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Detroit is the largest city in the U.S. state of Michigan and the seat of Wayne County. Detroit is a major port city on the Detroit River, in the Midwest region of the United States. Located north of Windsor, Ontario, Detroit is the only major U.S. city that looks south to Canada. It was founded on July 24, 1701 by the Frenchman Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac. Its name originates from the French word détroit for strait, characterizing its location on the river connecting the Great Lakes.
Known as the world's traditional automotive center, "Detroit" is a metonym for the American automobile industry and an important source of popular music legacies celebrated by the city's two familiar nicknames, The Motor City and Motown. Other nicknames emerged in the twentieth century, including City of Champions beginning in the 1930s for its successes in individual and team sport, Arsenal of Democracy (during World War II), The D, D-Town, Hockeytown (a phrase officially owned by the city's NHL club, the Red Wings), Rock City (after the Kiss song "Detroit Rock City"), and The 3-1-3 (its telephone area code).
In 2008 Detroit ranked as the United States' eleventh most populous city, with 912,062 residents. At its peak in 1950 the city was the fourth largest in America, but has since seen a major shift in its population to the suburbs.
The name Detroit sometimes refers to the Metro Detroit area, a sprawling region with a population of 4,425,110 for the Metropolitan Statistical Area, making it the nation's eleventh-largest, and a population of 5,354,225 for the nine-county Combined Statistical Area as of the 2008 Census Bureau estimates. The Detroit-Windsor area, a critical commercial link straddling the Canada-U.S. border, has a total population of about 5,700,000.
Many of the area's prominent museums are located in the historic cultural center neighborhood around Wayne State University. These museums include the Detroit Institute of Arts, the Detroit Historical Museum, Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History, the Detroit Science Center, and the main branch of the Detroit Public Library. Other cultural highlights include Motown Historical Museum, Tuskegee Airmen Museum, Fort Wayne, Dossin Great Lakes Museum, the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit (MOCAD), the Contemporary Art Institute of Detroit (CAID), and the Belle Isle Conservatory. Important history of Detroit and the surrounding area is exhibited at the The Henry Ford, the nation's largest indoor-outdoor museum complex. The Detroit Historical Society provides information about tours of area churches, skyscrapers, and mansions. The Eastern Market farmer's distribution center is the largest open-air flowerbed market in the United States and has more than 150 foods and specialty businesses. Other sites of interest are the Detroit Zoo and the Anna Scripps Whitcomb Conservatory on Belle Isle.
The city's Greektown and casino resorts serve as an entertainment hub. Annual summer events include the Detroit Electronic Music Festival, Detroit International Jazz Festival, and Woodward Dream Cruise. Within downtown, Campus Martius Park hosts large events such as the Motown Winter Blast. As the world's traditional automotive center, the city hosts the North American International Auto Show. Held since 1924, America's Thanksgiving Parade is one of the nation's largest. The Motown Winter Blast and River days, a five-day festival on the International Riverfront, leading up to the Windsor-Detroit International Freedom Festival fireworks can draw super sized-crowds of hundreds of thousands to over three million people.
An important civic sculpture in Detroit is Marshall Fredericks' "Spirit of Detroit" at the Coleman Young Municipal Center. The image is often used as a symbol of Detroit and the statue itself is occasionally dressed in sports jerseys to celebrate when a Detroit team is doing well. A memorial to Joe Louis at the intersection of Jefferson and Woodward Avenues was dedicated on October 16, 1986. The sculpture, commissioned by Sports Illustrated and executed by Robert Graham, is a twenty-four foot (7.3 m) long arm with a fisted hand suspended by a pyramidal framework.
Artist Tyree Guyton created the controversial street art exhibit known as the Heidelberg Project in the mid 1980s, using junk and abandoned cars, clothing, shoes, vacuum cleaners, and other garbage Guyton found in the neighborhood near and on Heidelberg Street on the near East Side of Detroit.
The Detroit Historical Museum is located at 5401 Woodward Avenue in the city's museum district. It chronicles the history of the Detroit area from cobblestone streets, 19th century stores, the auto assembly line, toy trains, fur trading from the 1700s, and much more.
