What To Know And Where To Go In Southeast Michigan
Stories of Detroit’s amazing past.
What can the past teach us about what we’re dealing with today? Our conversation today is with Tim Kiska, host and creator of the Detroit History Podcast. They recently put out a great special episode talking about the 1918 Spanish Flu epidemic and how it hit Detroit. History may not repeat itself, but it does rhyme. So it’s uncanny how many echoes there are today …
On today's show, we go to the Two Way Inn to talk about celebrating the 198th birthday this weekend of Colonel Philetus Norris. The civil war veteran who fought on the Union side built a place now known as one of the best dive bars in America - the Two Way Inn - and more in a village called Norris. Now, it's the Nortown neighborhood of Detroit, and they're looking to …
L. Brooks Patterson, who died Saturday at age 80 at his home in Independence Township, was one of the Detroit area's most consequential and controversial figures in local politics. To some, he represents the ascendancy of an economic powerhouse, in Oakland County, and the very pinnacle of good governance and fiscal stewardship. But he's also a key player in the region's …
Baker's Keyboard Lounge and, more recently, the Dirty Dog Jazz Cafe in Grosse Pointe Farms are famed venues for jazz in Detroit. But another venue played a huge role in that scene for decades: the Blue Bird Inn. Located at 5021 Tireman on the city's west side, the Blue Bird Inn was a major nexus of Detroit's swinging post-war, pre-Motown jazz scene, a black-owned business …
Detroit's had a long journey since it was founded as a frontier outpost by the French. There's been a lot of books about more recent Detroit history. Think 1900 forward. But not so many that look at the first years of Detroit, ones that were formative to the city we know today. R.J. King — an award-winning journalist, author and editor of dBusiness — joined me in the …
A piece of history is up for sale. The former Ford Motor Company Sales and Service Building that was part of the Highland Park Ford Plant is for sale according to a DBusiness report. The Sales and Service building offers 54,000 square feet of space across four stories. The lot size is 147,668 square feet. Interior shots of the building show it is in disrepair.DBusiness A …
Detroit played an important role in World War II. As the "Arsenal of Democracy," automakers and their suppliers were refitted to build the machinery to win the war. It also was a busy time for the city, pulling it up from the depths of the Great Depression. Real estate was at a premium — after all, this is before freeways and urban sprawl. What are known as "inner suburbs" …
Paul Riser has played trombone, wrote songs and arranged music with some of the biggest names in popular music. As a member of the fabled "Funk Brothers," the mostly anonymous house band for Motown Records during its heyday, he worked with the likes of Marvin Gaye, The Four Tops, The Supremes and Smokey Robinson. Riser will appear at the Detroit Institute of Music Education …
Developers on Monday took the wraps off the redeveloped Metropolitan Building, which will re-open soon as the 110-room Element Hotel by Westin after four decades of abandonment. As Dan Austin of HistoricDetroit.org tells us, she's a "real looker" of a building, with a triangle-shaped footprint and terra cotta tiles adorning its impressive facade. But the Metropolitan …
I traveled to Los Angeles recently to cover the auto show and got to stay in a hotel in a familiar-looking building. You might recognize it from movies like “Strange Days,” “True Lies” or “Interstellar.” Or, if you’re a Detroiter, you might think, “what the hell is the RenCen doing set among palm trees?” The Westin Bonaventure, located in downtown L.A., is kind of a smaller …
The big news around Detroit today is the groundbreaking on the Monroe Block. That's the two-block site adjacent to Campus Martius where Dan Gilbert and Bedrock plan an $830 million development to add 1.4 million square feet of housing, office, retail and public space. On today's podcast, we discuss the Monroe Block's colorful history as a theater district, its mostly …
Fans of Detroit watering holes of yore, take note: A documentary about the legendary Lindell AC sports bar makes its TV debut Thursday night on Detroit Public Television. It’s called “Meet Me At the Lindell: The Story of America’s First Sports Bar.” The 44-minute documentary from director Jason Danieliwicz first screened in 2017 at the Freep Film Festival. The Lindell AC …
Crews were on the scene today making repairs at two long-blighted properties owned by the Ilitch family on Cass Avenue in Detroit. Monday was the deadline to fix code violations at the former Hotel Ansonia and the former Atlanta Apartments. Both buildings have long been without windows and are unsecured. The city flagged the violations in May and has reportedly twice …
We're getting back to our boozy roots with this Daily Detroit Happy Hour conversation with barchaeologist Mickey Lyons. She's the talent author behind a recent Hour Detroit piece, "Dry Times: Looking Back 100 Years After Prohibition." Sven Gustafson — no stranger to a bar himself as a former bartender — and Mickey have a great conversation talking about the old time …
The Grande Ballroom is one of the most hallowed spaces in Detroit music history. It has been home to jazz, big band, rock. It was a center of Detroit's counterculture movement. It also is a gem of a building designed by Charles Agree and completed in 1928. He left his mark on a variety of structures around town like the Vanity Ballroom, the Whittier Hotel and others. But …
