The Detroit Historical Society shared: The Detroit Tiger’s Opening Day has always been cause for celebration! While baseball’s return and renewed championship hopes are enough to excite sports fans, the promise of the long summer days baseball brings with it never fails to put the rest of the city in a celebratory mood.
The caption of the photo is: Photo: c. 1886, from the Detroit Historical Society collection. Black and white photographic print depicting the Detroit Wolverines playing at Recreation Park, as seen from behind home plate. Mounted on board.
Definitely our red hot Tigers being THE ONLY undefeated team in baseball & in first place in the AL Central has the city extra fired up for the home opener against the Gonna Be in Vegas Next Year A’s.
Joey got an incredible drone shot of workers laying the last girder in place to connect the deck of the new Gordie Howe International Bridge to the Detroit Port of Entry. An astonishing project that is directed and paid for by Canada!
Diana Ross, 1976 photo by Motown Records & Diana Ross today by Diana Ross
Today is the birthday of Detroit-born singer, actress, record producer, and all around legend Diana Ross. The Black PR Wire Power news release in honor of her birthday says:
Born and raised in Detroit, Michigan, Ross rose to fame as the lead singer of the vocal group, The Supremes, who during the 1960s became Motown’s most successful act, and are the best-charting female group in US history, as well as one of the world’s best-selling girl groups of all time. The group released a record-setting twelve number one hit singles on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100, including “Where Did Our Love Go”, “Baby Love”, “Come See About Me”, “Stop! In the Name of Love”, “You Can’t Hurry Love”, “You Keep Me Hangin’ On”, “Love Child”, and “Someday We’ll Be Together”.
Following her departure from the Supremes in 1970, Ross released her eponymous debut solo album that same year, featuring the No. 1 Pop hit “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough.” She later released the album “Touch Me in the Morning” in 1973; its title track was her second solo No. 1 hit. She continued a successful solo career through the 1970s, which included hit albums like Mahogany and Diana Ross and their No. 1 hit singles, “Theme from Mahogany” and “Love Hangover”, respectively. Her 1980 album “Diana” produced another No. 1 single, “Upside Down”, as well as the international hit “I’m Coming Out.” Her final single with Motown during her initial run with the company achieved her sixth and final U.S. number one Pop hit, the duet “Endless Love” featuring Lionel Richie, whose solo career was launched with its success.
Ross has also ventured into acting, with a Golden Globe Award-winning and Academy Award–nominated performance in the film “Lady Sings the Blues” (1972); she recorded its soundtrack, which became a number one hit. She also starred in two other feature films, “Mahogany” (1975) and “The Wiz” (1978), later acting in the television films “Out of Darkness” (1994), for which she also was nominated for a Golden Globe Award, and Double Platinum (1999).
She is the only female artist to have number one singles as a solo artist; as the other half of a duet (Lionel Richie); as a member of a trio; and as an ensemble member (We are the World-USA for Africa). In 1976, Ross was named the “Female Entertainer of the Century” by Billboard magazine. In 1993, the Guinness Book of World Records declared her the most successful female music artist in history, due to her success in the United States and United Kingdom for having more hits than any female artist in the charts, with a career total of 70 hit singles with her work with the Supremes and as a solo artist. She had a top 10 UK hit in every one of the last five decades, and sang lead on a top 75 hit single at least once every year from 1964 to 1996 in the UK, a period of 33 consecutive years and a record for any performer.
In 1988, Ross was inducted to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of the Supremes, alongside Mary Wilson and Florence Ballard. She was the recipient of the Kennedy Center Honors in 2007, the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2012, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2016.
Detroit’s office of Arts, Culture & Entrepreneurship (Detroit ACE) announced Wednesday it is partnering with CANVS, an art technology company, to identify all the outdoor art on city walls.
ACE Director Rochelle Riley announced the initiative during a news conference in front of Chroma, a co-working office space in the Milwaukee Junction neighborhood. The CANVS collaboration, which involves an iPhone application and an online map, is part of Mayor Mike Duggan’s “Blight to Beauty” campaign promoting public art.
Riley declared the upcoming season “the summer of Detroit murals,” and said ACE will begin enlisting “mural hunters,” an army of supporters who will help enter murals into the registry.
To better connect residents to murals, CANVS will create a digital map on the ACE webpage that will allow users to create tours of similar murals, or find murals they have seen, but do not remember where.
Lorren Cargill, co-founder of the startup, said one of his company’s missions is to better connect community to art. “When art becomes more accessible, it allows people to better connect with the city,” he said.
Derek took this shot somewhere in Detroit back in March. Where exactly? I don’t know but I’ll find it with this app someday!! See more in his massive Detroit gallery on Flickr.
On the cool morning of April 25, doctoral student Eric Ste Marie from the University of Windsor’s department of integrative biology went out for a walk with his partner along the Detroit River prior to an anticipated long day in his lab. Much to his surprise, he saw an animal pop its head out of the water. It was too big to be a mink and, as it dove, he noticed that it did not have a flat beaver tail. Ste Marie ran out to the end of a pier beneath the Ambassador Bridge to get a closer look to check, and there it was: a river otter.
