Black Bottom Street View: Mobilizing a City Archive

Abstract

This paper discusses Black Bottom Street View, an immersive representation of an historic African American neighborhood in Detroit that was destroyed during Urban Renewal. The exhibit recreates Black Bottom’s street grid and envelops visitors within panoramic views constructed from stitched archival photographs of the neighborhood. The exhibit’s light- weight, tensile, and flat-packed structures allow the project to be deployed across the city and region. In spatializing the photographs, Black Bottom Street View transforms the archive from a stack of disconnected snapshots into a shifting but cohesive whole: a public spectacle, a transient monument, a social platform for connection with the archive. Black Bottom Street View also helps to augment the city’s fragmented, incomplete record of Black Bottom by working with a local organization, Black Bottom Archives, to collect, preserve, and provide digital access to oral histories that tell the story of Black Bottom from the perspective of its former residents. Through collaborative means, the Black Bottom Street View exhibit visualizes, spatializes and mobilizes a city archive in order to amplify ongoing efforts to preserve Black Bottom’s history and help connect its legacy with the present.