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The city of Detroit is rife with nods and tributes to ghosts of its past, legendary and sometimes infamous individuals who have helped shape the city for hundreds of years. Names like Woodward, Lodge, Fisher, and Cass are so synonymous with the thoroughfares and buildings they represent that many people don’t even associate the names with the actual individuals they …
For 85 years, Sanders did business at this location on Woodward Avenue - 1529 Woodward, just south of Grand Circus Park. That's until the December of 1982, when, according to newspaper reports, it closed up shop. The signage was was covered over, and except in the minds of the older among us, the downtown Detroit store was forgotten. Sanders was founded in 1875 and is a …
[smart_track_player url="http://traffic.libsyn.com/dailydetroithappyhour/DD-21-Happy_hour_Wasserman_mixdown.mp3" image="http://www.dailydetroit.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/henry-the-hatter-detroit-podcast.jpg" download="true" social_gplus="false" social_linkedin="true" social_email="true" twitter_username="TheDailyDetroit" ] Henry the Hatter is one of the most beloved …
There has been a lot of work done on the Palmer Park Log Cabin. So much in fact that the People for Palmer Park want to invite people to a special grand opening concert celebration this Saturday. Usually the cabin is only open during Log Cabin day, however this year it will be open both Saturday and Sunday. If you have been around Detroit for any amount of time you probably …
Detroit has a long history of misfits, creatives, gadflies, rabble rousers, and people who are wonderfully outside of the social "norm." One of the many places in the city that was defined by the people in it was the "Goat Yard," a small boat yard on the east side of the city over by the foot of St. Jean. It was maybe the last hippie boat yard, the Detroit Boat Works. For …
When you drive down Gratiot Avenue in Roseville, there's a monument just past Frazho road that would be very easy to miss. After all, it's painted green - the same as the surrounding bushes. An important piece of Detroit area history was erased by a strip mall with the "greatest ratio" of parking to store area in the nation as a selling point in 1954. That historic place …
The Michigan Department of Natural Resources and the Belle Isle Conservancy are looking to restore a historic shelter on the island and say they're in need of your help. There is currently a fundraiser to raise $50,000 by June 30 to restore the Newsboy Shelter (Shelter #1). This shelter was built in 1911 and is one of the oldest structures on Belle Isle. The Newsboy …
A four-part series focusing on Detroit's heyday is coming to CNN in 2018. "Detroit 1963: Once in a Great City" is the working title and will be produced by Anthony Bourdain and Lydia Tenaglia. Per the release: ...is a four-part series about the city of Detroit at its high point when their auto industry was the envy of the world and Motown ruled the airwaves. The …
At first when you walk up to these relics from a time when Fords rolled out of a plant on Woodward and Highland Park was the model of American success, you might not believe your eyes. You'd be forgiven if you thought it was a subway in the traditional sense with rails and cars when you walk up. Of course, this isn't the case. The Detroit area has had multiple failed …
The home of US civil rights icon Rosa Parks - rebuilt in Berlin by an artist - drew hundreds of people out to see it Saturday, the first time it was put on view. The project, the idea of US artist Ryan Mendoza, was realized in his garden in the Berlin district of Wedding. "It is wonderful how great the response has been to the house," said Mendoza's wife, Fabia, who was …
Imagine a 1930s police car with a ridiculously sized horn on top, politely but firmly giving orders on Detroit's streets. Well, that was Detroit's "Voice of Safety," or their talking police car that's featured in this neat retro film clip. There are some cool scenes of downtown Detroit in the video as well. The "Talking Police Car" (an officer, of course, was doing the …
Although Martin Luther King day is today - January 16, 2017 - we're going to step back in history, to June, 1963. Before the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his famous "I Have A Dream" speech in Washington, D.C., he used a version of it in Detroit at Cobo Hall in June of 1963. It was part of a "Walk to Freedom" march with more than 125,000 people coming to …
Sometimes, you can't help it. You're in the party store or in an aisle at Meijer, and you see it. The yellow bag. The red stripes. And if you're a Detroiter or a Detroiter at heart, the maid on the cover calls to you like a salty siren, and you must get ahold of what's inside the bag. Yes, Better Made potato chips. Whether they're original, ruffle, BBQ, sour cream and onion, …
The terms “hustle” and “hustler” are big in culture today, especially here in Detroit. “Detroit Hustles Harder” is a popular shirt and slogan. People waking up and Snapchatting “Time to rise and grind" and talking about how hard they hustle or are hustlers. But hustler? As in someone who goes after their goals and works hard? That’s a very old term. Described in an 1891 …
Despite a steady trickle of leaked recordings of him being horrible, Warren Mayor Jim Fouts was re-elected to a fourth term on Tuesday. On today’s show, we talk about and what it says about Warren. Then, we highlight some other races from around the region and discuss what they say about those cities, from Ferndale …
