One of the city’s “must see” pieces of street art has come down, along with the abandoned and badly blighted building it was on.
“The African Amalgamation of Ubiquity” was painted in 1985 by Curtis Lewis on an old bank building at 9980 Gratiot, just west of the Better Made Potato Chip Plant.
It was the former home of the neighborhood nonprofit “Operation Get Down,” which moved across the street to a new location some time ago.
While demolition signs reportedly abound in the neighborhood, the city says it had no hand in demolishing the building.
City spokeswoman Tiffany Crawford tells Daily Detroit that the demolition wasn’t pursuant to any legal action from the city and appears to have been a private demolition done by the building’s owner.
According to Loveland Technologies, the building was owned by a man with a Bloomfield Hills address who could not be reached.
The mural had fallen into significant disrepair in recent years. In its heyday, it attracted national acclaim, including being named one of the best murals that depicted civil rights hero Martin Luther King, Jr. It also highlighted a variety of other African-American leaders throughout history, all the way back to Egypt.
There’s no word on what will be going in the demolished bank building’s place, if anything.
Outside of the immediate downtown — where investment money is harder to come by — the city is continuing its program of demolishing vacant structures it deems dangerous.
The building itself was once an excellent example of Art Deco architecture.
This story originally appeared in the Daily Detroit podcast.