96 Fun Facts About Detroit

Which French explorer founded Detroit in 1701 by building Fort Pontchartrain du Détroit?

Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac founded Detroit in 1701 by building Fort Pontchartrain du Détroit; the Cadillac car brand, created in 1902, took his name and his coat of arms as its logo.

The name Detroit comes from a French word meaning what?

'Strait' is the meaning of the French word détroit; the city is named for the Detroit River, the strait that links Lake St. Clair to Lake Erie.

Windsor, Ontario, sits across the Detroit River in which compass direction from Detroit?

South: Windsor sits on the river's south bank, so Detroit is the only major city on the border where you drive south from the United States into Canada; Windsor is Canada's southernmost major city.

About how many people lived in Detroit at its peak, recorded by the 1950 census?

1.85 million residents made Detroit America's fifth-largest city in 1950; the 2020 census counted about 639,000, a fall of roughly two-thirds in seventy years.

The 'grand bargain' that ended Detroit's bankruptcy shielded city pensions and blocked the sale of what?

The art museum's collection passed to an independent non-profit after foundations, the state and museum donors pledged $816 million toward city pensions; the 2013 filing was the largest by any US city.

Who was elected Detroit's first Black mayor in 1973?

Coleman Young, who as a wartime Tuskegee Airman had protested a whites-only officers' club, beat police commissioner John Nichols in 1973 and held office for twenty years.

Which city replaced Detroit as Michigan's state capital in 1847?

Lansing became Michigan's capital in 1847, when the legislature moved it inland from Detroit, partly to put it farther from British-held Canada.

Henry Ford's 1913 moving assembly line borrowed its idea of work moving past the worker from which Chicago industry?

Meatpacking plants moved carcasses along a line past butchers who each made one cut; Ford's engineers turned the idea around, and building a Model T fell from over 12 hours to about 93 minutes.

Which nickname did Detroit earn in the 1940s?

The Arsenal of Democracy was Roosevelt's December 1940 name for American industry; Detroit earned it as its car plants stopped building cars and turned out tanks, jeeps and bombers instead.

In 2015 Detroit became the first US city named to which UNESCO Creative Cities category?

City of Design status came in 2015, with UNESCO pointing to Detroit's industrial design heritage and to designers such as Eames, Saarinen and Yamasaki who worked in the region.

Which ballpark opened in 2000 as the new home of the Detroit Tigers?

Comerica Park opened in April 2000 with fences so deep that one Tigers slugger dubbed it 'Comerica National Park'; before the 2003 season the team pulled left-center in from 395 feet to 370.

The Renaissance Center became a carmaker's headquarters, but its central tower, Michigan's tallest building, was built as what?

A hotel fills the 73-storey cylinder, the tallest hotel in the world when it opened in 1977; critics said the high berms around the complex walled it off from downtown, and they were later torn down.

Which automaker bought the Renaissance Center in 1996 for use as its global headquarters?

General Motors paid about $73 million for the complex in 1996, even though the drive to build it two decades earlier had been led by Henry Ford II, chairman of rival Ford.

Who lent Berry Gordy Jr. the $800 he used in 1959 to start the label that became Motown?

His family agreed, after some debate, to lend the $800 from the Ber-Berry Co-op, a savings fund its members paid into; the money launched Tamla Records in January 1959, and Motown grew from it.

What name did Berry Gordy give the West Grand Boulevard house that became Motown's first headquarters and studio?

Hitsville U.S.A. was a former photographer's studio that Gordy bought in 1959; his family lived upstairs while the studio below ran almost around the clock, and the house is now the Motown Museum.

To which city did Berry Gordy move Motown's headquarters from Detroit in 1972?

Los Angeles drew Gordy because he wanted Motown in films as well as records; the same year the company released 'Lady Sings the Blues', starring Diana Ross as Billie Holiday.

The 'Belleville Three', Juan Atkins, Derrick May and Kevin Saunderson, pioneered which electronic music genre in 1980s Detroit?

Techno took shape after the three met at Belleville High School; Atkins borrowed the word from futurist Alvin Toffler, and a 1988 British compilation, 'Techno! The New Dance Sound of Detroit', fixed the name.

Where is American Coney Island in relation to its Detroit chili-dog rival Lafayette Coney Island?

They stand next door to each other on West Lafayette Boulevard downtown; Greek immigrant brothers Gust and William Keros founded the pair, and each diner still claims to have opened first.

Detroit-style pizza is rectangular because it was originally baked in steel trays made for what purpose?

The blue steel pans, made for holding automotive parts in Detroit factories, were adopted in 1946 at Buddy's Rendezvous on Six Mile Road for a pie topped with Wisconsin brick cheese.

