Detroit 1915, image source
Detroit 1900 to 1930
Detroit Skyline, CIrca 1929
From 1900 to 1910 the primary source of population growth in Detroit and the surrounding region is Eastern European immigration and white farmers moving into the city. During the 1910s automobile factories are booming resulting in Detroit more than doubling its population, the region’s population nearly doubles, surpassing 1 million people. By the end of the 1920s Detroit grows in population to size to over one and half million people
1900: Detroit has over two hundred and eighty-five residents, making it the thirteenth largest city in the United States; nearly 12% of the population is composed of non-English speakers, the highest percentage in the nation.
1910: In 1910, 33.6% of Detroit’s population was foreign-born and a full 74% were of white foreign stock.
1910: Blacks in Detroit compose .5% of industrial workers; in Northern cities they represent approximately 4% of overall employment.
1911 Chevrolet opens first Detroit factory
1922: the Detroit Street Railways (DSR) which succeeded DUR on May 15, 1922, creating the world’s largest municipal streetcar system
1925: Chrysler opens Detroit factory; Detroit City is home to three thousand major manufacturing plants, thirty-seven automobile manufacturing plants and two hundred and fifty auto accessory manufacturing plants.
1900: Detroit has over two hundred and eighty-five residents, making it the thirteenth largest city in the United States; nearly 12% of the population is composed of non-English speakers, the highest percentage in the nation.
1910: In 1910, 33.6% of Detroit’s population was foreign-born and a full 74% were of white foreign stock.
1910: Blacks in Detroit compose .5% of industrial workers; in Northern cities they represent approximately 4% of overall employment.
1911 Chevrolet opens first Detroit factory
1922: the Detroit Street Railways (DSR) which succeeded DUR on May 15, 1922, creating the world’s largest municipal streetcar system
1925: Chrysler opens Detroit factory; Detroit City is home to three thousand major manufacturing plants, thirty-seven automobile manufacturing plants and two hundred and fifty auto accessory manufacturing plants.
1920s Detroit. Google Image Search
On January 1, 1901, the Detroit United Railway (DUR) began operating the cities transit system. The company was result of the conglomeration of street railway companies that operated streetcar lines both within the City of Detroit and to the suburbs. To cement control of region’s mass transportation network, DUR began to build new and buy existing interurban streetcar lines that connected the suburbs to the central cities. The interurban streetcars that served these lines were larger, more comfortable version of the electric streetcars that served downtown Detroit. Additionally, these streetcars traveled over rail lines ranging from twenty to seventy-five miles long.
As early as 1906, funding service to the expanding suburbs became a source of controversy as some rail lines began to charge higher fares further along the rail line, finally resulting in a city council resolution that requested the company to explain why fares increased from 3 cents to 5 cents along the “Springwells Plug Service” streetcar line. The same resolution asked the company to speculate on the likelihood of extending its service to the full length of the newly annexed sections of the City.
The emerging auto industry in Detroit provides a sharp contrast to the consolidation that was occurring in the rail line industry, The automobile industry saw a huge amount of economic activity and founding of new companies. Following the establishment of a short lived Oldsmobile plant in 1901, Ford opened a manufacturing plant in the downtown area which was followed by Packard in 1903. The 1908 establishment of a General Motors factory signified Detroit as the automobile capital of the United States.
The rise of Detroit automobile manufacturing to a position of dominance was enabled by the cities location and natural features which allowed local innovation to be fully expressed. Detroit is located alongside the Great Lakes enabling easy access to shipping lanes and a range of markets along the Atlantic coast. Just as critically, the city had a manufacturing base having produced stoves, machines, and ships during the twentieth century. The manufacturing knowledge gleamed from these early industries helped center automobile manufacturing in the region.
As early as 1906, funding service to the expanding suburbs became a source of controversy as some rail lines began to charge higher fares further along the rail line, finally resulting in a city council resolution that requested the company to explain why fares increased from 3 cents to 5 cents along the “Springwells Plug Service” streetcar line. The same resolution asked the company to speculate on the likelihood of extending its service to the full length of the newly annexed sections of the City.
The emerging auto industry in Detroit provides a sharp contrast to the consolidation that was occurring in the rail line industry, The automobile industry saw a huge amount of economic activity and founding of new companies. Following the establishment of a short lived Oldsmobile plant in 1901, Ford opened a manufacturing plant in the downtown area which was followed by Packard in 1903. The 1908 establishment of a General Motors factory signified Detroit as the automobile capital of the United States.
The rise of Detroit automobile manufacturing to a position of dominance was enabled by the cities location and natural features which allowed local innovation to be fully expressed. Detroit is located alongside the Great Lakes enabling easy access to shipping lanes and a range of markets along the Atlantic coast. Just as critically, the city had a manufacturing base having produced stoves, machines, and ships during the twentieth century. The manufacturing knowledge gleamed from these early industries helped center automobile manufacturing in the region.
