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The Hotel Pontchartrain in Detroit, seen earlier today around 1907 in this post. Now it's circa 1910-1915 and it has a few extra floors trimmed Second Empire style to look like a giant mansard roof. Not too many years later it was torn down to make way for a bank. Detroit Publishing glass negative. View full size.
You can see the edge of the roof of old City Hall in the right foreground and the still standing (and still beautiful) old Wayne County Courthouse in the background on the left.
Believe it or not, there are a few of us who are still managing to live, work and even recreate after dark in Detroit! The lights in this city aren't exactly out yet.
The Soldiers and Sailors Monument was dedicated in 1872 and sat in the same spot until 2002, at which time it was moved south a hundred feet or so for a park layout in the area. A copper box was discovered beneath the monument at that time, but alas, all the papers had been rotted away by seepage. A medallion was also discovered and it is now in the Detroit Historical Museum.
My father worked at this hotel. Detroit was at one time a beautiful city, a safe place to go downtown after dark. The first-run movies were shown downtown first then out to the neighborhoods. The burlesk shows were to the right of the hotel. Detroit's main street, U.S. 10, started at the Detroit River and ended in Seattle. Have pictures of my son and older daughter at the Seattle end.
67 years ago today I drove up to Bay City, Michigan, from Detroit for a Sunday drive with my future wife. We heard about Pearl Harbor on the drive back.
Actually the interesting thing about this picture is the street on the right side of the picture has only cars, but the street on left has at least 8 or 9 horse drawn carriages. The horses outnumber the cars on that street.
To me, the main difference between this photo and the one taken in 1907 is the presence of so many more automobiles and a bit fewer pedestrians scattered throughout the scene in the later photo. Assuming a date of 1915 for this photo, this gives an insight to the rapid progress of automotive technology. It's probably not unlike the number of household computers that sprang up between 1996 and 2004.
It's too bad Detroit went to hell in a handbasket, and now the whole state of Michigan is going down too.
Embedding is beyond me but the monument remains:
The Civil War dead getting a tinch more respect than below!
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