Quote:
Originally Posted by iheartthed
I doubt that any really wealthy people (meaning the millionaire class) had migrated across 8 Mile Rd. before 1940. Mitt Romey's family lived in Detroit's Palmer Woods neighborhood when he was born in the 1940s, before they to Bloomfield Hills when he was a child. His father George was CEO of American Motors before becoming governor of Michigan.
|
Bloomfield Hills was a major wealth center even 100 years ago. The Dodge family and many other auto barons had estates out there. The Cranbrook campus is on the former estate of George Booth, at the time one of America's wealthiest, and who built his Bloomfield Hills estate in 1904.
Christ Church Cranbrook is probably the most important Episcopalian church in Michigan. Kirk in the Hills is probably the most important Presbyterian church in Michigan. These are longstanding Bloomfield Hills institutions.
Also, there were suburban prewar upper middle class neighborhoods all along the Woodward corridor.
Birmingham-
https://www.google.com/maps/@42.5531...7i13312!8i6656
Royal Oak-
https://www.google.com/maps/@42.5020...7i16384!8i8192
Pleasant Ridge-
https://www.google.com/maps/@42.4716...7i16384!8i8192
Huntington Woods-
https://www.google.com/maps/@42.4833...7i16384!8i8192
The Pointes were always an outlier. In terms of regional wealth distribution, better analogues are Philly's Main Line, or Toronto's Yonge corridor. And they were all tied to downtown and the GM and Chrysler HQ via commuter rail, which didn't end until the 1980's.