Road Trip to Detroit

Cities in Decline

For my birthday, Brad treated me to a weekend in Detroit. The Cranbrook Academy in Bloomfield Hills http://www.cranbrookart.edu/ had a Cities in Decline exhibit. It was somewhat ironic that Bloomfield Hills, one of the suburban communities that has contributed to Detroit's decline had about 80% of the exhibit and the other 20% was downtown at the Museum of Contemporary Art. The Cranbrook is an amazing place to visit on its own but we only spent the morning there.

The afternoon took us downtown to Woodward Ave just north of Comerica Park home to the greatest ball team in the world. You will see from the pictures that initially the neighbourhood seems a bit sketch but surrounding the abandoned buildings are the biggest hospital buildings you have ever seen - all spanking new. It seems they are also renovating the buildings for purposes of creating lofts. Some looked pretty cool. It was strange to see suburban townhouses being built in Brush Park which is a huge neighbourhood that was all abandoned and is now being redeveoloped. Real estate is cheaper downtown Detroit than any of the suburbs.

We went to the Museum of Contemporary Art. The one thing that really interested me was book that I picked up on the Heidelberg Project http://www.heidelberg.org/ Some crazy guy painted his house with dots. The neighbourhood joined in and created a neighbourhood of crazy art houses. Periodically the City tears one down but the neighbourhood keeps going. Next time we are in Detroit we will be visiting the hood.

We stayed at the Inn on Ferry Street. http://innonferrystreet.com/05/ It consisted of 4 old mansions renovated to function as one inn. It was one block north of the Detroit Institute of Arts. The neighbourhood is formerly know as the Cass Corridor which has a bad history. Now it has been repackaged at "Mid-Town". This neighbourhood is loaded with galleries, an art institute and Wayne State University. We had a ball walking around and checking our the bars and restaurants.

The best was a club downtown called Cliff Bells http://www.cliffbells.com/index.html
It was boarded up since the 1940s and has been restored. It is a beautiful art deco club.

This is enough text - enjoy the photos

Visit to Detroit