If baseball is the national pastime, why isn’t Opening Day a national holiday?

Posted on by farlane

deleted photo by some asshole

The Detroit Tigers open the 2012 season today at 1:05 PM at home at Comerica Park vs. the Boston Red Sox. The game preview begins:

Opening Day will dawn Thursday afternoon. And in Detroit, it dawns in a big way.

You’ve got reigning AL Most Valuable Player and Cy Young Award winner Justin Verlander facing MVP runner-up Jacoby Ellsbury in the first inning. You’ve got Prince Fielder’s Detroit debut and Bobby Valentine’s first game at the steering wheel for Boston. You’ve got Miguel Cabrera manning the hot corner for the first time in four years.

…Regarding that aforementioned Verlander-Ellsbury matchup, it’s pretty rare stuff. The last time a reigning MVP pitcher faced the man who finished second to him in the balloting in his first start of the season? You have to go all the way back to 1932, when Lefty Grove faced Lou Gehrig.

Head over to Absolute Michigan for our Detroit Tigers 2012 season preview that includes all kinds of links and a look back at the very first Detroit Tigers Opening Day!

Much more about the Detroit Tigers on Michigan in Pictures!

Corktown, the Irish and St. Patrick’s Day in Michigan

Posted on by Michigan in Pictures

Saint Patrick's Day Parade

Saint Patrick’s Day Parade, photo by *Alysa*.

May your blessings outnumber the shamrocks that grow,
And may trouble avoid you wherever you go.
~Irish Blessing

Happy St. Patrick’s Day everyone! Detroit had their parade last weekend but there are events on tap today and tomorrow in Bay City, Clare, Flint, Kalamazoo, Grand Ledge,  Saugatuck, Traverse City and Muskegon.

Ground zero for the Irish in Michigan is Corktown. Wikipedia notes that it is Detroit’s oldest neighborhood explaining:

The roots of Corktown lie in the Great Irish Potato Famine of the 1840s. The Irish immigrated to the United States in droves, and by the middle of the 19th century, they were the largest ethnic group settling in Detroit. Many of these newcomers settled on the west side of the city; they were primarily from County Cork, and thus the neighborhood came to be known as Corktown. By the early 1850’s, half of the population of the 8th Ward (which contained Corktown) were of Irish descent

The Corktown Historical Society has a cool slideshow of historic photos and brochure images and you might want to check out the Corktown Explorer blog.

The Irish in Michigan from Seeking Michigan has some information about Corktown but adds that:

Irish immigrants to Michigan certainly did not limit themselves to settling in the urban hub of Detroit, with many of them making their way up north. In the 1830s, Irish immigrants settled in fishing camps on Mackinac and Beaver Islands. Today, a large portion of Beaver Island’s year-round residents are of Irish descent. Wexford, Clare, Emmet and Antrim counties in the northern Lower Peninsula are all named after counties in Ireland. Irish immigrants were also instrumental to the copper mining boom in the Upper Peninsula. Nearly one-third of the area’s foreign-born population was from Ireland in 1870, though the Irish population would decline by 1920. Many small Irish communities could also be found scattered throughout the Lower Peninsula in the 1800s and early 1900s.

Wherever you are and whoever your ancestors were, here’s hoping you have a fun and safe St. Patrick’s Day holiday!

Check this out bigger and in Ann Lysa’s slideshow.

Happy Birthday to you, Thomas Edison

Posted on by farlane

Detroit - Edison Illuminating Company high line crew

Detroit – Edison Illuminating Company high line crew, photo courtesy Seeking Michigan

The Life of Thomas Edison from American Memory at the Library of Congress says that:

Thomas Alva Edison was born to Sam and Nancy on February 11, 1847, in Milan, Ohio. Known as “Al” in his youth, Edison was the youngest of seven children, four of whom survived to adulthood. Edison tended to be in poor health when young.

To seek a better fortune, Sam Edison moved the family to Port Huron, Michigan, in 1854, where he worked in the lumber business.

Edison was a poor student. When a schoolmaster called Edison “addled,” his furious mother took him out of the school and proceeded to teach him at home. Edison said many years later, “My mother was the making of me. She was so true, so sure of me, and I felt I had some one to live for, some one I must not disappoint.”(1) At an early age, he showed a fascination for mechanical things and for chemical experiments.