Which Detroit pharmacist created the vanilla-tinged ginger ale that still carries his name?

James Vernor's company dates the drink to 1866, though a 1911 trademark filing points to 1880; the barrel-aged soda is the base of the Boston Cooler, a Detroit specialty despite its name.

Faygo, the Detroit soda founded in 1907, based its original flavors on recipes for what?

Brothers Ben and Perry Feigenson, Russian immigrant bakers, built Faygo's first flavors on their cake frosting recipes; decades later Insane Clown Posse made the soda notorious by spraying it over crowds.

Who owns the Ambassador Bridge between Detroit and Windsor, opened in 1929?

A private company controlled by the Moroun family has owned it since trucking magnate Manuel 'Matty' Moroun bought the bridge in 1979; the family then fought for years against a rival public bridge downriver.

The Detroit–Windsor cable-stayed bridge begun in 2018 is named after which hockey player?

Gordie Howe was a Canadian, born in Saskatchewan, who starred for Detroit for 25 seasons, so the name honours both banks of the river; he died in 2016, two years before construction began.

What has been mined from beds more than 1,000 feet beneath Detroit since 1910?

Rock salt lies in thick beds left by an ancient sea under the city; the mine's first shaft reached them in 1910, and today its only product is the salt spread on icy winter roads.

Detroit's 982-acre island park in the Detroit River is larger than which famous green space?

Central Park covers 843 acres, so the Detroit island outsizes it; the same designer, Frederick Law Olmsted, drew a plan for the island in the 1880s, though only parts of it were ever built.

The 1967 Detroit uprising began when police raided what kind of establishment on 12th Street?

Police raided a 'blind pig', a hidden speakeasy bar, above a print shop at 12th and Clairmount early on July 23, 1967; arresting its patrons touched off five days of violence.

Which Michigan governor sent the National Guard into Detroit during the 1967 uprising?

George Romney called out the Guard and then asked for federal paratroopers, but a dispute with President Johnson over declaring an insurrection delayed them; the five days of violence left 43 people dead.

Father Gabriel Richard is credited with Detroit's Latin city motto, coined after which disaster?

The 1805 fire destroyed almost the whole town on June 11 that year; the motto attributed to Richard, 'Speramus meliora; resurget cineribus', means 'We hope for better things; it will rise from the ashes'.

Judge Augustus Woodward modelled his 1807 plan for rebuilding Detroit on the layout of which city?

Washington, D.C., where Woodward had practised law, gave him Pierre L'Enfant's pattern of wide avenues radiating from circles; Detroit built only part of it, including the avenue that carries his name.

In 1909, Detroit's Woodward Avenue got the country's first mile of what?

Concrete roadway was poured for a full mile north of Six Mile Road in 1909, a national first; at Woodward and Michigan, a police officer in a tower directed traffic until a four-way signal replaced him in 1920.

Which numbered road forms Detroit's northern boundary with its suburbs?

8 Mile Road lies eight miles north of the downtown point from which Detroit's mile roads are counted; it is also the baseline of Michigan's land survey, and Eminem's 2002 film took its name.

'Lose Yourself' was the first song from which genre to win the Oscar for Best Original Song?

'Lose Yourself' was the first hip hop song to win Best Original Song, at the March 2003 Oscars; Eminem skipped the ceremony and was asleep at home when it won.

Which Detroit garage-rock duo split in 2011 after six studio albums?

The White Stripes long passed themselves off as brother and sister, though the two had been married and divorced; they called it a day in 2011, four years after their last album.

Aretha Franklin was the first woman inducted into what in 1987?

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inducted Aretha Franklin in 1987, its first woman; born in Memphis, she learned her craft singing gospel at New Bethel Baptist, the Detroit church where her father preached.

The Monument to Joe Louis at Jefferson and Woodward is a giant bronze of what?

Robert Graham's sculpture shows only his arm and fist, hung from a pyramid of poles; the fist was meant as a blow against racism outside the ring as much as a tribute to the punch he threw inside it.

What does the Spirit of Detroit statue hold in its right hand, opposite the gilt sphere?

Marshall Fredericks's 1958 bronze holds a family group of figures in its right hand, symbolising human relationships, and a gilt sphere for God in its left; fans have dressed it in giant team jerseys for Detroit finals runs.

Which Detroit skyscraper, finished in 1929, is nicknamed the 'Cathedral of Finance'?

The Guardian Building earned the name for its church-like lobby of vaulted tile and stained glass; it opened as the Union Trust Building, and its custom orange brick was later sold as 'Guardian brick'.

Detroit's Fox Theatre, opened in 1928 with more than 5,000 seats, was restored in 1988 by which family?

