Kick back and let an urban history buff tell you about throbbing, thriving times in Paradise Valley and Black Bottom.
John Gallagher of the Free Press flips on his Wayback Machine for a timely look at the impact of highways carved through neighborhoods.
If the state rips out I-375 to make Detroit more accessible to pedestrians, as some urban planners have urged, the move will come 60 years too late for older black Detroiters who remember how freeways destroyed the city’s historic Black Bottom district. . . .
The builders of I-75 and I-375 plowed multi-lane highways right through Hastings Street, the commercial heart of Black Bottom.
Sidney Barthwell ran a chain of pharmacies and ice cream shops that were "among the most important black businesses in America at the time," John Gallagher writes.
Gallagher, who has written two books on Detroit, talks with 66-year-old Sidney Barthwell Jr., whose father, Sidney Barthwell, ran a chain of pharmacies and ice cream shops in that area until bulldozers came in the early 1960s:
“Black Bottom, Paradise Valley, was indeed a paradise for black entrepreneurial businesses. Funeral homes, doctors — there were a dozen different black-owned hospitals."
The reporter-author also looks ahead at visions for 21st century Detroit:
No one suggests that Black Bottom could be rebuilt as it was should I-375 be removed. Rather, proponents of ripping out the freeway contend that a restored surface street would make the surrounding neighborhoods friendlier to pedestrians, better connecting Eastern Market and Lafayette Park with downtown.
Removing the freeway also could allow parks and new commercial development to rise on the reclaimed surface area. . . .
The benefits of removing freeways from the hearts of cities is a theme of growing popularity in urban planning. . . .
“Like weeds, the freeway in the city is the wrong thing. It’s a failed experiment in America,” urban planner Peter J. Park said [at a University of Detroit Mercy forum in Nov. 8]. “When you take freeways out of cities, they get better.”. “When you take freeways out of cities, they get better.”
And as a BTW aside: Black Bottom wasn't a racial reference, at least not originally. The area was "named for the rich dark soil that French explorers first found there," Gallagher notes.
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