History
During the late 19th century, creating wide, graceful streets was seen as a way to create a beautiful city. After much debate, in the 1890s Detroit adopted the idea of creating a "Grand Boulevard" encircling the city. By 1913, the landscaped Grand Boulevard was generally recognized as a major adornment of the city, and a prestigious address in which to reside.
Houses built along this section of the Boulevard were among the grandest in the city at the time they were built; however, by the mid-1920s, the appeal of living along Grand Boulevard declined. During the Great Depression and later during World War II, some of these massive elegant homes in this historic district were cut up into small apartments. Currently, this section of Grand Boulevard has become a mixed-use neighborhood. Only a few of these homes are still used as single-family residences; many serve as group homes for those who need institutional care.
Read more about this topic: East Grand Boulevard Historic District
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The one duty we owe to history is to rewrite it.”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)
“All history is a record of the power of minorities, and of minorities of one.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“What you don’t understand is that it is possible to be an atheist, it is possible not to know if God exists or why He should, and yet to believe that man does not live in a state of nature but in history, and that history as we know it now began with Christ, it was founded by Him on the Gospels.”
—Boris Pasternak (1890–1960)