The Ilitches bought the faded movie palace in 1987, spent about $12 million on an 18-month restoration and moved their own company offices into the building; it reopened in November 1988.

The architects of Detroit's long-derelict main railway station, reopened by Ford in 2024, also designed which New York landmark?

Grand Central Terminal and Michigan Central Station both came from Warren & Wetmore and Reed & Stem; the Detroit depot saw its last train in January 1988 and stood empty until Ford bought it in 2018.

Which member of the Ford family commissioned Diego Rivera's Detroit Industry murals in 1932?

Edsel, his son, put up the money; when newspapers attacked the finished frescoes in 1933, supporters signed petitions and the city's arts commission voted unanimously to accept them.

In 1922 the Detroit Institute of Arts became the first U.S. public museum to acquire a painting by which artist?

Vincent van Gogh's self-portrait arrived when the museum was flush with the money of a booming car city; the same year it bought Matisse's 'The Window', also a first for an American public collection.

Tyree Guyton's Heidelberg Project is best known for covering abandoned Detroit houses in which painted pattern?

Polka dots in many colours spread across the houses of Heidelberg Street after Guyton began in 1986 with his grandfather Sam Mackey; the city bulldozed parts of the project in 1991 and again in 1999.

Which automated train has run a one-way elevated loop around downtown Detroit since 1987?

The People Mover was meant to be the downtown link of a regional rail network that was never funded, which left a 2.9-mile loop of 13 stations that trains circle in a single direction.

The Detroit Zoo, opened in 1928, was among the first US zoos to do what?

It chose to feature bar-less habitats throughout, with Hagenbeck's moats in place of cages, an idea Denver had tried for its bears a decade earlier; the 125-acre zoo actually lies in suburban Royal Oak.

The first Model T was built in 1908 at which Detroit Ford plant, now a museum?

The Piquette Avenue plant is where Henry Ford's team designed the Model T in a third-floor experimental room and built the first one in 1908; production outgrew the building within two years.

What daily wage did Henry Ford announce for his workers in January 1914?

The $5 day, announced on January 5, 1914, more than doubled the typical $2.34 daily wage at Ford's plant and drew thousands of job-seekers to Detroit.

After moving to Detroit in 1957, Rosa Parks worked in the office of which congressman?

John Conyers hired her in 1965, after the bus boycott had cost her her seamstress job and sent her north to Detroit, where her brother lived; she worked in his office until she retired in 1988.

Which holiday tradition did the Lions begin in 1934, their first season after moving to Detroit?

A Thanksgiving Day game was owner George Richards's gimmick to win fans for a team newly arrived from Portsmouth, Ohio; he also owned radio station WJR and got NBC to carry the game across its network.

Detroit Red Wings fans throw what onto the ice during the playoffs, a tradition begun in 1952?

An octopus was first thrown by the Cusimano brothers, fish-market owners, in 1952; its eight legs stood for the eight playoff wins then needed to take the Stanley Cup.

The Detroit Pistons moved to Detroit in 1957 from which Indiana city?

The Fort Wayne Pistons, named for the piston foundry that owned them, moved to Detroit in 1957 for a bigger market; the 'Bad Boys' of Isiah Thomas later won back-to-back titles in 1989 and 1990.

Ford Field incorporates a 1920s warehouse of which Detroit department store?

Ford Field wraps around a 1920s Hudson's warehouse, whose floors hold the suites along one sideline; the stadium opened in August 2002 next to the Tigers' ballpark.

Which street, the heart of Paradise Valley, was razed for the Chrysler Freeway?

Hastings Street was the main drag of Paradise Valley, lined with Black-owned shops and nightclubs; it was cleared around 1960, and the sunken I-375 stretch of the Chrysler Freeway now runs where it lay.

Which Native American leader's 1763 war saw Fort Detroit besieged but not captured?

Pontiac first tried to take the fort by a ruse, walking in with weapons hidden under blankets, but the commander had been warned; the Odawa leader then besieged it from May to October 1763 without success.

British forces did not fully withdraw from Detroit until 1796, following which agreement?

The Jay Treaty of 1794 obliged Britain to give up its Great Lakes posts; Detroit was handed to US troops on July 11, 1796, thirteen years after the Treaty of Paris had ceded the region.

Which Detroit pharmaceutical firm was founded in 1866 and later absorbed by Warner-Lambert?

Parke-Davis sent plant hunters to Latin America in search of new medicines and in 1902 opened what is credited as the first industrial drug research laboratory; Warner-Lambert bought the firm in 1970.

Which Detroit mayor resigned in 2008 after felony convictions and later received a 28-year federal prison sentence?