Attorney and historian Clarence M. Burton donated his collections in 1914 to the Detroit Public Library in 1914 leading to the development of the Detroit Historical Museum. In December 1921, Burton brought together 19 prominent local historians to found the Detroit Historical Society, an organization dedicated to the preservation of the city’s history. In 1927, membership offices were leased and Society treasurer J. Bell Moran was appointed to set up a museum. A curator was hired and on November 19, 1928, the “highest museum in the world” opened in a one-room suite on the 23rd floor of the Barlum Tower, now the Cadillac Tower.
On July 24, 1951, the 250th anniversary of Detroit’s founding by Antoine Laumet de la Mothe Cadillac, the new museum was dedicated in an elaborate ceremony. In attendance were such dignitaries as Governor G. Mennen Williams, Mayor Albert E. Cobo, U.S. Senator Homer Ferguson, the French and British ambassadors and Detroiter Ralph Bunche of the United Nations.
Detroit Electronic Music Festival
The Detroit Electronic Music Festival (DEMF), or "Tech Fest," and its successors comprise an annual series of electronic dance music showcases held in Detroit each Memorial Day weekend since 2000. Following the first three events under the name Detroit Electronic Music Festival (2000–2002) were Movement (2003–2004), Fuse-In (2005) and currently, Movement: Detroit's Electronic Music Festival (2006–present), with each name change reflecting shifts in festival management. All of these festivals continued the DEMF's traditions by featuring performances by musicians and DJs and emphasizing the progressive qualities of the culture surrounding electronic music.
The first Detroit Electronic Music Festival was held in 2000, established by Carol Marvin and her company, Pop Culture Media. Marvin had previously been a sponsorship organizer for the Ford Detroit International Jazz Festival and Detroit-Montreux Jazz Festival, and was a producer of the 1993 Michigan State Fair.
The DEMF was intended to give Detroit and its overlooked history of electronic music major exposure both locally and nationally. Carl Craig, hired by Carol Marvin to act as "Artistic Director", booked a diverse range of the talent, from big internationally recognized names to lesser-known local talent. Patterned on high-profile dance music festivals in Europe, the DEMF had free admission and attracted many international attendees.
Each festival has been held at Hart Plaza in downtown Detroit, and has been sanctioned and financially supported by the City of Detroit. The city's support for the festival has been seen by many as the first high-profile acknowledgment and celebration of the city as the birthplace of techno music.
The Woodward Dream Cruise is a classic car event held annually on the third Saturday of August. The WDC Event spans much of Woodward Avenue from Pontiac through Ferndale in Oakland County, Michigan, all the way to the State Fair Grounds inside the Detroit city limits, just south of 8 Mile Road.
Today, the Woodward Dream Cruise is the world’s largest one-day automotive event, drawing 1.5 million people and 40,000 classic cars each year from around the globe. You can see muscle cars, street rods, custom, collector and special interest vehicles dating across several decades. The majority of the cars on display are those that were available and prevalent during the 1950s, 60s and early 70s prior to the OPEC oil embargo, which led to the Corporate Average Fuel Economy regulations of 1975 and the proliferation of more fuel-efficient and less powerful automobiles. However, the Woodward Dream Cruise also welcomes vehicles of all models whose owners have either scrupulously maintained or customized their car to create a unique vehicle or statement.
During the post-war era, people would "cruise" in their cars along Woodward Avenue, from drive-in to drive-in, often looking for peers or friends who were also out for a drive, and perhaps seeking an opportunity for some street racing or at least a chance to "burn rubber" (or "light 'em up") in a quick getaway from a newly green traffic light.
Nelson House, a plumber from Ferndale, initiated the cruise in 1994 to help raise money for a children's soccer field in his community.
Organizers initially expected 30,000 or 40,000 people to come to the August 19, 1995 inaugural cruise on Woodward Avenue in Ferndale, Pleasant Ridge, Berkley, Huntington Woods, Royal Oak and Birmingham. About 250,000 actually showed up.
