Please enjoy the awesome 4+ minute video below that excites as it informs:  Vacant not Blighted: Revitalizing Detroit (by MHPN).  Detroit’s historic assets are being creatively reused, and many await a loving rebirth.  I’m not from Detroit, but almost . . . geographically.  We lived in the suburbs (a poor one, not the kind with paved streets and horses), and while my dad worked in Detroit, we otherwise avoided that city like the plague.  Probably the race riots of 1967 (which I lived through) had something to do with it.  No doubt my dad experienced a great deal of the tension building up to those riots where he worked (a large retail company’s warehouse).

I didn’t get to experience Detroit myself, as we moved “up north” when I was 15, then I lived in California for most of my adult life–until recently.  But driving to my new home in Port Huron, my son and I passed through Detroit.  I was shocked at some of the magnificent buildings we passed by.  I really had no idea Detroit held such wonders.  Detroit doesn’t need to rise from the ashes, it just needs brush them off.

Below are a couple of photos of Fort Street Church, Detroit.  Not a repurposed building, but one that is one of those places of wonder still standing in the city the auto industry left behind.  Below these is an example of a church building that hasn’t fared so well.

An exterior shot of Fort Street Church, Detroit, showing detail. The tower is copied from a 15th century cathedral found in Louth, England.

Fort St Church, Detroit. an interior shot. When did we lose our will to create awe-inspiring spaces?

A once beautiful church, in crumbled ruins with graffiti. St Agnes Church, Detroit.