Detroit (city)

I

Introduction

Detroit (city), city, Michigan, United States. Detroit is the tenth largest city in the United States and the core of a major metropolitan area; the suburban population is more than 3.5 times the population of the city itself. The area is the world’s foremost car manufacturing centre, giving Detroit its nickname “The Motor City”, and is one of the nation’s leading industrial centres. Its economic growth was aided by its strategic location on the Detroit River, a waterway connecting the upper Great Lakes and the lower Great Lakes, and by its transport links to the interior. Population 886,671 (2005 estimate).

II

Economy

Detroit has a highly specialized manufacturing economy, generating many products associated with the car industry. Thus, the city tends to prosper in times of economic boom, but is vulnerable in economic recessions. Besides cars, the goods manufactured in Detroit include steel, metal products, machine tools, chemicals, office machines, and pharmaceuticals. The metropolitan area contains the international headquarters of such major motor-vehicle firms as General Motors Corporation, Ford Motor Company, and Chrysler Corporation; these operations have attracted many service-oriented industries in research, design, advertising, public relations, accounting, and finance.

III

Places of Interest

The hub of the Detroit metropolis remains the site on the Detroit River where the city’s first white settlers landed in 1701. From this site, a series of arterial roads in the form of a modern motorway system and originally trails made by Native Americans, radiate outwards like the spokes of a wheel. On the city riverfront is the Civic Center, with the Renaissance Center, the City-County Building, Henry and Edsel Ford Auditorium, Cobo Hall and Arena (one of the country’s largest convention halls), and Hart Plaza. To the north of this area is the Medical Center, one of the country’s largest concentrations of hospitals, clinics, and research laboratories, which includes the Wayne State University medical school. Also north of downtown are the General Motors and Fisher buildings, designed by German-born architect Albert Kahn. Another place of interest is Pewabic Pottery (1907), east of downtown, built for ceramicist Mary Chase Perry Stratton, whose glazed tiles were an important architectural element in buildings of the 1920s. West of the downtown area is Fort Wayne Military Museum, the best-preserved pre-American Civil War fort in the Midwest. It houses the Great Lakes Indian Museum, tracing Native American history in Michigan, and the Tuskegee Airmen Museum, commemorating the country's first black military aviation unit.

Detroit’s main institution of higher education is Wayne State University (1868), others include the University of Detroit Mercy, the Detroit College of Law, and Marygrove College. Next to the Wayne State University is the Detroit Cultural Center, which includes the main branch of the Detroit Public Library, the Detroit Historical Museum, the Horace H. Rackham Educational Memorial, and the Center for Creative Studies. Also part of the Center is the Detroit Institute of the Arts, whose extensive holdings include “Detroit Industry”, a famous 27-panel mural by Mexican artist Diego Rivera.

The Detroit area is home to several professional sports teams. The Detroit Lions American football team plays at Ford Field, a downtown stadium that opened in 2002. In 2000 the Tigers baseball team moved from historic Tiger Stadium to Comerica Park, also in the downtown area. Joe Louis Sports Arena is the home of the Red Wings ice hockey team.

IV

History

A fort and trading post was established on the Detroit River in 1701 by Antoine de La Mothe, sieur de Cadillac, as a check to British encroachment on the upper Great Lakes. The name Detroit comes from d'étroit (French, “of the strait”), taken from the original settlement’s full name, Pontchartrain d’Étroit. The fort was captured by the British in 1760 during the French and Indian War. To drive the British from their frontier possessions and re-establish Native American autonomy, Ottawa leader Pontiac organized a confederacy of Great Lakes and Ohio Valley tribes in 1763. Their attempt to capture the fort at Detroit, including a five-month siege, was unsuccessful. In 1805 Detroit was named capital of Michigan Territory—then was virtually destroyed by a fire. In 1810, after 109 years of existence, Detroit remained little more than a trading post and fort with only about 1,650 inhabitants. It commenced its first important period of growth with the surrender of Michigan lands by Native Americans and the advent of steam navigation on the Great Lakes in 1818. Growth was further spurred by the opening in 1825 of the Erie Canal, which reduced travel time between New York and Detroit to one-tenth of what it had been; the city then became a major terminal for settlers of the northern Midwest as well as a site for shipbuilding and related activities. With the admission of Michigan to the Union in 1837, Detroit became the state capital, a status it retained for ten years.

When railways were constructed in the 1840s, and especially with the completion of a link to Chicago in 1852, Detroit became a primary transfer and processing point for products (particularly timber and grain) from the interior. These activities soon induced the development of manufacturing, and by the end of the 19th century Detroit had grown into an industrial centre of nearly 286,000 inhabitants. Its great manufacturing diversity included iron and steel, stoves, wheels and axles, leather, chemicals, engines, and ships. These industries, and the accumulation of ready capital and labour, provided the foundation for the establishment of a new industry that was to dictate the city’s fortunes in the 20th century—the car industry.

The first motor car factories were founded in 1899 and 1903 by Ransom Eli Olds and Henry Ford. The emergence of mass production and a vast middle-class market for cars took place in the 1910s and 1920s. The population of the city continued the rapid growth begun in the 1840s. The car industry suffered severely in the 1930s during the Great Depression. In 1936 and 1937, the organizing of, and strikes by, car workers at the huge General Motors plants in nearby Flint resulted in official recognition by major car manufacturers of the United Automobile Workers of America. This labour action, one of the most significant of the century, affected thousands of car workers in Detroit and other cities. During World War II the car industry converted its operations to the manufacturing of military equipment such as tanks, aircraft, and amphibious vehicles, thereby earning the city the title of Arsenal of Democracy.

In the wartime and early post-war years, when the economy was booming, the city experienced another wave of immigration and reached a peak population in 1957 of about 1,850,000 people. In the succeeding years, like most big American cities, Detroit experienced much social stress in the form of deteriorating neighbourhoods, misguided housing renewal programmes, racial tension, city bankruptcy, and chaotic urban sprawl. The population in these years increased in the suburbs, but declined drastically in the city itself. In the summer of 1967 the city was the scene of severe race riots. Tension eased somewhat in the 1970s, and in 1973 Coleman Young was elected Detroit’s first black mayor; he served a record five terms before retiring in 1994.