hazen pingree

You are currently browsing articles tagged hazen pingree.

That we may be more worthy of the place we now hold in the world.

November 23, 2011 in History, Holidays | No comments

(Source)

Thanksgiving as we know it today — celebrated on the last Thursday of November — was nationally, officially proclaimed by Abraham Lincoln in 1863. But Thanksgiving had been celebrated locally, and proclaimed by individual states, long before that.* It was kind of a New England thing  — pilgrims, and all that — but over time it spread through the Northern states and territories, and wherever New Englanders were going.

Michigan became an early adopter of the Thanksgiving tradition when it celebrated its first official Thanksgiving on November 25, 1824, by proclamation of Governor Lewis Cass — a New Englander, under whose term boatloads of New Englanders came to the Territory. Successive governors took up the call, and by the 1840s — when other states were just begin to proclaim Thanksgivings — it was old-hat. Here is Governor John Barry’s 1844 proclamation, signed at the Capitol in Detroit and published in the Michigan Farmer:

Whereas, the time is approaching when, according to a long-established and well-approved custom observed by most of the States in the Union, the people unite in rendering Thanksgiving and praise to the great Giver of all good; and

Whereas, though sanctioned by no legal authority, it has been customary for the Chief Executive officer of the several States to recommend a particular day to be set apart for such purpose; and

Whereas, it is a duty incumbent on all to render thanks to the Most High for his divine protection;

Now, therefore I, John S. Barry, Governor of the State of Michigan, have thought proper to appoint, and by these presents do appoint, Thursday, the thirtieth day of November next, as a day of Public Thanksgiving and Prayer, and I do hereby recommend to the people of this State to set apart and observe the same accordingly, that they assemble on that day in their several places of public worship, and with united hearts render unfeigned thanks to the great Maker and preserver of all things, for the numberless blessings vouchsafed to us during the past year, that he has preserved our lives, maintained peace within our borders, stayed the pestilence, averted famine, rewarded the husbandman with abundant harvests, and preserved to us inviolate our civil and religious institutions, and, with deep humility, confessing our sins, give thanks for all his numerous mercies and humbly ask a continuance of Divine favors.

Just for contrast, and for fun, here is Hazen Pingree’s Thanksgiving proclamation from1900. I love the emphasis he places on justice, and the need for us to be generous, and to earn the blessings we enjoy from our place in the world:

In accordance with the proclamation of the President of the States, and in compliance with a venerable custom, I, Hazen S. Pingree, Governor of the State of Michigan, hereby designate and appoint Thursday, the twenty-ninth day of November, 1900, as a day of thanksgiving and praise to the God of men and nations, for the manifold blessings received during the past year.

Let us this day be thankful for the abundant yield of our fields, and for the freedom from pestilence and famine.

Let us remember the ready response which has come from sympathetic hearts, touched by the calamities of our fellow citizens, the generous contribution to those whose homes have been destroyed by tempest and flood, and the development of humanity in the of methods which alleviate the sufferings attendant upon war.

Let us as we unite in our services of thanksgiving and praise, remember with gratitude the growing sense of justice among all classes of men, and the establishment of higher ideals of social life.

While we remember these blessings with thankfulness, let gratitude inspire us to so utilize our high powers of citizenship that we may be more worthy of the place we now hold among nations of the world.

How did Detroiters celebrate Thanksgiving? Besides the usual praying, feasting, and drinking, you could shoot your own turkey at the bar.

(*Side note: It was not unusual for state or local governments to declare a day of public Thanksgiving for any number of blessings and lucky strokes. In July 1849, an outbreak of cholera seemed to have passed Detroit by, and the city closed its schools and proclaimed a day of Thanksgiving that it had so far avoided the scourge. No such luck, as it turned out; in July, people started to die.)

Happy Thanksgiving, friends and readers! I am grateful for all of you. Also grateful that Detroit no longer suffers from cholera outbreaks.

Tags: , , , ,

July 11, 1796: Evacuation Day

July 11, 2011 in History, Holidays | 1 comment

[The Battle of Fallen Timbers]

Hey, Detroit! We are lucky. You know why?

We get TWO Independence Days. (Actually, if you count Canada Day on July 1, which we celebrate with international fireworks, we get three.)

Besides the terrific  festivities we enjoy with the rest of our country on the Fourth, we can celebrate another milestone in our struggle to wrest control from the British: Evacuation Day, July 11, 1796.

Of course, Detroit belonged to the United States, in theory, after the Revolutionary War. But the British retained control of their fort at Detroit, for a host of reasons. In general, the triumph of the Treaty of Paris yielded to years of boundary disputes, diplomacy and intrigue. In the Northwest, a tribal confederacy demanded that the new federal government recognize their claims to the region. The United States didn’t have a military presence here, and George Washington was reluctant to start an Indian war. So the British stayed. And they encouraged the Indians to stay, too.

