"Constant Temptation"

Wooden bridge over canal, Belle Isle, Burton Historical Collection, predates Sylvan Creek and Oakway Bridge described below.

A guy named Benjamin Gravel makes it his labor of love to post photos of Detroit-area structures and their architects via Facebook and Detroit Yes. When he posted a photo of Belle Isle's Oakway Bridge, over Sylvan Creek, with guesstimated dates of 1910's to 1920's, I was compelled to spring into action with my mega-librarian skills. I found this, from June 1914:

...which if you continue reading (I can never resist continuing reading and there went my night), leads to this:

"I also desire to register my protest against the erection of any more buildings on Belle Isle Park, especially those of the cheaper sort. I am also opposed to the plan of a municipal dance hall on Belle Isle Park. If erected at all it should be located elsewhere. There has been too much of a tendency on the part of people who are looking only to financial gain and who in turn enlist the assistance of their friends in public positions in advocating those things which would transform our beautiful park into a second Coney Island. Let us keep Belle Isle beautiful, restful, and with sufficient opportunities for recreation without submitting the visitors to unnecessary annoyances in the way of noise or subjecting them to a constant temptation for spending money unnecessarily. All of which is respectfully submitted. WM. T. DUST, Commissioner"

It turns out this Willam T. Dust was quite multi-talented. He served the city in many roles, including as the Commissioner of Parks & Boulevards during one of the greatest growth phases in Detroit's history. A bio of him can be found here:
  https://sites.google.com/site/mydustroots/names-in-my-tree/dust/william-theodore-dust/william-t-dust-bio

I also found this modern description of the Oak Way bridge, which still has what are likely Pewabic tiles on it:

http://www.michigan.gov/mdot/0,4616,7-151-9620_11154_11188-29415--,00.html

The eleventh annual report of the Commissioner of Parks and Boulevards, from 1899-1900, describes how the streets on Belle Isle were named, "OAK WAY From Riverbank Road east to Lakeside Drive. so named because of the oak trees located along this roadway". Well, that makes sense.

Want to get lost in Belle Isle's bridges? 199 photos here.

And yes, I know. I hardly ever write anymore. But I do still hang out on the island with Smart, Fluffy, and friends.

Relics of Memory and Light

I must have passed Woodlawn Cemetery thousands of times, driving down Woodward, but never stopped until today.

I'm always looking for new spots with great scenery to walk Smart and Fluffy, and although newer cemeteries give me pause, filled with such fresh grief, older ones seem more welcoming and peaceful. The older cemeteries like Woodlawn are also a testament to the talent of Detroit's architects and artisans. 

Bad photo, but oh, how the window reflects onto the marble on either side.

I imagine the spirits happy to have company, and of course I imagine them as dog lovers, undisturbed by racing paws and curious noses.

Smart takes in the view.

The mausoleum where I am first bewitched by stained glass.

Woodlawn Cemetery is noted for its exceptional quantity and quality of mausoleums, and if you peek inside them when the light strikes in the most magical way, they are ablaze. One could easily spend an afternoon just looking at stained glass. For more about Woodlawn's history, see the excellent Night Train. 

There were many flowers left from Mother's Day, and I was reminded how lucky I was to have my grandparents around into my twenties and thirties. Honestly, even now I don't think of them in the ground or in ashes; I think of them as staying with me in talismans I have...

in my grandpa's paintings that I can see from where I'm typing, in my Disneyworld Mickey Mouse locket ring from the first time I visited the grandparents in Florida when they retired... and in the scent of lilacs in Woodlawn's May air redolent of my other grandma's perfume.

Not my grandmother, but beloved as all mothers, grandmothers, and great grandmothers are.

Snowdazzled At Palmer Park

Smart and Fluffy are still around, frolicking in the snow as usual. They've missed being minor blog celebrities.

Palmer Park makes a nice change of scenery (smellery for dogs?) from their usual haunts on Belle Isle.

How many parks have their own enchanted castle? Besides the mouse king? This castle has been homes to soldiers and princesses since at least the 1920's. Best guess from lazy internet research is that it was part of a "cascades" sort of water feature that was popular in its day.

I've got an email out to a local park historian. In the meantime, visit the People for Palmer Park website for more information on this delightful winter fantasy.

Welcome 2012 Ice Tree and the New Year!

A quick update for Ice Tree lovers... as of today, the 2012 tree is growing. It's not too sparkly yet, but give it a few icy days. It should be gorgeous by the weekend, just in time for the 42nd New Year's Eve Fun Run, and for the New Year's Day 3 pm champagne toast at the Detroit Boat Club. It's a great opportunity to see a grand old building.

I'm also excited to see what happens with the Belle Isle Conservancy in 2012!

