Detroit--Where Life's worth Living (Part 2)

“Detroit—Where Life’s Worth Living” (Part 2)

The People of Detroit

In 1915, the Detroit Convention and Tourists' Bureau put out a lovely brochure touting the many highlights of the city. At the time, Detroit was the seventh-largest city in the country. The population was estimated at 645,000, up from 465,000 in 1910. (A 39% increase in 5 years!) As a point of comparison, the 2010 census puts Detroit at 713,000 today--a 25% decrease from 2000 and the lowest number of any official census since 1910.

In 1915 Detroit:

• There were more parks per capita than any other major city in the U.S.
• Per capita debt was the lowest of the 22 leading U.S. cities.
• The cost of living was the lowest of the 28-largest U.S. cities.
• 41% of the homes in the city were owned by their residents. (An extraordinarily high number for the day)
• Over 100,000 people were employed in the automobile industry.
• There were 447 miles of paved roads.
• About 5,000,000 tourists per year came to town, many of them “auto tourists.”
• The steamers on the Detroit River carried more than 11,000,000 passengers per year. You could ride one all day, listening to the orchestra, for ten cents.
• Navin Field, home of the Tigers, had a seating capacity of 25,000 and was the only centrally-located park in the big leagues.
• There were 110 public schools in the city with an annual budget of $1,600,000.
• There were more than 150 “moving picture houses” and 32 theatres for vaudeville, burlesque, and traditional theatre.

  1915 Detroit was a happening place, and a city where a man (and only a man, well, only a white man) with moxie and talent could go from rags to riches. Immigrants from other parts of the U.S. and all around the world made up the vast majority of the population.

The southern migration had begun with Ford’s “Five-dollar day” in 1914. (Up to this point, most unskilled laborers made a little over a dollar a day.) The five-dollar day sparked the growth of the middle-class, creating for the first time a large group of people who could afford to buy cars and eventually move out of the city centers where they worked. In that way, Ford first was responsible for a large part of Detroit’s growth and then for the decline of the city as those who could afford to leave did.