <li><a href="arc.html">Arc Lighting Tower</a>; <li><a
href="bag.html">Bagley Fountain</a>; <LI><a href="bagstat.html">John J. Bagley Statue</a>; <LI><a
href="hamm2.html">Birds-eye Panorama of the City</a>. <li><a href="cithal.html">Old City Hall</a>;
<LI><a href="countv.html">County Building Views</a>. <li><a href="hamm.html">Hammond Building</a>;
<li><a href="hrscar.html">Horsecars</a>; <LI><a href="intu.html">Northbound Interurban Car</a>; <LI><a
href ="coney.html">Lafayette & Michigan</a> <LI><a href ="maj.html">Majestic Building</a> <li><a
href="mer.html">Merrill Fountain</a>; <LI><a href="ponch.html">Ponchartrain Hotel</a>; <LI><a
href="retail.html">The Retail District</a>; <LI><a href="sosa.html">Soldiers and Sailors Monument</a>;
<LI><a href="scar.html">Electric Streetcars</a>; <li><a href="vantage.html">Vantage Point</a> - where the
panorama photographers stood.</ul> All major items items have some description.</font>
<p>The <a href="#overview">overview</a> gives a brief history; unless you're the type that browses
magazines back to front, read it first. <p>The black and white photographs are from the <a href =
"http://lcweb.loc.gov/">Library of Congress</a>, Prints and Photographs Division, <A HREF =
"http://lcweb2.loc.gov/detroit/dethome.html">Detroit Publishing Company Collection</a>, a collection of
turn-of-the century images. <a href ="http://lcweb2.loc.gov/detroit/detres.html">According to the LOC</a>,
I am violating no known copyright by using the images here. <P>The text and other photos are copyrighted
1996 by me, <a href = "http://www.walshcol.edu/~moran/" target="_top">James B. Moran</a>, <a
href=mailto:moran@www.walshcol.edu>moran@www.walshcol.edu.</a> <p>Thank you for stopping by visitor number
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<a name="overview"><center><h2><em>Overview</em></h2></center>
<center><h3><b>Campus
Martius, Detroit, Michigan, 1906</b></h3></center>
<p>This is downtown Detroit, 1906, on the eve of the automobile explosion. There are no automobiles in the
three-picture perspective at right, even though Henry Ford had driven his first model through the streets
of Detroit ten years earlier. People and cargo travel by horse or electric streetcar, and pedestrians roam
freely through the streets. Detroit City Hall (1871) is in the center with its wide lawn sloping to
Woodward, Detroit's main street. The scene has an aura of civic idealism, equal parts bustling metropolis
and manicured garden; the dusty streets, striped by vehicle tracks, lend a rural air.
<p>Detroit's major roads radiate from this public square known as Campus Martius. (Ironically, the city
had been laid out in the shape of a spoked-wheel nearly one hundred years before Henry Ford manufactured
the first Model T.) All distances in Detroit were once measured from this point, including the "Mile
Roads" that march into Detroit's northern suburbs. Woodward Avenue, Fort Street, and Michigan Avenue meet
here, and Gratiot and Grand River start only a few blocks away. These are main arteries along which
Detroit is still developing in the outer suburbs.
<p>As the automobile transformed the country, Detroit quadrupled in population (1900-1930). Concrete was
poured, skyscrapers soared, and the retail district, seen in the right panel of the panorama, expanded to
world class status. Increasingly prosperous Detroiters bought more and more of their own product, and
downtown overflowed with cars.
<p>By 1928, Campus Martius was the busiest intersection in the country according to a contemporary
visitor's guide.
<p>As early as 1920, civic leaders made plans to relieve the congestion around Campus Martius. Streets
were widened, traffic signals installed, and subway schemes studied. The Great Depression put an end to
the subway plans, and the city's growth slowed.
<p>After the war, Detroiters, like most Americans, were far more interested in the open spaces of their
suburbs than in the grimy confines of the central city. Despite well-intentioned (yet often clumsy)
attempts at urban renewal, the central city and Campus Martius slowly withered as families left the city
to raise baby boomers in the clean air of suburban tract housing.
<p>The City Hall in the center of this picture was torn down in 1961, leaving an open public space. New
buildings were set back from the street, and the streets were widened, but by the late 60's, the number of
people in downtown was declining. The closing of the huge Hudson's department store in 1982 signaled the
end of retail in downtown, and only government and financial institutions hang on today, awash in a sea of
unused office space and boarded storefronts. General Motors' recent purchase of the <a
href="http://www.airsho.com/rencen1.htm" target= "display">Renaissance Center</a> for a bargain basement
price ($72 million for a complex that cost $350 million to build twenty years ago) is an indication of how
far the decline has gone.
<p>Campus Martius is still a relatively busy intersection, but no more so than dozens of other places
across town and probably less so than many rural interstate exit ramps.
<p>In the photographs at right, scattered pedestrians walk at random slants across the open space. Today,
they cling together at crosswalks or huddle at bus stops, numbed by the thrum of tires and the dull
grinding of laboring motors.
<p>Detroiters have a bittersweet nostalgia for their downtown, and some still go back for sporting events,
parades, and the like; but none of them would give up their strip malls and cineplexes to go back to 1906.
The collective psychology that built civic plazas like Campus Martius no longer exists, dissipated in the
march of technology, time, and social turmoil that goes by the name of Progress.
<P>The average Detroiter walking across Campus Martius in 1906 probably had a pretty good opinion of
Progress; the frontier days were still in living memory, and the technological and material improvements
in daily life were manifest.
<P>The average Detroiter today wouldn't walk across Campus Martius at all, though he may drive through it
on the way to a Red Wings game. He may even have a fair opinion of Progress, but It probably doesn't cross
his mind as he waits at just another stoplight at what was once "the busiest intersection in the country,
by <em>actual</em> count!"<hr>
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