Outside a newly-renovated home in Detroit’s Corktown neighbourhood, a flag bearing the city’s 210-year-old motto (Speramus meliora; resurget cineribus’ — ‘We hope for better things; it will arise from the ashes’) flutters in the breeze. At least here, in Motown’s oldest district, that claim appears to be true.
Once a 19th-century Irish slum, it’s now the city’s coolest neighbourhood, full of young artists, restaurateurs and entrepreneurs, inspiring Time Out to declare it one of the 10 hippest communities on the planet.
That’s very encouraging for a city that was declared bankrupt in 2013, with debts spiralling beyond $20 billion; a population dropping nearly two-thirds from its original two million residents; factories and office buildings lying empty; derelict homes being bull-dozed; and even the Detroit Institute of Arts’ outstanding collection under threat of sale and dispersal.
DETROIT’S CULINARY REVIVAL
But, as derelict buildings were torn down, something unusual happened – around 1,500 urban farms sprang up in their place. They were dedicated to producing and selling fresh food directly to the city’s growing collection of farm-to-table restaurants. Among the 100 that emerged in Corktown during the past three years are Grand River Avenue’s Republic, Mudgie’s Deli & Wine Shop and Urban Soul. Some restaurants have not even bothered to replace the old façades – witness Mexicantown’s transformation of a former pawnbrokers on a nondescript corner into Detroit’s hottest new restaurants, Gold Cash Gold.
It’s a similar story right across the city. Saturday-only Eastern Market, one of the largest historic markets in the USA, sells pretty much every type of food imaginable from its six blocks of food stalls, and National Geographic recently pinpointed Detroit as one of its top ‘Unexpected Cities for the Food Lover’.
In Downtown, the pick of the new arrivals includes the outstanding Wright & Company on Woodward Avenue, and the high-end Chinese restaurant, The Peterboro, run by up-and-coming chef Brion Wong in Peterboro Street.
A LIVELY SHOPPING AND CULTURAL SCENE
Another comeback neighbourhood, Cass Corridor, is known not only for such restaurants as the chic, award-winning Selden Standard on Second Avenue but also for its string of old buildings, including a derelict Jeep factory, which have been beautifully remodelled into upmarket designer boutiques. Among them are Hugh, Shinola, which recently opened its flagship store in London.
It’s not just food and fashion that are powering the return of this once-great metropolis. The arts have also had a big role to play. One of the things the city insisted upon during bankruptcy negotiations was retaining the incredible assemblage of masterpieces by the likes of Picasso, Matisse and Van Gogh in the Detroit Institute of Arts. It’s also renowned for its Rivera Court, adorned with the outstanding frescoes painted in situ by Mexican artist Diego Rivera during a visit in 1932 with his wife, Frida Kahlo.
On Friday evenings, free concerts enhanced by cocktails are served there until 10pm, and if that whets your artistic appetite, there’s also the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit to explore. Like many other local enterprises, it is housed in a former auto dealership.
And, for a truly surreal experience, there’s the mind-bending outdoor Heidelberg Project of ‘found objects’ from across Detroit. It has been installed during the past 30 years by local artist Tyree Guyton and attracts 275,000 visitors annually.
As for music and the performing arts, the world-renowned Motown Museum, also known as Hittsville, USA, may be no bigger than a small house, but it’s due for a $6-million expansion this year. Meanwhile, it is crammed to the rafters with musical memorabilia from the days when Motown music was pouring out hit upon hit from the likes of Stevie Wonder, Diana Ross and the Supremes and Michael Jackson and the Jackson Five. For great jazz, check out Cliff Bell’s sultry Art Deco jazz club . Opened in 1935 and now renovated, visiting it still feels like walking on to the set of a Fred Astaire movie.
The ornate, 5,000-seat Fox Theatre, a former movie palace, offers a wide range of music events, theatre and comedy shows, and, if you are travelling with children, it’s worth visiting the Belle Isle Aquarium, set in a 982-acre Detroit River island park. In fact, the whole waterfront area is now in the midst of renovation.
Among the historic automobiles in the Henry Ford Museum is President John F Kennedy’s limousine
And, before leaving the city, you should visit at least one of the tributes to its motor industry heritage. The meticulously-restored Ford Piquette Avenue Plant,where the Model T Ford was born, is so full of classic vehicles that it looks like a parking lot from 100 years ago, and, in nearby Dearborn, the Henry Ford Museum’s incredible automotive collection includes the limousine in which John F Kennedy was assassinated and the bus on which Rosa Parks refused to relinquish her seat during the Civil Rights movement whereas Deerfield Village is filled with the relocated homes and workshops of such American entrepreneurs and inventors as the Wright brothers, Thomas Edison and Henry Ford.
In recent years, Detroit was on nobody’s ‘to do’ lists, other than those of debt collectors and demolition companies. Now, it’s living up to its nickname – America’s ‘Comeback City’.