In 1790, after escalating skirmishes between Indians and settlers, George Washington sent the first offensive to present-day Ohio. Poor training and bad planning led to two massive and bloody U.S. defeats before Washington put Mad Anthony Wayne in charge. His victory at the Battle of Fallen Timbers (near present-day Toledo) ended the Northwest Indian War and rendered British excuses for keeping forts in the region null and void.

The Jay Treaty of 1794 made it official: the British had to leave their western forts, once and for all, by 1796.

And leave they did. On July 11, 1796  British “evacuated,” and the United States raised the flag over Fort Detroit. General Wayne was sick, so he left Colonel Hamtramck in charge. Though it is often reported that Hamtramck personally hoisted the Stars and Stripes, Captain Moses Porter actually did the honors; Hamtramck did not arrive in Detroit until July 13.

Did the British renegade Simon Girty really freak out and ride his horse across the river to Canada when he saw the American boats approaching? Probably not, but that is hilarious.

Most people who lived in Detroit at the time were French, so the transfer of power was received as more of a collective shoulder-shrug than a patriotic triumph. And all of these acrobatics — the defeat of the Western Confederacy, the  imperfect Jay Treaty, the British loss of influence in the Northwest — led to the War of 1812 a generation later, when the British took back our fort. And then burned down the White House.

But that is another story. And a hundred years later, with Detroit full of wealth and people and industry and American optimism, and the British long gone, the centennial of Evacuation Day was cause for celebration indeed.

Wrote the New York Times:

At the approaching celebration there will be a grand parade of all the civic and military organizations … ; patriotic speeches, with politics barred; a riotous waste of powder (for Detroit has been skipping the Fourth of July for several years in view of this event), and fireworks of all nations in the evening.

[American flag illustration from Centennial Celebration of the Evacuation of Detroit by the British, 1896]

Everyone who was anyone in Detroit came out to speechify on the grounds of the unfinished Federal Building, which stood where Fort Detroit used to be. A number of orators tied the Evacuation of Fort Detroit to the last unfinished business of the Revolutionary War. One son of the War of 1812 brought a spyglass that his grandfather swiped from a British ship during the Battle of Lake Erie.

Buildings were decked in red, white and blue bunting. Mayor Pingree invited important visitors from all over the country. They enjoyed lunch on a riverboat, where they were entertained by a mandolin orchestra. Then there was a big military parade.

I am not sure if Evacuation Day was ever celebrated in such a fashion again, but I doubt it. We may not even need to bring it back. But if you need one more reason to have a picnic, drink a glass of champagne, see a mandolin orchestra or set off fireworks on your street today, here it is. Happy Evacuation Day.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

Detroit’s other micro-funded public art project

February 14, 2011 in Best of THE NIGHT TRAIN, History | 4 comments

In 1901, 60-year-old Hazen Pingree — Detroit mayor, Michigan governor, potato-patcher, Idol of the People —  died in London on his return trip from an African safari. As soon as the report hit the streets in Detroit (“within minutes,” reports Dan at BuildingsofDetroit.com), readers started calling the paper offering donations for a monument.

The iconic seated Ping that has presided over Grand Circus Park since 1904 was funded by over 5,000 people. The average donation to the project: between 25 cents and a dollar.

I know I said I didn’t really want to talk about Robocop (also, are we still talking about Robocop?), but the project’s much-ballyhoo’d Kickstarter campaign has made me that much more awed by and appreciative of how much people adored Hazen Pingree.

It also occurred to me that we’d be remiss if we neglected to mention, in our heated public debates about the Robocop statue, the heated public debate that raged for five years over the Scott Fountain on Belle Isle (and accompanying life-size statue of Jim Scott). When I’m really feeling bummed about Robocop, it’s nice to remember how many people really loathed Jim Scott (and if indeed he was a scumbag, he was a REAL LIFE scumbag, and not just an imaginary robot). And that turned out a-okay. Except the fountain keeps getting scrapped. But other than that. It’s a joy to behold. Perhaps Robocop will be as well.

Tags: , , ,

Michigan Governors: Hazen S. Pingree

October 6, 2010 in Best of THE NIGHT TRAIN, History | 5 comments

(You can get this and other vintage reproduction campaign buttons at the always marvelous City Bird.)

