No home for the “ordinary gamut”: A historical archaeology of community displacement and the creation of Detroit, City Beautiful

Abstract

Michigan Central Station and Roosevelt Park were constructed between 1908 and 1918 as part of Detroit's City Beautiful Movement. The construction process was a placemaking effort designed to implant order on the urban landscape that involved the displacement of a community who represented everything that city planners sought to erase from Detroit's city center: overcrowding, poverty, immigrants, and transient populations. Current historical archaeological research reveals how the existing ornamental landscape of Roosevelt Park masks the history of a forgotten working-class neighborhood. This synthesis of archival and material evidence details the conditions of life within the neighborhood and of a contentious, decade-long displacement struggle rooted in the inequalities of early-20th-century industrial capitalism. Positioned at the start of a century of controversial urban planning initiatives, the Roosevelt Park case study encourages understandings of displacement as a process that has diachronic and comparative dimensions, both in Detroit and in other urban settings.

Effects of Anthropogenic Particles on the Chemical and Geophysical Properties of Urban Soils, Detroit, Michigan

“…19) started to be demolished in order to make room for the Michigan Central Train Station (Ryzewski, 2012). The purpose of Roosevelt Park was to create a grand entryway into Detroit for visitors once they exit the train station (Ryzewski, 2015). In 2012, an archaeological excavation took place at Roosevelt Park in order to identify the history, lifestyles, and social interactions that used to take place in this neighborhood when homes were first built.…”