Evidence of lackluster city zoning is still evident in Delray. While there may have been a historical absence of zoning in the heavily industrial, immigrant community of Southeast Detroit, the residents of Delray were never adequately served by city zoning. Despite high-density residential settlement, Delray was never zoned residential, and through time this allowed for inadequate environmental and...
Twelve years after the Detroit Parks and Recreation Department entered into service, they proudly announced that they had become the “largest and most active [Department] in our City Government.” Originally created to prevent overlaps in event planning, the department expanded along with the booming city of Detroit. The total acreage of Detroit parks from 1940-52 jumped from 4163 to 5736 acres,...
Delray residents have been living with the roar of 18-wheeler trucks and congested morning commutes off the Interstate 75 since 1961. The interstate divided Historic Delray, with West Fort Street to the south and Lafayette Boulevard to the north, and created what the City of Detroit called a "natural boundary" between the industrial and residential quarters. At first glance at the land use map prepared...
Until the mid-twentieth century, the north-bordering area of Detroit's east side Black Bottom neighborhood was known as “Paradise Valley.” Its name referred to the high number of black-owned businesses that occupied Hastings Street and St. Antoine Street, the heart of the entrepreneurial neighborhood. At the time, it was the only place with businesses that would all serve blacks. In the 1940s,...
After World War II in 1943, the city of Detroit had trouble dealing with the huge influx of people moving to Detroit to find factory jobs and returning war veterans. White residents of Detroit were very reluctant to allow black people live in the same neighborhood so new and returning migrants were confined to live in certain areas away from white neighborhoods. Even though there were inadequate living...
The photograph taken by the agency created to document and appraise Detroit’s East Side neighborhoods in 1949 captured an important aspect of the history of urban agriculture in Detroit—African American’s contributions to urban agriculture. Seeing as the photograph was a piece of data used to assess the state of the neighborhood, it is clearly labeled. The date (7-26-49) is nicely written...
Betty DeRamus is seen as a Detroit legend to some. Her parents moved to Detroit in the 40s when Betty was a baby. She lived in Detroit’s Black Bottom neighborhood as a child – her parents moved from the Black Bottom neighborhood when she was in high school. While growing up in Black Bottom Betty noticed the dilapidated housing; she said one house she lived in was desperately in need of a paint...
In January of 1942 in the brink of World War II(WWII), Federal Price Administrator Leon Henderson ordered that the city of Detroit to stop making automobiles for citizens and start military production for the United States. Factories stopped production and began to make weapons, planes, trucks, and tanks for the Allied forces. President Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered citizens to unite and help our factories...
In the aftermath of a riot that started on June 20, 1943 due to racial tension between whites and blacks, residents of Black Bottom and Paradise Valley try to repair their lives and their businesses. Hastings Street is temporarily disabled even a month after the riots. Community members of this neighborhood look at the ruin of Paradise Valley in dismay, for their prized entertainment and business district...
In 1942, in the heat of the Second World War, the United States Department of Agriculture published a 16-page pamphlet to be distributed to homes and families across the United States. The pamphlet was intended as an informational packet to facilitate the successful implementation of Victory Gardens in American’s backyards. The pamphlet detailed the nutritional, economical, and national benefits...