DUR Network, Circa 1904
In 1905 the Detroit Board of Commerce solicited reports on urban improvements from Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr., and Charles Mulford Robinson specifically to explore the options of river promenade, locale specific municipal improvements, and the feasibility of a boulevard system. The development proposals distinguished commercial and civic spaces through a hierarchical ordering. The proposals also sought to unify the city through the construction of civic buildings, organizing the city along the idea a city's monumentality would be lost if civic structures such as city hall or the courts were surrounded or dwarfed by commercial building as articulated by Robinson in Modern Civic Art.
The Detroit manifestation of the City Beautiful ideals cumulated in the 1913 design and city plan which aimed at restoring the tradition urban balance in favor of civic buildings rather than allow continued industrialization and commercial building to dominate the city's skyline and public places. In the years following Woodward's 1805 plan the city's civic building dominated the urban landscape as they were dispersed throughout the city on residual lots that grew out of the overlay of a diagonal street system over a rectangular grid system. This trend is perfectly represented by the struggle of the City Hall, County Court Houses, and cultural institutions to dominate public as the city experienced rapid urban growth.
These city beautiful developments were seen by advocates as a way to fight the corrosive effect of a life spent in pursuit of commerce, while providing the added benefit of attracting new residents to the region. This dynamic is best seen in Detroit's central library, museum, and finally an integrated arts center. The library was amidst a residential neighborhood during the mid-19th century. By the beginning of the 1900s commercial buildings had "encroached" on the library's quiet locale, prompting debate about where to move the cultural instution to avoid the corrosive, sullying effect of commercialism.
The same fears of commercial encroachment and importance of civic pride within the context of the City Beautiful spurred the city’s museum (WHICH ONE?) to propose an expansion that would fully occupy its current block. The expansion featured a duplicate of the current building, connected by "a roman baroque arcade with colossal Corinthian columns and surmounted by monumental groups of bronze statuary" with a convention center or music hall in the rear section of the block. The expansion would be oriented around central a fountain and sculpture garden.
The museum instead chose to relocate to an "elite residential neighborhood" whose stability was attractive "in the days of magical industrial growth" rather than risk further commercial expansion. Shortly thereafter the City's library relocated to a lot across from the museum at great expense, the total expense exceeded a million dollars.
In early 1913 the Detroit City Planning and Improvement Commission requested a proposal for the arts center. Leading to request for proposal, two competing visions for the newly conceived arts center containing both the library and museum were debated. One featured a massive building with u-shaped wings while the other was a cluster of building, each tailored for the occupant. The resulting proposal established "the library and museum on axis to either side of woodward avenue, and surrounded them with nine secondary structures" and included a recommendation that the center be expanded to 29 acres to prevent commercial encroachment and height restrictions for surrounding buildings.
Several years later, in 1919, the museum was transferred to municipal ownership and was renamed the Detroit Institute of Arts to ensure the construction of the art center. Due to high costs associated with the landscape plans, construction bonds were presented to voters which framed the completion of the arts center as a necessity to prove their civix pride. Detroit voters approved the bonds allowing construction of the library to finish in 1921.
The nation's demographics were drastically altered as a result of southern blacks immigrated across the county during The Great Migration and Detroit was no exception. In 1910 the black population was 5,741, in a decade the black population had expanded to 40,838. Most of the population growth occurred following 1917, as world war one induced labor shortages due to reduced eastern European immigration. To fill this labor shortage, northern industrialists recruited southern blacks; “offering "justice tickets" which allowed migrants to use their belongings as collateral in exchange for fare north and a percentage of their first year's wages.” Additionally blacks who had immigrated from southern states encouraged family and friends to join them, in some cases even going as far as to secure them jobs.
The 1915 City Plan stated "a city plan should aim at the connivence of the people in the city" and outlines the need for a city plan to update and accommodate rapid population growth, through the examination of population growth and city plan execution of the by other urban centers around the world. The plan suggests continued development along the diagonals of the original plan alongside diverting traffic from certain downtown streets, noting that well-paved and well-light streets will attract drivers and suggest the "cutting and extending" of some streets to better accommodate cars.
In 1919 the Detroit Board of Education established a schooling system composed of six year elementary schools with three year middle and high schools each attempting to teach children specific social skills. The elementary schools aimed at instilling general life skill into the students such ....., the middle school aimed to assist students in choosing which high school curriculum they would take. The high school curriculum was broken into three separate tracts: college preparation, business, and general education.