For more information on the Ice Tree, check out the drive-by guide.

The bridge to Belle Isle

Hidden Within at Scarcyny Garden

There were so many exciting events going on in the city today. It was hard to decide what to do first, but I started with this one, the grand opening of Scarcyny Garden in southwest Detroit.

Back in the spring, the owner of the Ideal Group, Frank Venegas, decided he wanted to do something with the vacant lots that bordered his business on the old Clark Street Cadillac plant property and partnered with Southwest Detroit Environmental Vision and several other neighborhood groups to make it happen.

Chris, who came up with the name for the garden, draped in ribbon from the opening ceremony

This guy named the garden. He lives around the corner, and started coming by to work on it. While doing some homework, he stumbled across a word (or maybe made it up, it doesn't seem to be googleable) that he says means "hidden within". For him, and for the other people working on the garden, this summed up all that they wanted to do with it... reveal the potential for beauty and community hidden within our city.

Before the ribbon cutting, there were a few different stories told by garden volunteers. Park Ranger Steve (in the white hat at left), who has lived in a house overlooking the vacant lots for 40 years, spoke of watching the initial garden clean up from his back porch. He wondered what was going on, wandered over to find out, and soon gained his official park ranger title from 6 AM plant waterings and eagle-eyed 24 hour lookout duty.

There is a Buddhist monastery across the street, and the monks have taken on cleaning and maintaining the lots on the other side of the street. They also inspired a meditation corner in the garden, with comfy chairs and the respite of shade.

Pinatas, face painting, and a potato sack race were all part of the opening day festivities.

The garden and park were designed by my friend Sarah Clark from Southwest Detroit Environmental Vision. The garden is a series of interlinked circles, with sections for native plants, low-maintenance shrub roses, plants for birds and butterflys, and the beginnings of a planned fruit orchard and raised bed vegetable garden. The park has a soccer field and a small hill for winter sledding so far. The park is located off Junction at Merritt, halfway between the thriving commercial district along Vernor and St. Hedwig, so it is ideally located to be an island linking those areas together.

As metaphors go, this is a pretty good one for what's right and hopeful in Detroit. I can't wait to see what it looks like in the spring.

Can Anything Gold Stay In Scripps Park?

I am a huge fan of Access Arts and their projects, having enjoyed their exhibitions on Belle Isle immensely. They branched out this spring to partner with Forward Arts and the Woodbridge Neighborhood Development Corporation to clean up Scripps Park and present a show there. 

They included a "student artist" component to the show as part of their mission to create opportunities for  youth arts education. The piece above was my favorite of the student entries, with its description below:

 This edge of the Woodbridge neighborhood is a point of contact between two Detroits.... one of homelessness, joblessness, lack of education and skills, sometimes mental illness, and soul-sucking poverty; and one of hopefulness in the form of a relatively stable neighborhood core, and a cadre of energetic, idealistic and determined students, artists, activists, and residents young and old... I hate to use the word hipsters because it can be hard to see the individuals past the word, but sometimes the shoe does seem to fit.

I am very interested in points of contacts like this to find ideas on how (as we try to build the city back up) we can "gentrify" without "disenfranchising". I put those words in quotes because I think they're both loaded with heavy baggage.

The people behind the show, who worked so hard on cleaning and fixing up the park and creating the installations, have been a little discouraged and dismayed by some events of the past weekend. Whole exhibits and improvements to the park made of materials as precious as plastic shipping crates, tires, and plastic bags were rearranged and even removed.

The day the show opened, the park was filled with people picnicking, walking their dogs, and generally enjoying their day. Maybe nothing gold can stay, but the golden glow of that day returns, again and again, in every creative act it inspires. Rising from the ashes, right?

Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf,
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day
Nothing gold can stay.
Robert Frost

Horses of Many Colors

Today was the Michigan Black Horseman's Association Trail Ride on Belle Isle. I only caught the tail end of it (no pun intended), but it was so much fun to see the horses, worn out from their adventure on the island.

The horse's history on Belle Isle predates the establishment of the park. Horses were used on the island to haul blocks of ice when ice harvesting was big business, and for moving supplies and equipment around the island when the marshes were being drained to establish the park.

There were two stable complexes on the island, one for the general riding stables (now removed to Greenfield Village, to be rebuilt someday), and one to house the workhorses of the island (designed by Mason & Rice, now the island's maintenance complex).

The riding stables (above, in their original incarnation) were built from Detroit's old central market, located where Cadillac Square is today, in 1894.

The maintenance complex stables (old entrance, above) are planned to be the next big project that the Belle Isle Women's Committee undertakes.
A more current view of them...

I wish you could have seen the horses flying in full gallop across the meadows of Belle Isle today. The riders and horses were colorfully attired and in high spirits, waving and strutting for passers-by.

