Remembering Aretha Franklin With Evrod Cassimy, Marsha Music, Dan Austin & Detroiters
The Queen of Soul dies, and a city mourns
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Life At The Historic Grande Ballroom? Supporters Are Fundraising For A Structural Engineering Report
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 what will be next for the place that’s seen a couple lives and been sitting closed since 1972? It’s currently owned by t...
8 Before And After Pictures Of Detroit's Beautiful Book Tower Coming Back To Life
The building at the corner of Washington Boulevard and Grand River has a long history, and is one of the most ornate exteriors in the city of Detroit, and possibly the United States. For years the Book Tower was ridiculed as one of Detroit’s ugliest buildings. It turns out when the exterior gets a deep cleaning its intricate art that sits high above the city streets comes to life. Although some of us always appreciated the structure for its unique design. It’s a rare Renaissance-style skyscr...
Retro Motor City: Check Out Detroit's Talking Police Car From 1936
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 talking) was a plan to lessen the amount of tickets written while educating the public. It feels like this would be useful...
Peek Into History With These 10 Wigglegrams From 1880s Detroit
Detroit’s history as a city spans more than 300 years. Photography was only available for a portion of that time. Today, we’re going to look at stereoscopic images. See, before fancy virtual reality technology, there were stereoscopes. These were simple devices with special lenses that make the image seen through it appear larger and more distant. Often, the image is shifted to the left or right. If you have normal vision out of two eye, you could create a depth of field – or trick your eyes...
A Piece Of Detroit's History From The 1870s Burned Last Weekend
Over the Fourth of July weekend, a piece of Detroit history burned. A piece that a dedicated group of neighbors was trying to save. On the evening of Sunday, July 3 the Nortown Community Development Corporation got a call that there was a fire at the Philetus W. Norris House at 17815 Mount Elliot in Detroit. It was heartbreaking for the group, as years of hard work and passion went up in flames for the people who were involved with trying to renovate historic the house. “I’m heartbroken, and...
A Ghost Story From Detroit's Past You've Probably Never Heard
Detroit’s history is full of bizarre stories and fascinating characters, yet many of the strangest still lurk in the faded clippings of old newspapers, lost amid the forgotten of pile media rubble. One such story is that of Thomas Lynn Bradford. A Detroit resident in the early 1900s, Bradford was an interesting character. Professionally, he was something of a job hopper, spending time as an electrical engineer, professional athlete, and even as an actor. Toward the end of his life, though, B...
Southwest Detroit Was Originally Springwells Township (With Lots Of Maps)
Southwest Detroit and Springwells are suddenly in the forefront of conversation again, thanks to this Metro Times article diving into the work that a group called Urban Neighborhood Initiatives (UNI) and some others are doing in a part of Southwest Detroit. We at Daily Detroit found it interesting that the neighborhood name was something “most of its own residents have never heard of.” Part of pride in a neighborhood is to know its history. We haven’t shared until now because it’s not been ver...