Founded in 1767, Middletown is located in the fertile valley between Frederick and Boonsboro, and like many towns in western Maryland, it owes its genesis to an advantageous position along trade routes. However, it was the opening of the interurban...
Since its designation as the county seat in 1776, Hagerstown’s position along major roads and the Baltimore and Ohio, Western Maryland, Norfolk and Western, and Cumberland Valley railroads have made it a regional economic center for both...
Sharpsburg is best known as the site of the bloodiest battle of the Civil War (in terms of the most casualties in a single day) and the first major engagement on Union soil, fought in 1862. However, Sharpsburg was founded nearly a century prior, in 1763...
Founded as Fort Cumberland in 1754 and at the time the westernmost outpost of the British colonies, Cumberland became the county seat of newly created Allegany County in 1789. Its topography and location at the confluence of the Potomac River and Wills...
Rich in beauty and natural resources, especially timber forests, mountains, and seascapes, Maine boasts an almost boundless coastline, historically accommodating profitable fishing and shipbuilding, and other maritime-related industries, as well as coastal and transatlantic commerce. After the Civil War,...
The state of Michigan lies at the very heart of the Great Lakes: Lower Michigan is surrounded by three lakes—Erie, Huron, and Michigan; the Upper Peninsula also by three—Michigan, Huron, and Superior. The state has 3,288 miles of Great Lakes shoreline, 36,350 miles of streams and rivers, and 11,...
Detroit became the premier American industrial city in the twentieth century, due mainly to its meteoric rise as the center of automobile production. The early history of Detroit is discussed on pages 23–53 of this volume.
Before it became the Motor...
In 1890 Mayor Hazen S. Pingree (1840–1901) proposed placing a civic center on the Detroit River at the end of Woodward Avenue. Commissioned by the American Institute of Architects (AIA), Eliel Saarinen drew up a design in 1924, but lack of funds prevented its...
This center of banking and business activity since the 1850s was converted into a canyonlike setting, not unlike Wall Street, with the erection in the 1920s of the Buhl (1925; 535 Griswold Street), Guardian ( WN12), and...
This intact portion of the original 1805–1807 Woodward plan includes triangular-shaped Harmonie Park and Madison Avenue, a street radiating out from Grand Circus Park ( WN27). The area was settled by Germans. In 2007 Detroit's Downtown...
Originally a German neighborhood, this area was named Greektown for the Greeks who settled here in the early twentieth century. Greektown comprises a small enclave of Late Victorian, two-, three-, and four-story red brick commercial buildings...
The Detroit Symphony Orchestra conceived Orchestra Place (1997, Rossetti Associates; 3663 Woodward Avenue) as an urban renewal project that expanded the function of historic Orchestra Hall ( WN55) with the Max M. Fisher Music Center (...
In 1910 the Detroit City Planning Commission, under the administration of Mayor Philip Breitmeyer, asked Edward H. Bennett, a well-known urban planner, to prepare suggestions for the orderly development of the fast-growing city, including a center of...
New Center consists of four primary buildings linked by skywalks: the former General Motors (Cadillac Place; WN76), Fisher ( WN77), New Center (Albert Kahn Building, 1931, Albert Kahn; 7430 2nd Avenue), and...
This exclusive residential neighborhood consists of nearly three hundred large houses constructed mostly between 1915 and 1940 after plans by such well-known architects as Minoru Yamasaki, Frank Lloyd Wright, Maginnis and Walsh, Richard Marr, Alvin E. Harley, and J. F....
Situated in the narrows of the Detroit River, midway between the Canadian and American shores and within sight of the Renaissance Center and the central business district lies Detroit's island park, Belle Isle. A glory of idyllic scenery and meandering canals, this...
Surrounded by Detroit and named for Colonel John Francis Hamtramck, a German French Canadian who was the first American military commander of Detroit, Hamtramck is a Polish enclave of workingmen's dwellings. As waves of immigrants from eastern Europe flooded the United States,...
Highland Park, formerly called Whitewood, straddles Woodward Avenue about ten miles northwest of downtown Detroit. It is part of the ten thousand acres northwest of Detroit that were opened after the fire of 1805. Highland Park remained rural until about 1904, when the first...
Grosse Pointe comprises five communities—Grosse Pointe Shores, Grosse Pointe Woods, Grosse Pointe Farms, Grosse Pointe, and Grosse Pointe Park. (Grosse Pointe Shores extends into Macomb County, but is included here for the purposes of this...
The counties of the Suburban Satellite Region lie in a crescent around the south, west, and north of Detroit and Wayne County. With Detroit and Wayne County, they constitute Michigan's only metropolis. The land is undulating, often hilly terrain, dotted with many...
Settlement began in Monroe County in about 1785 when large numbers of French Canadians from Detroit carved out homesteads on the Rivière Aux Raisins (River Raisin) and the adjoining creeks. This settlement represents one of the first major satellite...
Ann Arbor is located in the Huron River valley and the city's buildings rise into the embracing hills. The city is the seat of Washtenaw County and the home of the University of Michigan. Two commercial districts developed here, one downtown and the other along...
Thirty miles west of Detroit, where an Indian trail crossed the Huron River, Ypsilanti was the camping and burial ground for several Indian tribes. In 1809, three French explorers built a log Indian trading post on the west bank of the river. In 1823, Benjamin Woodruff...
Although it was situated along the Saginaw Trail (now Woodward Avenue), a main traffic corridor, Birmingham was a predominantly agricultural community during the nineteenth century. The advent of the railroad in 1839 and the electric interurban in 1896 brought Birmingham...
Romeo is situated among rolling orchard-covered hills now encroached by development as urbanism creeps in from the south. Originally known as Indian Village for the Chippewa who wintered here, and renamed Hoxies' Settlement, Romeo was settled in the 1820s by New Englanders and...
With the opening of the Erie Canal in 1825, New Yorkers and New Englanders migrated westward into Michigan following the early Indian trails. Later, roads and railroads replaced the trails as the migration routes. Settlers took up claims, cleared land, and...
Jackson was settled at the intersection of the Grand River and an Indian trail. People built gristmills on the river, the state opened a prison in 1838, and the Michigan Central Railroad arrived in 1841. By 1871 Jackson was a major railroad junction, with shops and yards, and...
Settled on the St. Joseph River in 1832, Hillsdale was incorporated as a city in 1855. It was at the junction of the Ypsilanti, Lansing and Fort Wayne branch and the Lake Shore and Michigan Southern railroads. Like many southern Michigan villages, Hillsdale...
