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Here are a few things that really make me happy today.
Finally getting some face time with Polish Revolutionary War hero Thaddeus Kosciuszko,
An impromptu Kosciuszko serenade at sundown,
Dogs wading in the lagoon near the old Palmer Park lighthouse,
Public pools open for business,
Biking through Senator Palmer’s untouchable woods.
Tags: detroit party marching band, dogs, palmer park, public pools, tadeusz kosciuszko
Well, really. Just scenes of a cannon. And some fauna.
We drove into Rouge Park on Saturday to see what we could see of the nearly 1200-acre mega-park that’s scheduled to close on July 1 along with 76 other Detroit parks. I will admit, sheepishly, that I did not know this park existed until it showed up on the closures list last week.
The way I’ve heard it, the City dropped $1.3 million on several plots of farmland along the Rouge River back in the 1920s. Then they didn’t do a lot with it. As a consequence, Rouge Park is ringed by all of your standard-issue parks features (and then some: a golf course, 11 tennis courts, 14 baseball diamonds and THREE public pools, plus pony stables and an AeroModelers field), hugging a huge, quiet interior of woods, prairie and wetlands.
We found this cannon. I think it might be a commemorative reproduction, but I’m not sure of what or from when. Any ideas?
What happened in Sevilla in 1779?
Or had to do with Spain? The Battle of Baton Rouge? Something about the Revolutionary War?
Three of what?
Who or what is ENCO? And for that matter, who or what is JAMM (or is it “Jammz”)?
We saw three of these old club houses scattered around the park. I love them like Wade loves Cindy, although, it seems, they need more productive love than I can give them.
We tried, and failed, to find a trail on the River, and now I’m in hot pursuit of some trail maps. We were about to leave when we saw this pretty lady relaxing in the tall grass with her friend.
I wish I had taken more photos of all of the activity thrumming around in the park; I really do not want to make this park look neglected or underused. There were low-flying model planes humming over Jefferson Field, lots of families out grilling and swimming, bikers and hikers circling the trails and clean-up crews picking up trash on the streets. But the grace of a park like this is how easy it is to get a little lost in it.
Today at 5:00 PM, in a show of support for the closing parks, will be gathering at Palmer, Riverside, Rouge and other parks across the city. It’s been promoted as a protest rally, and if that’s your style, I’m sure you’re free to bring bullhorns and big posters. But I think it will make just as much of a statement if you just show up to picnic, play tennis or basketball, go swimming, ride bikes, grill out or take a nap in the shade. I will be at Palmer Park to PAR-TY. IN THE U.S.A. See you there.
More information on Facebook (where you can also follow The Night Train) and via the Friends of Rouge Park.
If you’re going to be at Palmer and would like to say hello, send me an email.
Tags: detroit aeromodelers, detroit park closures, detroit parks, friends of rouge park, palmer park, river rouge park, riverside park, rouge park
Hey, friends. Last week we grumbled about our dismay that Fort Wayne might close. Then we had a nice afternoon in Palmer Park, and it saved the day.
Today, the Bing administration released a list of 77 parks slated for closure on July 1. Among them: Palmer Park.
Remember when we shared that poem about the demolition of the Lewis Cass house, written in the 1880s?
Here’s General Friend Palmer on the former Territorial Governor’s home:
At the time of the demolition of the Cass [House], it was suggested by some one that the City of Detroit buy it and remove it to East Grand Circus Park, but no one in authority took any interest in the matter, the idea died out and the old historic relic when to the rag bag, so to speak.
What an attraction it would be at the present day, not only to our own citizens, but to the citizens of the entire country as well. Just witness in the season how the crowds of visitors from abroad press and crowd through the rustic log cabin at Palmer Park, a structure so suggestive, in a way, of the early days, and besides it is situated quite near (little over a stone’s throw) Mad Anthony Wayne’s road through the woods to Pontiac, over which his army marched with its artillery and wagon train so long ago.
There are many things that vex me about the closure of some of these parks. (Like the 1200-acre Rouge Park. Which is 40% bigger than Central Park.)
The City Council has a job to do and I respect that. It pains me, but I do.
But because I am who I am and I do what I do, I’m also pretty worried about the potential loss of these tremendous natural and historical resources. Because as the General observed in 1906, when they’re gone, they’re gone, and not just for us, but for everyone downstream of our moment in time who looks back and wonders why we didn’t have the foresight to take care of what we had when we had it.