River otters were quite common in southeast Michigan, including the Detroit River, up through the arrival of European explorers and fur traders,” said Gearld P. Wykes, a historian from the Monroe County Museum System. “During the fur trade era, they were much sought after for their fur, along with beaver. Based on historical records, river otters were likely extirpated from the Detroit River in the early 1900s.”
In 1986, the Ohio Department of Natural Resources reintroduced river otters into high water quality rivers and streams in eastern Ohio. The river otters thrived. As their population grew, they began to move westward – what scientists call expanding their range. By the early 2000s, they had found a home in western Ohio, particularly near Cedar Point and Ottawa National Wildlife Refuge, just east of Toledo.
…Biologists studying the Detroit River and resource managers have been excited about the possible range expansion of river otters into the Detroit River. There have been a few anecdotal reports from citizens, but no photographic or videographic proof until Ste Marie was greeted with that ecological surprise on the morning of April 25.
…River otters are considered an indicator species, and their return to the Detroit River after an absence of more than 100 years is a hopeful sign of improving watershed conditions.
Ashleigh took this back in 2016 in Detroit at the Detroit Zoo. Hopefully she gets a shot of them in the wild! See more in her Detroit gallery on Flickr & for sure check out her Go See Do Photography website for more great pics!
The abandoned Grande Ballroom is up for sale for a hefty $5,000,000, according to a listing on Jim Shaffer and Associates Realtors that went online this week. The old-school music hall was a hub for classic and psychedelic rock bands in the 1960s until it closed in 1972. Since then, it has sat looming like a fading memory of a bygone era.
Back in the days of sex, drugs, and, rock ‘n’ roll, the ballroom hosted acts like Led Zepplin, Pink Floyd, Janis Joplin, and even John Coltrane and Sun Ra. MC5 became regulars on the stage and recorded its 1969 debut album Kick Out the Jams there, and in recent years a mural of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame-nominated band’s guitarist Wayne Kramer was painted on the side of the building.
The Detroit Tigers open the 2022 baseball season at 1:10 PM today in Comerica Park. Vintage Detroit shared a really great history of Opening Day in Detroit that has all kinds of great trivia including the fact that in their first game in the American League on April 25, 1901:
…the Tigers made an amazing comeback on Opening Day at Bennett Park at the corner of Michigan and Trumbull. Detroit trailed the visiting Brewers 13-4 entering the bottom of the ninth. It seemed like the Tigers would start their entry in the American League with a lopsided loss. But wait…the Tigers got a runner on, then another, then a walk, and another hit, and a passed ball, and a hit, and another, and another. You get the idea. The Tigers scored ten runs to steal the game 14-13. The fans were thrilled to see the walkoff victory (though it would be decades before that term existed). Amazingly, the rally from nine runs down remains the biggest ninth inning comeback in league history.
The Tigers shared this pic of phenom Spencer Torkleson and one of their all-time greats Miguel Cabrera yesterday in their first practice at home. See more on their Facebook & let’s go Tigers!!
Flower Day takes place every year on the Sunday after Mother’s Day and has been a time-honored tradition of Eastern Market since 1967. Growers offer a wide variety of flowers at a great value so we recommend you come early for the best selection!
This special day is made possible through our partnership with the Metropolitan Detroit Flower Growers Association. MDFGA members arrive every year from Michigan, Ontario, and neighboring states. They share 15 acres of the heartiest varieties of flowers for this region and they’re ready to share the best strategies of how to help their flora thrive.
We also offer free convenient parcel pickups so you can explore the market throughout the day without being attached to your flats of flowers.
Northland Center, located in Southfield, Michigan was the world’s largest shopping center, and first regional shopping center, when it opened on March 22, 1954. For many, its construction heralded the beginning of the end for downtown Detroit’s shopping district, and the beginning of suburban shopping malls.
Designed by architect Victor Gruen and constructed at a cost of $25 million, Northland Center’s opening, widely publicized in the national media, was said to signal the future of shopping in postwar America. The Center had a Hudson’s department store as its anchor with, at time of opening, an additional 80 spaces for tenants, all surrounded by an 8,344-space parking lot. Northland Center also featured a bank, post office, auditoriums, artwork, fountains and extensive landscaping, design features that were soon incorporated by other developers across the country.
The artwork included six sculptures commissioned by Hudson’s, perhaps the most well-known being Marshall Fredericks’ Boy and the Bear. Among other commissioned works were Moby Dick by Joseph Anthony McDonnell, and Lily Saarinen’s water sculpture/fountain, Noah.
In 1975, Northland Center was enclosed as a mall, and a food court was added to the complex in 1991. Despite these additions, Northland suffered a natural decline as it aged. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, major tenants vacated their operations, as did several of the anchor stores. The volume of shoppers dropped from its peak of 18 million annually to half of that. The property had various owners until the last in 2014 who defaulted on his mortgage.
Michigan in Pictures 