In 1859, Edison took a job selling newspapers and candy on the Grand Trunk Railroad to Detroit. In the baggage car, he set up a laboratory for his chemistry experiments and a printing press, where he started the Grand Trunk Herald, the first newspaper published on a train. An accidental fire forced him to stop his experiments on board.

Read on for much more, and also see Thomas Edison at Wikipedia. While Edison’s life in Michigan didn’t include much of what one of the architects of our modern lifestyle was famous for, there’s some great places to visit to learn more about him. Two of the best are the Thomas Edison Depot Museum in Port Huron and Edison’s Menlo Park Laboratory at Greenfield Village.

Get this photo from Seeking Michigan big as the 20th Century and see a few more Edison-related photos from Seeking Michigan.

Post #350 on Michigan in Pictures!

Happy Martin Luther King Day

Posted on by Michigan in Pictures

JELLY BEAN HOUSE-MLK

JELLY BEAN HOUSE-MLK, photo by marsha*morningstar.

I have a dream this afternoon that my four little children, that my four little children will not come up in the same young days that I came up within, but they will be judged on the basis of the content of their character, not the color of their skin.

I have a dream this afternoon that one day right here in Detroit, Negroes will be able to buy a house or rent a house anywhere that their money will carry them and they will be able to get a job.

~Martin Luther King, June 23, 1963 Detroit, Michigan

Martin Luther King delivered the above lines first in the massive Great March on Detroit in 1963 – click that link for the full speech and more on MLK.

See this photo bigger and see more in Marsha’s Heidelberg Project Detroit 2009 slideshow.

Get Ready to ROAR!

Posted on by Michigan in Pictures

PP_Zoo_0132-2-2 Lion web

PP_Zoo_0132-2-2 Lion web, photo by alj70.

The Detroit Lions travel to New Orleans tomorrow to face the New Orleans Saints in their first playoff appearance of this century.

My favorite sports blog, the Bleacher Report, has a nice preview of what should be a high scoring and exciting affair. Here’s a fantastic highlight video to get you roaring!

Check it out on black and in Alan’s slideshow … and GO LIONS!!

Christmas in Old Detroit

Posted on by farlane

Untitled, photo by BareBonesDetroit

The Detroit News has a fantastic feature titled Christmas traditions in Old Detroit: Pigeon pie, horse racing, tapers on trees that is a wonderful look at the history of the Christmas holiday in Detroit. They begin:

Although Protestant churches in Detroit did not embrace the Christmas holiday until the 1840s, it was long celebrated in the French Catholic Churches such as Detroit’s oldest parish, St. Anne’s. (pictured above)

Before Christmas trees became the rage, the French holiday tradition in Detroit was represented by yule logs, reveillon feasting, and horse races. Yule logs were enormous logs or sometimes entire tree stumps that filled the hearth along with a half cord of wood to get it started. Holiday feasting began on Christmas Eve in a tradition called reveillon (pronounced Ray-veh-yon), which is still celebrated in Quebec and New Orleans (at least for the tourists).

In Detroit, families would carry a lantern to midnight mass and leave it with a beggar at the church door. When the Christmas mass was over, they would pick up their lantern and give a Christmas tip to the beggar. They then would go home for the feast that would last until 8 a.m.

The reveillon supper was a sumptuous menu that included la tourtiere — a meat pie made with pigeons in the 19th century and later with pork, veal or other game. Other dishes might include a stew of meat balls and pork, minced pork pie, turkey, pumpkin pie, mince pie and new cider.

There’s a whole lot more including holiday menus, toys, the hazards of decoration and even holiday horse racing through the streets of the city by the French and Ulysses S. Grant! Definitely read the rest and check out the photo gallery which includes some great old photos! About this photo from December 2010, BareBonesDetroit wrote:

Day Six: During the holidays, many of us end up donning our Sunday best and heading over to our local place of worship. Lucky for us here in Metro Detroit, the city overflows with churches, and even has a synagogue. Ste. Anne’s is the oldest church in Detroit. It’s massive structure is a beacon from both sides of the International border we share with Canada. For the season, it’s facade becomes even merrier. If you’ve never visited, for the history lesson and stained glass alone, it’s worth a visit.

View this photo bigger and see more in his Twelve Days of Christmas slideshow. Also be sure to check out barebonesdetroit.com for a cool photographic tour of the D!