So much to say about Hazen Stuart Pingree, the Idol of the People, and one of Detroit’s most famous and beloved mayors. You probably know the basics of his legacy:

  • His “potato patch plan” to turn vacant lots into vegetable gardens to feed the depressed city’s hungry
  • Advocacy of public ownership of private utility monopolies, like gas and electricity
  • Public works projects to alleviate unemployment
  • Rooting out municipal corruption
  • Having the school board arrested
  • Fighting for 8-hour workdays and equitable wages
  • Shoemaker!
  • Friends with Teddy Roosevelt (who wore his Rough Riders uniform to Hazen’s turn-of-the-century party)
  • Eternally gazing northward from his massive perch in Grand Circus Park

Hazen was elected Governor in 1896 and had originally planned to hold his Mayorship and the Governor’s chair concurrently, that feisty so-and-so. But the State Supreme Court wouldn’t have it, so it was off with Ping to Lansing, where the adored Mayor found himself a struggling and obstructed Governor.

His final address after his second term is full of vinegar and vitriol. His indomitable spark leaps right off the page, but for a man so successful for most of his career, his frustration at this final stretch is kind of heart-yanking. It reminds me of some of our Presidents who really did not like being President or consider their Presidencies the high point of their professional lives. (Thomas Jefferson, anyone?)

Here’s how the speech begins:

I enlisted as a private at the commencement of the civil war and have two honorable discharges, which I prize. I have been a citizen and taxpayer of Detroit since 1865. My ancestors fought for their country in both the Revolution and the war of 1812. I mention these facts to show that there is nothing in my record to indicate that I should not be treated with proper respect as an individual.

The office which I have held for the last four years should have commanded the respect of every loyal citizen in the State, whatever the opinion of myself may have been. That it did not command the respect of the people of Lansing is proved by the fact that during the whole four years of my term as Governor I have only once been invited to the home of a single resident of the capital city of Michigan.

Awww. No one wanted to have Hazen over for dinner. That hurts!

The speech goes on to enumerate all of the reforms he attempted as Governor, with great expositions on tax equity for big corporations (famously, the railroads), direct election of Senators and protection of Michigan forests. But at every corner, he blames the obstruction of the Supreme Court and the Legislature (particularly the “Immortal Nineteen” in the Senate, his sworn enemies) for failing to make bigger, better reforms. On the subject of the Senate’s failure to ratify a  Constitutional amendment that had overwhelmingly passed by popular vote, for instance, he said:

The Senate, however, as it has always done in the past, defeated the bill without assigning any reason for its action. This action of the Senate is too idiotic and boyish to discuss.

By the end of his address, Hazen is jaded and sharp-tongued as to how he may have been more successful in the Governor’s office:

My experience during my political life, extending over a period of twelve years, has convinced me that in order to secure the full commendation of those who consider themselves the “better classes,” the Governor and other high officials must do nothing to antagonize the great corporations and the wealthy people. I am satisfied that I could have had the praise and support of our “best citizens” and our “best society,” and of the press of the State generally, if I had upheld those who have for years attempted to control legislation in their own interests, to the end that they might be relieved from sharing equally with the poor and lowly the burden of taxation. I would have been pronounced a good fellow and a great statesman.

Of course, Hazen Pingree was, and still is, considered a great statesman. But I think what makes him resonant with today’s Detroiters is not just his humane progressivism or the fact that, you know, we are totally into urban vegetable gardens right now.

Hazen Pingree did not suffer morons, hypocrites, evil people, cowards, or systemic dysfunction. He was a bully when he had to be and he could be rude. But he got. shit. done.

And the sweep of cynicism at the end of his career feels very contemporary to me.

Also bitter. Because he died a year later, in London. After an African safari. But long may he live, still idolized by the people of Detroit.

Pingree for Governor.

Tags: , , , ,

Biking Detroit: A brief history

June 22, 2010 in History | No comments

Wouldn’t it be terrific to know how this book …

… ended up at Powell’s Books in Portland, OR? Quite a journey for a children’s book self-published in 1935.

However it fulfilled its own Manifest Destiny, it’s back where it belongs now, thanks to a very nice man in my life who was out of town on a business trip for several days and returned home with this book (!!!) as a souvenir.

You know how I feel about this book, right? Of course you do.

***

Tonight I set out for a bike ride at dusk (maybe inspired by reports from the USSF group ride this afternoon).

