The Mark Twain Library in Detroit opened in 1940 and served as an important community hub for decades, hosting events and providing a safe space for neighbourhood children. However, as the surrounding area declined in the 1990s, the library’s finances deteriorated and it was forced to close and then only open two days a week. It eventually shut down permanently due to disrepair and asbestos issues.
Despite community fundraising efforts, plans to renovate the library were never realized. With no progress being made, the city demolished the building in 2011, much to the anger of neighbours who felt misled about how renovation funds would be used.
The site where the Mark Twain Library once stood at the junction of Gratiot Avenue and Seneca Street is now an empty lot.
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I couldn’t figure out why it would be in such bad shape, with books everywhere like that, and then get razed. Then I saw Detroit. The big auto companies really fucked that city good, they should be paying to fix what they broke.
Clearly you skipped over the Coleman Young Era of leadership in Detroit. Plagued by crime and rampant corruption, White flight started after a series of race riots in 1967, but continued through the 70s and 80s. Young succeeded in integrating the police department and reducing brutality complaints, but the murder rate never dipped below 50 per 100k residents and the city lost about half a million residents during his ~20 years of leadership.
Then of course you had later convicted crooks like Kwambe Kilpatrick run the city into bankruptcy. Auto companies, mainly GM and Chrysler, left, but that was only part of the problem. Years of fiscal mismanagement and crime deteriorated the city.
I didn’t mean to imply it was the only problem, but I’d argue it was the biggest which the others stemmed from. Detroit grew around them but as you pointed out it wasn’t only when they left that problems happened.
The city is rebuilding albiet slowly. Some parts of detroit are either full of abandoned buildings next to occupied buildings or just an empty plot of land that is cheaper to purchase. Than with a home in need of repairs.
I wouldn’t say auto companies ruined the place, environmentally yes, but Detroit was a center of racist activities combined with a huge migrant black workforce from the south. In a similar way the Republicans are trying to destroy democracy today, the leaders and racist individuals decided to create separate laws for “certain people”. They prevented these people from integration into the city, from getting loans or mortgages like white people could get. Then they stole what property they did have like black bottom and used the police as their agents of mayhem, killing innocent black Americans and driving them to riot to get justice. Unlike today, no one back then supported them that could make a difference. The racists would rather destroy a beautiful city to hurt black people then to lift them up as equals. Detroit was abandoned by it’s government, leading citizens, the state and the nation.