Anyway. We’ll be keeping up on it.
Our Sunday started thus: We had just enjoyed some bloodies (well, a Blatz for my sweetheart, who’s never taken to Queen Mary) and a big plate of breakfast at the Bronx.
Then we set out (soberly, I swear) for Delray. Our mission: Fort Wayne, Detroit’s star-shaped riverbank bulwark against British/Canadian troops that never came.
News came through the wire two weeks ago that proposed cuts in the City Council’s budget could result in the indefinite closure of Fort Wayne to the public. Since the Council overturned the Mayor’s veto, I guess that could be imminent. We wanted to get a visit in before the Fort started popping up in the Flickr feeds of ruin-creepers.
Maybe it’s already too late. When we got to Fort Wayne and drove through the gates on a gorgeous Sunday afternoon, perfect for a walk around the old fortress walls, as I dug through my purse for some cash, the parking attendant told us that they weren’t open yet.
“What do you mean, yet?” we asked. “It’s 2:30 in the afternoon.”
“I mean, for the season,” she said. “We were supposed to open Memorial Day weekend. But we didn’t. And now it’s up in the air.”
So we drove back to the city center, my heart in my lap. We tried to think of another outing. He wanted to go to the museum. I wanted to take a walk by the river. We couldn’t find anywhere to park. The museum sounded stuffy. We drove back home.
Here’s the thing: Detroit has real problems. The budget is one of them. An empty 19th-century garrison post, understandably, does not rank high on the list of financial priorities, if it ranks at all. It’s not a space like Belle Isle where people go to grill, bike, fish and relax. Tucked away in Southwest, it doesn’t have the gaping majesty (or danger to pedestrians) of an abandoned tower. Any place that claims flea markets, ghost hunting and Civil War reenactments as its biggest tourist draws is probably a hard sell.
But Detroit’s ongoing failure to tend to its historical legacy is tiring. It makes me so uneasy to imagine Fort Wayne — a place Civil War soldiers returned to and, a century later, drafted Vietnam soldiers decamped — shuttered and crumbling.
Later in the day, some friends called and asked me to join them for a picnic in Palmer Park. Eager for the chance to save the day from my own storminess, I hopped on my bike, stopped at the liquor store for a bottle of champagne and pedaled south on Woodward to 7 Mile.
Palmer Park, the gorgeous, sprawling space granted to the city by Senator Thomas Witherell Palmer — on the condition that its virgin forest be left alone — was a little muddy and unkempt the last time I visited. It was early in March, so I may have been quick to judge. This summer, the park is overrun with geese and there are huge, hungry mosquitoes everywhere (thanks, at least in part, to the lagoon you see in this picture), but it’s crowded and full of activity: people out grilling, jogging, walking dogs, playing tennis and basketball, or just hanging out by their cars and blaring thumpy music through their speakers.
For a while we sat at the fountain and watched a drum circle.
(In its original setting.)
(Today. Photo by Dan Austin/BuildingsofDetroit.com)
Noah rang Senator Palmer’s Spanish bell.
Then we enjoyed some refreshments at a picnic table in the shadow of some lofty pines and an empty swimming pool.
No one actually brought any food, as it turned out, so we left Palmer Park after a few drinks and biked all the way to Mexicantown, a 10-mile trip through a corridor of burned-out buildings in Highland Park, the brick stoops of Clairmount, a long, open stretch on Rosa Parks, into Woodbridge (where I was promised GOATS! but they weren’t out) and Corktown and across the new Bagley pedestrian bridge to margaritas and taco paradise.
A day that started with defeat (OK: delicious brunch, followed by defeat) turned into one of the best, most promising days of the season.
Fort Wayne could close; Lizzie Merrill’s fountain is dry and pillaged; the Senator’s cabin is tagged-up and guarded by clouds of bloodthirsty insects.
But on Sunday evening, the sun was low and the breeze was warm. Kids rode bikes in their driveways and people sat on their porches. At Los Galanes, we watched from the patio while a couple slow-danced in the street.
Detroit’s past matters. A lot. Detroit’s future matters more. But at the risk of sounding trite and kind of drunk, sometimes you need to enjoy where you are and what you’re doing in your own present moment and let that count for something.