(Bike aside: I ride a vintage Ernie Clements Falcon that I bought for $10 at a Goodwill in Beloit, Wisconsin.  This bike was built under a bad sign. Days after I bought it, after a long ride through mint fields, my front wheel collapsed, hurling me to the street. I had it shopped at least four times after that until finally, in Milwaukee, I brought it to a friend who ran a punk bike collective for a total rebuild. He was evicted from his warehouse a week later and my bicycle, in pieces, mouldered in his boarded-up work room. He broke in to save it and then left on a six-month train-hopping vision quest across the country. I finally retrieved it from him, still in pieces, days before I moved back to Michigan, where I shipped it off to another secret bike laboratory so it could at least meet the glory it so badly deserved. It’s been fully restored and I’ve never ridden a better bike. It’s amazing that I haven’t given up on this bike. I actually don’t even know why I was so bent — and so lavish with cash — on saving it.)

Didn’t make it more than two miles before my back wheel made a hideous kerchunk. Everything stopped. The wheel had buckled. All that was left for me was to wait in the 7-11 parking lot for my ride to come get me, then get home and nose around for something to blog about.

***

[Source]

This is Norman Conger. He was with the National Weather Service. Here he is in 1880 on top of his High Ordinary.

Writes Florence Marsh:

During the [18] seventies the bicycle was a low-built contraption with the pedals on the front wheel and was sometimes called a “Bone-shaker.” This was followed in the eighties by the “Ordinary,” with one high wheel and one small one in the rear. A short stepladder or horse block was used for mounting, and the driver was above the heads of foot passengers and rode at great peril. With the improved wheel, the number of cyclists increased rapidly. Gay parties were now seen on [Belle Isle] where wheels could be rented.

Marsh is quick to clarify that the bicycle craze in Detroit didn’t really blow up until the 1890s, lest you think that “the old-time feeling for fast horses and racing on the ice had gone.” Oh, no.

Bikes in Detroit were a big deal, as I’m sure many readers know far better and more thoroughly than I do. The bicycle’s popularity in Detroit, as I’ve gathered from a few reliable accounts, contributed directly to the development of the car. Henry Ford’s first functional automobile, the Quadricycle, was basically a bicycle with four wheels and an engine. The Dodge brothers started in bicycles. William Metzger, who opened one of the first automobile dealerships in the country, was a bicycle enthusiast and entrepreneur first. His bicycle shop, Huber & Metzger, opened in 1891. Metzger was also a founding member of the Detroit Wheelmen, a prominent cycling club that P.N. Jacobsen wrote about in Outing that same year:

Wheeling has attaineda height of popularity in Detroit heretofore unknown.The vilest of cedar block pavement in the last stages of decay on the principal streets until recently retarded that natural growth in wheeling interest that almost all American cities experienced during the last few years.
… Although this general improvement in the city pavement has been a great factor in the wonderful increase in cycling, there is another which has been equally potent in this respect, and that is the existence of a large and active wheel club.
A year has scarcely passed since this club, active in cycling as well as socially, was formed, yet it is now in a position to properly entertain visiting wheelmen, and when visiting other cities to have a representation creditable to a city of such importance as Detroit. The formation of the club resulted in a concentration of all cycling interests in the city into one large vigorous organization under the name of the “Detroit Wheelmen.”

The Club, Jacobsen wrote, was one of the largest the nationwide League, and its membership was growing rapidly. That year the Wheelmen organized a 300-mile ride to Niagara Falls.

The frenzy for cycling in Detroit reached fever-grade in the last decade of the 19th century. Again from History of Detroit for Young People:

The city streets were crowded with men, women, and children on wheels … High school boys prided themselves on century runs to Port Huron and back on the Saturday holidays. As you may imagine pedaling a hundred miles gave a boy a strenuous day. Cass Avenue was so crowded with wheels after dark that the street twinkled with the tiny headlights and the air was filled with the clanging of bicycle bells. Foot passengers waited in vain for a chance to cross the road.

(I know this is a coincidence, but this was during the Pingree years. Golden. Age.)

Bike fever coincided with vast improvement to the city’s streets, which were being paved and mended like never before. The Detroit News writes that many historians “attribute the automobile’s explosive growth in Detroit to the network of superior roads built for bicyclists.”

A century (and change) later, the bike is a big deal in Detroit all over again. David Byrne loves to bike here. The Metro Times loves to bike here. The Hub, the Wheelhouse, Tour de Hood and Charlie love to bike here. I like to bike here too.

Part of me wonders if this is just dumb luck: the automobile — which the bike, in some way, made way for — widened, flattened, smoothed over, and made necessary, Detroit’s thousands of spidery thoroughfares. Now we don’t need so many of them and we can safely bike our hearts out.

But don’t you want to believe that it was bikes that made those roads possible in the first place? And now we’re just taking back what’s rightfully ours?

Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

Detroit History Tour: Woodlawn Cemetery

March 18, 2010 in Best of THE NIGHT TRAIN, History | 10 comments

memoria in eterna

In the location of the large cemeteries such as Elmwood, Mt. Elliott, and the German Lutheran, considerable enterprise was displayed in choosing places remote from the city, but the wonderful increase in population and in size has made these places practically usless for the future. There is something sacred about the resting place of the dead and we are unwilling to disturb it … The time will probably come when all burials within the limits of the city will be forbidden.

Clarence M. Burton, The City of Detroit, Michigan, 1701 – 1922, 1922

Woodlawn Cemetery, on Woodward between 7 and 8 mile, opened in 1896. Since then, according to cemetery estimates, more than 71,000 have been interred there. When Mr. Burton wrote his history of the City, Woodlawn was relatively new, and interred, he estimated, about 6,000.

Old cemeteries are a strange joy. Even with the chill of death in the air (and the weird-out knowledge that woah! There are bodies ALL AROUND YOU), a well-planned, well-preserved 19th-century burial ground, with rustling shade trees, gentle hills and eye-popping marble monuments squeezed together in a concordance of grace and/or audacity — well, it’s a thing to behold.

woodlawn cemetery

Elmwood is about 50 years older than Woodlawn, and yard for yard, there are many, many more weeping angels, ornamental obelisks and showy statuary there. The tombstones are plainer at Woodlawn, but the real cry of defiance in the face of mortality are its dozens of private mausoleums, which give the place the character of a small, silent city.

hudson fw

Here’s the eternal home of J.L. Hudson, department store magnate, guarded by a pair of vicious Canadian geese, which tried more than once to chase me off.

couzens fw

At the top of one of Woodlawn’s highest hills, up twenty-five or so shallow stairs, the tiny Parthenon of James J. Couzens, Mayor of Detroit 1919-1922 and US Senator 1922-1936.

Couzens was an adamant philanthropist who, when his wife requested “a box to in which to keep my pearls,” presented a million dollars to the Children’s Hospital of Detroit. And in this eloquent essay, he advocates — with uncommon progressive zest — higher wages, treating your employees like human beings, and caring for even the least promising of your lot as an employer:

Ninety-seven percent of the ex-convicts employed by the Ford company have made good, though 45 percent of them have required a good deal of attention and patience. Such a corporation will even find some way of caring for its share of the world’s incompetents, for Society must care for them anyhow, and must add to the corporation’s tax roll if provision is not made for them on the pay roll.

hecker

The tomb of Colonel Frank Hecker, whose turreted chateau still stands at Woodward and E. Ferry.

dodge brothers fw

And the Dodge Brothers, with their unbelievable temple to (tacky?) Egyptian revival architecture, footed by two buff sphinxes.

Behind the Dodge family monuments is a burbling lake, ringed by gorgeous European-style garden memorials and staffed by a dozen or more of those nasty fighting geese. An elegantly crumbling stone bridge (flanked on either side by less elegant “Don’t feed the geese” signs) takes you across the water.

woodlawn bridge

garden monument fw

I always feel anxious in cemeteries at first, as if there is some way I should behave, a particular method of walking between narrowly plotted headstones (I think someone told me once to walk behind them, not in front of them, to avoid stepping on what would be a person’s face, but maybe I just imagined that). In Wisconsin, I used to jog through the local cemetery, but always a little ashamedly, always preparing a defense should someone pull me aside and tell me it was rude. Even being there as a tourist seems crass somehow, especially in a place like Woodlawn that buries people every day, places where families still gather to mourn.

The lines between public park and private emotional space are blurry at cemeteries, but after an hour or so on foot at Woodlawn I felt comfortable in — and comforted by — its serenity, and its hugeness, and its neo-Classical hubris.

And I love, please excuse the pun, how grounding they are. Those people you read about in history class, with streets and buildings named after them, weren’t phantoms spewing out old letters and pioneering big ideas from on high. They took up space! And wherever their souls are, if there is such a thing as a soul, their bodies are still right here with us, whether that is a reassuring fact or not.

hazen pingree fw

Here’s Hazen Pingree, in a relatively modest private mausoleum. Most of these have stained glass in the back walls, and when the sun shines through them, an eerie tinted glow emanates from their shackled doors.

stained glass inside fw

Besides long-dead city fathers and industry magnates, Woodlawn is also the last home of Rosa Parks, who is interred in the chapel mausoleum, as well as some Motown stars (Levi Stubbs and Lawrence Payton of the Four Tops; The Funk Brothers’ James Jamerson). Stevie Wonder and Diana Ross both have Woodlawn plots reserved. It’s like a secret society of city elders, and it’s not hard to imagine the whole place as a circle of friends.

There are tons more pictures on The Night Train’s Facebook page, including several of mausoleum doors, which I could not get enough of.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,