Historical information on the stables comes from Janet Anderson's book, Island In the City, and the Friends of Belle Isle website. Old photos from the Burton Historical Collection, Detroit Public Library.

A Little Less Conversation**

When I started writing this blog, it was actually to help me learn how to use my new laptop and to learn Web 2.0 kinds of things. I hoped but didn't really imagine that other people would read it. It has been a gratifying and enlightening experience.

I started writing the blog from a place where I was standing on the sidelines, observing the happenings around town and getting to know my city better. The creative people and amazing places I've gotten to know through the blog have inspired me, gradually, to move off the sidelines and back into the thick of things (or at least the version of it that I am suited for).

I started grad school last week. Since I decided to go to grad school sort of last minute (like, the end of January), time for the blog has been shanghaied by various applications, tests, and technology interventions that I needed to perform on myself to get up to speed.

I also have started trying to put my time where my mouth (or my keyboard) is, and I'm putting in a little time in a small way with some groups that do things that are close to my heart... historic preservation and community development.

This is a roundabout way of saying, "Guys, I want to keep up the blog, but posts will be shorter and less frequent." I feel like I have built something here that I don't want to quit on, but at least until I get my sea legs in school, I may have to do "Belle Isle Home Lite".

I hope you still enjoy it. Thanks for reading, especially to those who noticed I was in absentia.

Warm regards,
Belle

** Thanks to Elvis, too.

Et Tu, Belle Isle Home?

My esteemed blog friend at The Night Train: Detroit asked on her facebook page (probably jokingly) what I thought about the idea floated by a guy at Tech Town to put a vineyard on Belle Isle. Be careful what you wish for, TNT. Since the island is so near and dear to my heart, I'll give it a shot. It sounds like this is just a fledgling idea for now, not really thought-out and with few details attached. However, we recently saw a tweet go from a far-fetched crazy idea to an actual statue in the making pretty quickly (the Robocop statue). If the vineyard thing turns out to be a serious plan that may actually happen, I have some questions, and I hope other people that are smarter and more influential than me do, too.

The guy who has the vineyard idea, Randal Charlton, suggests putting a vineyard on 10 "vacant" acres of land near the lighthouse. I don't think of the land he suggests as "vacant" at all. I consider it to be the most serene, peaceful, and scenic part of the island, with trails along the river and the Blue Heron Lagoon. Last time I checked, having open green space was an important thing in a park. On any given summer day, there are people using the "vacant" land to walk, fish, jog, play football, picnic, bike, read, meditate, do yoga, take pictures, or just sit and watch the boats go by.

Belle Isle is unarguably Detroit's finest public park. Is it a good idea to sell or lease part of it off to a private company? What parts of it are people willing to turn over to a private company? I'll agree that parts of the island are underutilized or not used at all... a section of the old golf course and the closed zoo come to mind, and there certainly could be more of an effort to develop the island into a winter attraction. If we're talking about redeveloping the island, is there a master plan and how does a vineyard fit into it? How would the private company's vineyard benefit the island as a whole?

How would having a vineyard in this area impact public access? Would this private company be able to fence off their "property"? Cut off access to the water? Charge admission to this part of the island?

Before we dive in head-first on this vineyard thing on Belle Isle, I'd like to see a conservancy established to run the island, like the conservancies that successfully run Central Park in New York, and Campus Martius and the RiverWalk here. With a conservancy in place, I would feel more confident that a vineyard plan or any other plans for the island would have safeguards in them to make sure that Detroit's  public playground and park doesn't get chopped up into a bunch of private parks that benefit their private owners, while making it harder for us regular folks to enjoy the river.

Although I'm not so sure about a vineyard on Belle Isle, I actually do like the idea of a riverfront winery. Since we're tossing around ideas here, what about using some city-owned land along the riverfront that IS vacant and needs to be redeveloped for a vineyard? There is talk of the West Riverfront, when it is developed, cutting a much wider, deeper swath along the river. Would a vineyard fit in to this part of the riverfront? If we're talking about a vineyard and winery being a big draw for visitors, why not use it as an anchor for redevelopment somewhere that doesn't already get thousands of visitors a day, like Belle Isle does? What about vacant city land adjacent to Fort Wayne? Fort Wayne has incredible potential for being a significant tourism draw. Wouldn't a winery along the water be a great fit there, on the bluffs overlooking the river?

I'm clearly no expert on any of this, and I don't have any answers. Maybe this is a really cool idea and I have just been drinking the kool-aid about people trying to steal Detroit's precious jewels for too long.  But if Detroit really does have any precious jewels left to steal, surely Belle Isle is one of them. Can we please not screw this one up?