Tags: biking detroit, bronx bar detroit, merrill fountain, mexicantown, palmer park, thomas w. palmer
In 1895 Palmer gave 120 acres of adjacent land to the City of Detroit as a park. Two years later the Log Cabin itself was added to the gift. In 1897 the area was officially designated
as Palmer Park.I do
Palmer Pakr Som
Something I hope you all realize about this blog is that I’m playing it by ear. As a former editor, I know better than to go without an editorial plan, but despite a few half-hearted attempts, I don’t have one. I have no formal scholarly training in history at all, let alone Detroit history. I can barely operate our digital camera.
On good days, I like to think that imparts a sense of adventure around here, and on especially self-inflated days, I think that the thrill of discovery is what my blog is really about. On dark days, I feel like a hack of the highest order, and in frustrated moments, I realize I’m a few steps too far behind some pretty obvious details.
Today, for instance, I made the connection between General Friend Palmer, whose memoirs we explore here on a semi-regular basis, and the more famous Detroit Palmer, Thomas W. Palmer, whose sprawling property at present-day 7 Mile and Woodward encompassed Palmer Woods, Palmer Park and the Detroit Golf Club.
They were cousins. OF COURSE. Thomas W. Palmer gave the eulogy at the General’s funeral, the text of which is printed in Early Days in Detroit. Yet I knew so little about Thomas W. until today.
He was born in 1830, in a brick house at Jefferson and Griswold. After a year at the University of Michigan, which he gave up because of a problem with his eyes, Palmer left to travel the world with some of his friends from school, paying his way by “the Daguerrean arts.”
Long story short, when he came back to Detroit he got into lumbering, farming and real estate, and then into politics, serving as a state Senator from 1879-1880 and in the US Senate from 1883-1889, where he became an advocate for women’s suffrage. After his term in the Senate, President Benjamin Harrison appointed him Minister to Spain.
His cousin the General shares this story about T.W.’s return to Europe after the traipses of his youth:
After forty one years had passed, Senator Palmer returned to Spain, to Cadiz. Not as a college graduate just released from his Alma Mater and on a voyage of pleasure or adventure, but as the accredited minister of this great republic to the court of Spain.
… One afternoon, in walking around the ramparts, we came across a somewhat dilapidated Spaniard who was seated on the outer wall fishing in the bay.
Senator Palmer accosted him in Spanish and said, “Well, my friend, I see you are fishing here yet after all these years,”
“Yes, Señor, but how many years?”
“Forty years,” responded the senator.
“Oh,” said the chap with the rod, “that was my father.” And they two had, by constant use all the years, at that point worn quite an indenture in the stone coping of the wall.
Thomas W. Palmer inherited the land that is now Palmer Park from his Grandfather, a Supreme Court Judge of the Michigan territory. In 1885, Palmer commissioned a rustic log cabin on the land to use as a summer home.
In 1895, Palmer donated the land to the city of Detroit for use as a park, on the condition that none of the virgin forest be destroyed (it was sometimes claimed that there was a greater variety of indigenous trees and shrubs in Palmer Park than in Europe. Any arborists out there want to take that on?)
In 1897, he donated the cabin, too. The park was dedicated to him the following year.
On the lawn near the cabin is a massive bell, old-world and emerald with patina. Cast in Spain in 1793, then taken to Mexico, it was a gift to the Senator from some of his political friends:
At one point, Palmer’s cabin was home to other mementos of his service in Spain, including a plow and ox yoke from the convent La Rabida, whose prior convinced Queen Isabella to send Christopher Columbus on his expedition to the Americas. And General Friend writes adoringly of some of Lizzie Palmer’s “old-time” furniture, as well as some curious leather fire buckets he admired.
Palmer Park is also home to the Merrill Fountain, which was commissioned by Lizzie and unveiled at Campus Martius, in front of the old Detroit Opera House, in 1901. If you zoom in really close on this image of Woodward Avenue in 1917 (via Shorpy), you can see where it used to be:
The turtle is beheaded, but I love the cattails and the bearded fish:
The fountain is no longer in working order. It was moved to Palmer Park in 1926.
For more on Thomas W. Palmer, I enjoyed skimming this biography, by Agnes M. Burton.
But for more, extraordinarily more, on Palmer Park, please check out this beautiful Souvenir, published by the Silas Farmer Company in 1908.
“Asked what his motive was in donating Palmer Park to the people of Detroit,” writes the author, “His answer was: ‘The good of everybody.’”
Tags: early days in detroit, general friend palmer, lizzie palmer, merrill fountain, palmer park, thomas w. palmer, virgin forest