Quote:
Originally Posted by Crawford
I don't think Detroit, even in 1930, was anywhere close to Philly, Boston or SF in terms of downtown vibrancy. Once there were cars, it was always a polycentric, auto-oriented model. There were very strong secondary districts, like Grand River-Joy and Grand River-Greenfield, not that different from LA.
Detroit probably had the third best collection of prewar highrises on earth, but the downtown was always pretty compact. There were never more than three department stores (albeit one was one of the world's largest), and the commercial core was only a few blocks. There were only two department stores by the late 1950's. There was never much of a prewar highrise residential lifestyle, outside of a few buildings along/near Woodward. The 1920's-era theaters and office buildings were incredibly grand, basically unmatched outside of NY and Chicago, but there wasn't much else. There were two streets worth a stroll - Woodward and Washington Blvd. Granted, Woodward was a pedestrian crush until the late 1960's.
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This was almost certainly one of the top 4 downtowns in 1950s America:
source:
https://digital.library.wayne.edu/
About 70% of the buildings in this photo were lost to freeways, stadiums, surface parking lots, urban renewal, or just neglect. The locations of Little Caesars Arena and Comerica Park are close to the center of this photo. Without adding a single building, it would arguably still be a top 5 - 7 downtown today.