It is now the largest single day classic car event in the world, and brings in over $56 million annually for the Metro Detroit economy.
Each year, the celebration starts early in the week with these classic vehicles brought out onto the streets in preparation, and ancillary events are scheduled in the sponsoring communities of Ferndale, Pleasant Ridge, Royal Oak, Huntington Woods, Berkley, Birmingham, Bloomfield Township, Bloomfield Hills, and Pontiac.
The Detroit Zoological Park, commonly known as the Detroit Zoo, is located about 2 miles (3.2 km) north of the Detroit city limits at the intersection of Woodward Avenue, 10 Mile Road, and 696 in Royal Oak and Huntington Woods, Michigan, USA. The Detroit Zoological Society, a non-profit organization, operates both the Detroit Zoo and the Belle Isle Nature Zoo, located in the city of Detroit. The Detroit Zoological Society is responsible for the care and feeding of more than 1,800 vertebrates and 5,000 invertebrates representing over 270 species.
The zoo participates in numerous Species Survival Plans helping preserve critically endangered species. Trumpeter swans and Partula snails were raised at the zoo for reintroduction to the wild, while the zoo has taken in abused circus animals (Barle the polar bear in 2002) and a drug-house guard lion. Barle successfully gave birth to a cub, Talini, in late 2004 . In the spring of 2005, two wolverine kits were born at the zoo - a very rare event for the species, which tends to breed poorly in captivity, and symbolic given that the wolverine is the state mammal of Michigan. In 2001, the National Amphibian Conservation Center (2001) (or Amphibiville) and the Arctic Ring of Life (2001) - the world's largest polar bear exhibit - opened to the public. The Arctic Ring of Life exhibit is centered around a 300,000 U.S. gallon (250,000 imp gal; 1,136,000 L) aquarium. The exhibit allows visitors to view the polar bears and seals from a 70 foot (21 m) long underwater tunnel. The tunnel is 12 feet (3.7 m) wide by 8 feet (2.4 m) tall (3.6 m by 2.4 m) and is made of four-inch (10.1 cm) thick clear acrylic walls that provides a 360-degree view into the aquarium above. Other new buildings include the Ruth Roby Glancy Animal Health Complex (opened 2004) and the 38,000-square-foot (3,500 m2) Ford Education Center (opened 2005).The zoo made additional news in 2005 when it became the first U.S. zoo to give up its elephants on ethical grounds, claiming the Michigan winters were too harsh for the animals and that confining them to the elephant house during cold months was psychologically stressful. The elephants, named Wanda and Winky, were relocated to the Performing Animal Welfare Society's (PAWS) sanctuary in San Andreas, California. The zoo had housed elephants since its opening. Former Detroit Zoo Elephant Winky was euthanized in April 2008 at the Performing Animal Welfare Society (PAWS) sanctuary. The former elephant exhibit was renovated, and is now home to two white rhinoceros, Jasiri and Tamba.
The Zoo's newest exhibit, Australian Outback Adventure, opened in spring 2006. The exhibit allows visitors to walk through a 2-acre (0.81 ha) simulated Outback containing 17 (10 Males and 7 Females) red kangaroos and 2 (1 Male and 1 Female) red-necked wallabies; only knee-high wire cables separate visitors from the marsupials, allowing the animals to hop freely onto the walking path. On February 18, 2006, the Detroit City Council voted to shut down the zoo as part of budget cuts, being unable to reach an agreement with the Detroit Zoological Society to take over the park and a legislative grant having expired that day. An uproar ensued and the Council, on March 1, 2006, voted to transfer operations to the Detroit Zoological Society with a promised $4 million grant from the Michigan Legislature. The city retained ownership of the assets, including the Detroit Zoological Institute in Royal Oak and the Belle Isle Nature Zoo in Detroit. The Society is responsible for governance, management and operations, including creating a plan to raise the money needed to keep the facilities operating for generations to come. On August 5, 2008 voters in Macomb, Oakland, and Wayne counties overwhelmingly passed a zoo tax that will raise fifteen million dollars a year for the zoo, approximately half the zoo's budget.
