One of my favorite sites that I like to recommend when the subject of Detroit comes up - Forgotten Detroit: http://www.forgottendetroit.com/
It’s just sad to think of all the magnificent buildings just going to waste, and the fall of the economy that used to support them.
I went to UM Ann Arbor in the early ‘70s and married a guy from Dexter. As a student, I went with my friends to Cobo for rock concerts. Even then, most of the whites I knew from Detroit had either just moved out or where planning their get away. By time my son went to UM in the mid ‘90s, the only place his uncle would take him in Detroit was Greek Town (the paternal side of the family is Greek) and the baseball stadium. What a loss.
Sad. I grew up in country between Flint & Saginaw. In the 4th grade our class went to Greenfield Village. As a teen I went to concerts at Cobo and the Greek Festival on the river in the early 70s. Once I visited a friend somewhere in the city & was fasinated by the wonderful huge stately homes in the neighborhood she lived in. It was no longer a good neighborhood but you could get a good idea of what it once was. I did not know Detroit well but enjoyed listening to my mother-in-law talk about growing up there. Her stories were so vivid & the pictures she put in my mind are what I think of initially when I hear “Detroit”. It is so very sad to see what “Urban renewal” and other socialist programs have done to what once was one of the best cities in this country.