May 24, 2019
Why is the robin Michigan’s state bird?
Many people have been dissatisfied with Michigan’s state bird — including the woman who personally organized the state bird campaign, immediately after the campaign concluded.
May 24, 2019
Many people have been dissatisfied with Michigan’s state bird — including the woman who personally organized the state bird campaign, immediately after the campaign concluded.
March 4, 2019
The “memorial park” cemetery was created from whole cloth by a California salesman. An interview with his grand-nephew.
January 29, 2018
The mid-century mausoleum may be under-appreciated and rarely visited, but most cemeteries have one. Turns out, it’s kind of a Detroit original.
November 21, 2017
We have pheasants. Why don’t we have turkeys? Or do we?
July 28, 2017
Michigan used to be on Central Time. Things changed.
March 26, 2017
Why a Detroiter who made a fortune in the funeral business opened his own cemetery.
February 11, 2017
The cemetery on Woodward Avenue is the final resting place of many of the most important Detroiters of the 20th century.
December 22, 2016
Victorian-era shops of Detroit, and their eccentric wares and keepers.
November 23, 2016
Let’s keep this new tradition alive.
November 3, 2016
Pay your respects to a suffragist this election season.
August 22, 2016
This post is part of my ongoing, slow-going effort to visit every cemetery in Detroit. To give you a sense of how slow-going this effort is, I took these photos of Grand Lawn two summers ago. Time marches on. So does this project.
March 25, 2016
The woman who sat on every executive committee ever formed.
December 17, 2015
We almost built it next to Palmer Park. Then we almost didn’t build it in Royal Oak.
July 24, 2015
Detroit has changed a lot in 314 years. It has also changed a lot in five years.
May 12, 2015
Incorporated in 1867, Woodmere is “the cradle of cremation in the Northwest.”
March 24, 2015
Born in a gold rush town, Detroit historian Clarence Burton amassed — and kept in his house! — the most important archive of books, papers, and manuscripts on Detroit, Michigan, and the Old Northwest ever collected.