Hiroshima vs Detroit -- 64 years later

9/25/2009 | VANITY

[GeronL]

I hear it was a grand city once. Now its just sad. The abandoned portion of Detroit is larger in area than San Francisco... so I hear.

[sushiman]

Tiny living spaces they are accustomed to living in . A country of 135,000,000 living in a country smaller than the state of California which is mountainous and uses much of it’s countyside’s land for farming is going to have a space problem . I’ve got to laugh at Americans , who , when somebody builds a house 100 yards away complains about it !

[sushiman]

Thanks again for posting all the pics . Arigato !

[GeronL]

If I win the lotto I am buying me 1000 acres in Wyoming or something. I’ll call it my country.

[goat granny]

My brother worked at Michigan Central Depot (RR) from the 50's and retired from it in the 80's. By then Amtrak had bought the place and moved to Philly in the 1970's...There is one site if you google Michigan Central Depot/Detroit that has before and after pictures of some of the beautiful buildings that use to be Detroit...The depot was built in sometime between 1903-1913. I cannot remember which..

Anyway when the depot closed to trains and moved to Philly, the place was full of beautiful old wood furniture and the employee's could take anything they wanted from the offices as it was cheaper to buy new stuff after the move...He furnished his condo in Philly with much of the furniture from the offices...Beautiful oak and cherry conference tables and the arm chairs to match, I have a 7 piece (hutch type) set in my basement of a cabinet with all types of drawers for railroad plans and such...Doors, drawers, open shelving the base and the top cornice are separate pieces..He had barrister book cases from the turn of the century.

I googled to try and find out about the furniture maker (with no luck) as the piece I have has a brass medallion on the cornice with the Manufactures name...

The before and after pictures are enough to make you cry...I was there once in 1950 to see my brother off for the Korean war...It was awesome.(the depot not the war)....

People traveled by train most of the time as air flight was just too expensive, no expressways and the only Air Port was a couple of hours from Detroit. The old Willow Run airport...and those that traveled by plane were dressed like they were going to an important meeting....(my sister lived in Maryland and flew home once in the late 40's.)

Times they do change...as do the people, not always for the better...sad to say..

[GeronL]

http://www.seedetroit.com/pictures/mcsweb/

There’s one site

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ira3xb2IEb0

a video from someone driving by...

[goat granny]

I was born and raised in Detroit. It was called the Venice of America...Every street was lined with huge elms trees and in the summer when you drove down the street it was like a tunnel of green...and that was the majority of the streets in Detroit. There was no public housing and the colored (that is what Afro-Americans were called and didn't find it offensive) area's were well kept. No graffiti streets clean and anyone could walk in any area's without fear.My graduating class was 500 kids and about 25 % black...some a lot smarter than I was and education was important to both races.

What started Detroit down was forced busing...There was a principal of a colored school that went on TV greatly offended that whites in Washington thought his children could only learn if they sat next to a white kid...Many that could leave, both black and white left for the suburbs. That left the poor, both black and white and no tax base. With the riots of the 60's, business's moved out...Coleman Young was a racist and ran that town for about 20 years. When he finally was gone, so was Detroit...Everything was the white man's fault...just like today....He told those that committee crimes in the city to go out past 8 Mile(the border for Detroit) and commit crimes on the white folks...

Gee, I wonder why it has become a hell hole...

[SaraJohnson]

Good question! We got eaten by termites.

[DCPatriot]

That’s fantastic! Thanks for posting it.

[TChad]

Hiroshima and Nagasaki are not unusually radioactive.

[Irisshlass]

Thank-you Seek. That is what I thought viewing some videos of Detroit several months ago..a warning what is to come to the rest of the country.

[Irisshlass]

White Flight

[Irisshlass]

http://holysouls.com/sar/rosarymiracle.htm

[Irisshlass]

http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~detroitchurches/page48.htm

On my birth certificate..but I guess it is no longer there..

[tophat9000]

Hmmmm, Detroit today

Do we call it? ...

Terrorism?

A Man Made disaster?...

Or just another Demo-crap-hole....

[Irisshlass]

Seek..forget that last link I posted..that hospital closed in 1949..LOL I’ll have to ask my mother which one it was and if it is still there.

[SunkenCiv]

This is just mean. Hiroshima looked a lot better than this. ;’)

Detroit looks much better than it did when I was a kid. I attribute this to a few things. A) demolition of derelict houses, B) a bunch of people died in the 1990s, and C) a bunch of other people went to prison for killin’ ‘em.

[goat granny]

What the news papers never mentioned was black flight...that did not fit the agenda...the middle class blacks wanted out as well....Put a first grader on a bus and they spent an hour being bussed to a strange school miles from their homes....both black and white middle class hated it...they wanted neighbor schools just like the white folk..You will note that in most inner cities there is no middle class blacks. There fore no one successful to emulate.... The only hero's are vulgar rappers or pimps drug dealers and sports stars......doctors, nurses, lawyers and teachers, etc are no where to be seen...

[Recovering Ex-hippie]

Correct analysis and brilliant articulation of this process!!!

[grellis]

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