May 25, 2010
Perrin Cemetery: Troy
A semi-restored 19th-century family graveyard nestled between an airport and a Meijer.
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May 23, 2010
On writing, about history and otherwise
Unequaled Detroit historian Silas Farmer has some advice for you.
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May 17, 2010
One constant succession of amusements
Detroit Rock City, 1815.
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May 12, 2010
General Friend Palmer and The First State Election in Detroit
The Napoleon of Detroit auctioneers, a schooner on wheels, laughing gas at Michigan Gardens and the lost pomp of gubernatorial election season.
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May 10, 2010
More on cemeteries: Elmwood in the springtime
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May 3, 2010
Milwaukee’s Forest Home Cemetery
Visiting the beer baron delta, where Blatz, Schlitz and Pabst are all eternally locked in their boozy, intertwined legacies.
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April 27, 2010
Computer Perfection at the Ford Piquette Plant
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April 25, 2010
In which Henry Ford tells me to take it easy for a while
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April 21, 2010
More on James Scott, “Detroit’s Boss Romancer.”
In which he tells a corpse joke that made me laugh out loud in the library, and admits a penchant for bagpipes and white bowties.
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April 19, 2010
Tuesday with General Friend Palmer: The Lost Dauphin
Some Princes on a Dauphin-hunt visit Detroit in 1841, and buy some French books.
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April 16, 2010
The Free Press Building
I’m not really the kind of Detroit kid that does a lot of scrambling around in old buildings, for better or worse, and not for lack of trying — it was pretty much my greatest dream (besides greatness itself) when I was seventeen. Since then I’ve done a lot of personal tail-chasing about Detroit’s ruins. Ultimately I’ve accepted the mesmerizing reality of places like Michigan Central and the Packard Plant, even though I still have a (sometimes kind of nasty and spiteful) knee-jerk reaction to the national fixation on the city’s decay.
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April 13, 2010
Practically Blameless: James Scott and his Memorial Fountain
Was this “vindictive, scurrilous misanthrope” really so bad? The New York Times didn’t think so.
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April 8, 2010
Opening Day, 1963
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April 4, 2010
Michigan Garden & Detroit’s “Amusement King”
A public garden/museum of curiosities/menagerie/circus/theater/bathhouse in early Detroit.
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April 1, 2010
The Ford Piquette Plant (… Opens Today!)
In 1908, the first Model T rolled off the assembly line in Detroit at the Ford Motor Company’s Piquette Plant. The plant, which opened in 1904, was only open for a few years — in 1910, Ford moved production to its bigger and more famous Highland Park Factory — but history pushed forward pretty irrevocably in that skinny brick building at Milwaukee Junction.
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March 29, 2010
Tuesdays with General Friend Palmer: Goose Yokes
The remarkable story of a French immigrant, swindled into coming to America, finding himself in Detroit, starting a general store, and selling some legendary goose yokes. Also marbles.
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