Into the 1920s, Blacks continued to migrate to Detroit, but it was to escape a southern Boll weevil epidemic rather than job recruitment, when they reached Detroit they often lived in a neighborhood known as Paradise Valley; which had a community of thriving black businesses including “17 physicians, 22 lawyers, 22 barber shops, 13 dentists, 12 cartage agencies, 11 tailors, 10 restaurants, 10 real estate dealers, eight grocers, six drug stores, five undertakers, four employment offices, a few garages and a candy maker.
The Detroit manifestation of the City Beautiful ideals cumulated in the 1913 design and city plan which aimed at restoring the tradition urban balance in favor of civic buildings rather than allow continued industrialization and commercial building to dominate the city's skyline and public places. In the years following Woodward's 1805 plan the city's civic building dominated the urban landscape as they were dispersed throughout the city on residual lots that grew out of the overlay of a diagonal street system over a rectangular grid system. This trend is perfectly represented by the struggle of the City Hall, County Court Houses, and cultural institutions to dominate public as the city experienced rapid urban growth.
These city beautiful developments were seen by advocates as a way to fight the corrosive effect of a life spent in pursuit of commerce, while providing the added benefit of attracting new residents to the region. This dynamic is best seen in Detroit's central library, museum, and finally an integrated arts center. The library was amidst a residential neighborhood during the mid-19th century. By the beginning of the 1900s commercial buildings had "encroached" on the library's quiet locale, prompting debate about where to move the cultural instution to avoid the corrosive, sullying effect of commercialism.
The same fears of commercial encroachment and importance of civic pride within the context of the City Beautiful spurred the city’s museum (WHICH ONE?) to propose an expansion that would fully occupy its current block. The expansion featured a duplicate of the current building, connected by "a roman baroque arcade with colossal Corinthian columns and surmounted by monumental groups of bronze statuary" with a convention center or music hall in the rear section of the block. The expansion would be oriented around central a fountain and sculpture garden.
The museum instead chose to relocate to an "elite residential neighborhood" whose stability was attractive "in the days of magical industrial growth" rather than risk further commercial expansion. Shortly thereafter the City's library relocated to a lot across from the museum at great expense, the total expense exceeded a million dollars.
In early 1913 the Detroit City Planning and Improvement Commission requested a proposal for the arts center. Leading to request for proposal, two competing visions for the newly conceived arts center containing both the library and museum were debated. One featured a massive building with u-shaped wings while the other was a cluster of building, each tailored for the occupant. The resulting proposal established "the library and museum on axis to either side of woodward avenue, and surrounded them with nine secondary structures" and included a recommendation that the center be expanded to 29 acres to prevent commercial encroachment and height restrictions for surrounding buildings.
Several years later, in 1919, the museum was transferred to municipal ownership and was renamed the Detroit Institute of Arts to ensure the construction of the art center. Due to high costs associated with the landscape plans, construction bonds were presented to voters which framed the completion of the arts center as a necessity to prove their civix pride. Detroit voters approved the bonds allowing construction of the library to finish in 1921.
The nation's demographics were drastically altered as a result of southern blacks immigrated across the county during The Great Migration and Detroit was no exception. In 1910 the black population was 5,741, in a decade the black population had expanded to 40,838. Most of the population growth occurred following 1917, as world war one induced labor shortages due to reduced eastern European immigration. To fill this labor shortage, northern industrialists recruited southern blacks; “offering "justice tickets" which allowed migrants to use their belongings as collateral in exchange for fare north and a percentage of their first year's wages.” Additionally blacks who had immigrated from southern states encouraged family and friends to join them, in some cases even going as far as to secure them jobs.
The 1915 City Plan stated "a city plan should aim at the connivence of the people in the city" and outlines the need for a city plan to update and accommodate rapid population growth, through the examination of population growth and city plan execution of the by other urban centers around the world. The plan suggests continued development along the diagonals of the original plan alongside diverting traffic from certain downtown streets, noting that well-paved and well-light streets will attract drivers and suggest the "cutting and extending" of some streets to better accommodate cars.
In 1919 the Detroit Board of Education established a schooling system composed of six year elementary schools with three year middle and high schools each attempting to teach children specific social skills. The elementary schools aimed at instilling general life skill into the students such ....., the middle school aimed to assist students in choosing which high school curriculum they would take. The high school curriculum was broken into three separate tracts: college preparation, business, and general education.
Into the 1920s, Blacks continued to migrate to Detroit, but it was to escape a southern Boll weevil epidemic rather than job recruitment, when they reached Detroit they often lived in a neighborhood known as Paradise Valley; which had a community of thriving black businesses including “17 physicians, 22 lawyers, 22 barber shops, 13 dentists, 12 cartage agencies, 11 tailors, 10 restaurants, 10 real estate dealers, eight grocers, six drug stores, five undertakers, four employment offices, a few garages and a candy maker.