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Detroit, Michigan, circa 1916. "Hotel Pontchartrain and Cadillac Square from City Hall." Detroit Publishing Co. glass negative. View full size. Earlier views of the hotel: Circa 1907, minus the upper floors, and 1910, minus most of the cars.
Look at the two trolleys in the foreground. They are pulling trailers!
A very rare thing in the US-trolley history.
I have been told that my father worked at the Hotel Pontchartrain. He died in 1929. In the late 1930s I went to the Gayety once in a while. Left Detroit in 1953. Left Michigan for Seattle in 1980.
The Cadillac Chair, a tribute to Detroit's founder, Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac, was dismantled in the 1940s after it became a popular seating location for "vagrants and drunks."
http://buildingsofdetroit.com/places/chair
There are definitely more than a few buildings in that picture still standing, and the square itself is still somewhat intact.
The Pontchartrain to me is the angular-brown-glass '70s building, with its "Top of the Pontch" restaurant, that fascinated the suburban kid I was then on terrifying but exciting field trips or sporting-event trips downtown. Was that a completely different building?
[The Hotel Pontchartrain in this photo was torn down in 1920. - Dave]
I think I'd be afraid nowadays to ask for something advertised as the "Cock of the Walk."
I was born in Detroit, but was 9 when my family moved us away. This looks like it was a really neat place. At one time.
Does anyone know what the "throne" was for?
To the right and behind the Pontchartrain, it looks like "HOTEL ROOKSTOO" What could it be?
["Room $1.00." - Dave]
On July 12, 1909, at the Soldiers & Sailors Monument, a large group of cars began a 2000+ mile trek known as the Glidden Tour. On that same spot, 100 years later, a small group of cars gathered to commemorate the event.
The Glidden Tour, along with the AAA, did much to promote road improvement in America by demonstrating the awful state of roadways of the day.
You'd never see that many people downtown today.
I believe we have a coathanger from this hotel hanging in my closet (in Atlanta). I guess I got it from my father, who probably got it with some of his father's clothes when my grandfather died in Pensacola, FL. I think my grandfather spent some of his youth in Michigan, and I've always wondered how, when, and under what circumstances this thing came to be in our hands...
Go to Detroit. The Gayety Burlesque and the Old Kentucky Whiskey Co. are almost next door to each other. And if you overshoot the Whiskey Co. on your way from the Burlesque, there's a Bar just past it.
Of all the buildings in this photo only two still stand, the old Wayne County building in the center background and the commercial building next to the Pontchartrain at the far right.
Note the "Worlds Salesmanship Congress - Automobile Salesmen" going on at the Pontchartrain Hotel that particular week. I wonder if car salesmen were as pushy then as they later became.
"leading tragedienne of the Yiddish theater."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertha_Kalich
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0435747/
The Soldiers and Sailors Monument at left honored those who served in the Civil War. Dedicated in 1871, it sat there until 2004, when it was moved about 100 feet for a street widening project.
In the base of the monument was found a copper box, which was taken to the Detroit Historical Society. It was opened only to find that water had seeped in. All that was found was a bronze medallion and papers (which had the names of all Detroit CW volunteers, according to papers of the day) that had turned to mush.
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