Sunday, March 01, 2009

It's Up to You Detroit!

Elect a crazy council, get crazy results
Nolan Finley - Detroit News

Nowhere is Michigan's brain drain on greater display than in the Detroit City Council chambers.

My hopes for Detroit's future faded as I watched the tape of last Tuesday's council meeting, the one that considered the Cobo Center expansion deal.

It was a tragic circus, a festival of ignorance that confirmed the No. 1 obstacle to Detroit's progress is the bargain basement leaders that city voters elect. The black nationalism that is now the dominant ideology of the council was on proud display, both at the table and in the audience....

This is the perhaps the harshest criticism of the Detroit City Council that I have read so far. However, even if you only watched a few minutes of last Tuesdays Council meeting, you know how true it rings.

Read the rest of the column here.

Sunday, January 25, 2009

Saturday, January 24, 2009

Mercy Hall Hospital of Detroit Rediscovered

I can now put a name to this previously unidentified house on Watson. While I was researching Brush Park on Virtual Motor City. I discovered this photograph from 1931. At the time, this was the location of Mercy Hall Hospital, a small Detroit facility for indigent cancer patients, founded by Loretta Mary Gibson. It relocated to 269 Mack in the 1940's.

Monday, January 19, 2009

Gone Missing

This section of Hendrie at Beaubien is one of the few blocks not yet devoured by the Art Center Townhomes and Carriage Houses development in the northern section of the Cultural Center District. This building existed in the summer of 2004, but it is no longer there and nothing has risen in its place.
July, 2004
December, 2008