More Christmas traditions on Michigan in Pictures…

 

Remembering Michigan’s legendary architect Albert Kahn

Posted on by Michigan in Pictures

Albert Kahn's legacy

Albert Kahn’s legacy, photo by .brianday.

“Architecture is 90 percent business and 10 percent art.”
~Albert Kahn

Legendary Detroit architect Albert Kahn died on December 8, 1942. The Albert Kahn entry at Wikipedia begins:

Kahn was born on March 21, 1869 in Rhaunen, Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. Kahn came to Detroit in 1880 at the age of 11. His father Joseph was trained as a rabbi. His mother Rosalie had a talent for the visual arts and music. As a teenager, he got a job at the architectural firm of Mason and Rice. Kahn won a year’s scholarship to study abroad in Europe, where he toured with another young architecture student, Henry Bacon, who would later design the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.

The architectural firm Albert Kahn Associates was founded in 1895. He developed a new style of construction where reinforced concrete replaced wood in factory walls, roofs, and supports. This gave better fire protection and allowed large volumes of unobstructed interior. Packard Motor Car Company’s factory built in 1907 was the first development of this principle.
The success of the Packard plant interested Henry Ford in Kahn’s designs. Kahn designed Ford Motor Company’s Highland Park plant, begun in 1909, where Ford consolidated production of the Ford Model T and perfected the assembly line. On Bob-Lo Island, Henry Ford had a dance hall designed and built by Albert Kahn, which was billed as the second largest in the world in a 1903 account…

Ten Albert Kahn designed buildings are recognized with Michigan historical markers:

    • Battle Creek Post Office
    • The Dearborn Inn
    • Detroit Arsenal Tank Plant in Warren, Michigan
    • Edsel and Eleanor Ford House in Grosse Pointe Shores, Michigan
    • Fisher Building
    • Delta Upsilon Fraternity, 1331 Hill St., Ann Arbor
    • Packard Motor Car Company factory
    • The Detroit News
    • The Detroit Free Press
    • Willow Run

Get the complete list of his firm’s buildings (including the Russell Industrial Center) at Wikipedia. The company that Kahn founded in 1895 is still in the business. There’s an interesting biography of Albert Kahn from Ford that notes that a Detroit sculptor recognized Albert’s artistic talent and allowed him to attend his art school free. However, after discovering that Kahn was color blind, the artist encouraged him to become an architect and secured him a job as an office boy.

Check this photo out bigger and see more in Brian’s Detroit Flavor slideshow. Coincidentally enough, Brian just let me know that this photo is being hung in a gallery today along with 10 other prints from Brian (and another 10 from two other michpics regulars,  Jon DeBoer and Jeff Gaydash) at Studio Couture gallery, 1433 Woodward Avenue. Opening night for the exhibition will be this Saturday from 6pm-9pm. Details right here!

More Michigan architects & architecture from Michigan in Pictures.

Brighter Days Ahead

Posted on by Michigan in Pictures

Brighter Days Ahead

Brighter Days Ahead, photo by Kim.Kozlowski.

Great sentiment, great photo. Learn about the Renaissance Center on Michigan in Pictures.

Check it out bigger and in Kim’s Detroit Slideshow.

Ford Rotunda Building at Christmas 1961

Posted on by Michigan in Pictures

Ford Rotunda Building at Christmas 1961

Ford Rotunda Building at Christmas 1961, photo by kbreenbo.

Today on Absolute Michigan, we’re featuring the Ford Rotunda and the annual Christmas Fantasy. The feature on the Rotunda in the Detroit News tells how it burned in 1962 and explains:

Over the nine years the Christmas Fantasy was held, almost 6 million people visited it. Thousands of Detroiters had their first visit with Santa at the Rotunda, and memories of Story Book Land and the miniature circus mingle with childhood memories of stockings by the fireplace and cookies for Santa.

Check this out on black and see more in Karen’s Ford Historic Archives slideshow.

All Star, Cy Young, MVP, Tiger

Posted on by farlane

PITCH!

PITCH!, photo by robmelody

“Obviously pitchers are not just written off all of a sudden because they’re pitchers.”
~Tiger Pitcher Justin Verlander

Our feature on Absolute Michigan on Verlander’s MVP victory explains that Verlander is only the second player in baseball history to capture a Rookie of the Year, Cy Young and Most Valuable Player award over his career and finished this season with pitching’s Triple Crown.

Check it out background big!