Kwame Kilpatrick quit after pleading guilty to obstruction of justice in the text-message scandal; a federal racketeering case brought the 28-year term, which President Trump commuted in 2021 after about seven years.

Who was appointed Detroit's emergency manager a few months before its Chapter 9 bankruptcy filing?

Kevyn Orr, a bankruptcy lawyer named by Governor Rick Snyder in March 2013, took control of the city's finances from its elected leaders, with power to rewrite contracts; he filed for Chapter 9 on July 18.

The J. W. Westcott II, a boat serving freighters on the Detroit River, is America's only floating what?

ZIP code 48222 belongs to the boat, which hoists letters up to passing freighters in a bucket on a rope, a service nicknamed 'mail in the pail'; the Westcott company has worked the river since 1874.

Detroit has bid more often than any other city without ever being chosen to host which event?

The Summer Olympics eluded Detroit at vote after vote for the Games of 1944 to 1972; in 1963 it ran second to Mexico City, which took the 1968 Games on the first ballot without a single vote to spare.

Which famous speech did Martin Luther King Jr. give in an early form at Detroit's Walk to Freedom in June 1963?

I Have a Dream took shape before 25,000 people at Cobo Hall after 125,000 had marched down Woodward Avenue; organisers chose the date to mark twenty years since the city's 1943 race riot.

Which team won Super Bowl XL, played at Ford Field in February 2006?

The Pittsburgh Steelers beat Seattle 21–10 on February 5, 2006, a fifth title that equalled the 49ers and Cowboys at the time, in Detroit native Jerome Bettis's final game.

Which Motown star was signed to the Tamla label in 1961 as an eleven-year-old?

Stevie Wonder, born in Saginaw and raised in Detroit, was taken to Motown by Ronnie White of the Miracles; two years later 'Fingertips' made him the youngest solo artist to top the Hot 100.

Which famous aviator was born in Detroit on February 4, 1902?

Charles Lindbergh was born in Detroit, his mother's home town, on February 4, 1902, but grew up mostly in Little Falls, Minnesota; his mother, a Detroit dentist's daughter, taught chemistry at high schools in both towns.

Which workwear brand was started in the Detroit area in 1889 by its namesake, Hamilton?

Carhartt began in 1889 with two sewing machines and five workers; Hamilton Carhartt asked railroad men what they needed and built his first bib overalls to suit them.

Which August event on a Detroit-area avenue is the world's largest one-day car gathering?

The Dream Cruise began in 1995 as a Ferndale fundraiser for a children's soccer field and grew into a Woodward Avenue spectacle drawing around 1.5 million people and 40,000 classic cars each August.

Besides produce, Detroit's Eastern Market has the US's largest open-air market for what?

Flowers fill the sheds each May for Flower Day; the market itself began downtown and moved in 1891 to the 43-acre district it still occupies, the largest historic public market district in the country.

Detroit's oldest surviving neighborhood was named for Irish immigrants from which county?

Corktown takes its name from County Cork, the origin of many of the Famine-era Irish who settled Detroit's near west side in the 1840s; by the 1850s about half the Eighth Ward was Irish.

Which pizza chain's name is on the arena the Red Wings and Pistons moved into in 2017?

Little Caesars Arena brought the Pistons back inside the city for the first time since 1978, so that all four of Detroit's major league teams play in its downtown district, a claim no other US city can make.

Founded in 1701, Sainte-Anne de Détroit is the second-oldest continuously operating US what?

Catholic parish records at Sainte-Anne's date from 1704; work on the first church began on Saint Anne's feast day in 1701, two days after the French landed, and the present one became a minor basilica in 2020.

RoboCop is set in a future Detroit, but where was the 1987 film mostly shot?

Dallas stood in for future Detroit because director Paul Verhoeven found the real city's low, old-fashioned buildings wrong for the near future; Dallas City Hall, stretched taller with matte paintings, played OCP headquarters.

Which Motown group scored twelve Billboard Hot 100 number ones between 1964 and 1969?

The Supremes began as the Primettes, schoolgirls from Detroit's Brewster-Douglass housing project formed as a sister act to the Primes; five of their twelve chart-toppers came in a row in 1964–65.

Jimmy Hoffa was last seen in 1975 outside what kind of business in suburban Detroit?

He was last seen outside a restaurant, the Machus Red Fox in Bloomfield Township, on July 30, 1975; he is thought to have been killed by mobsters who did not want him back running the Teamsters, and was declared dead in 1982.

Which escape artist died in a Detroit hospital on Halloween 1926, days after his final show in the city?

Harry Houdini went on stage at Detroit's Garrick Theater with acute appendicitis and a fever of 104, was taken to Grace Hospital afterwards and died there of peritonitis a week later, aged 52.

Which two separate cities sit as enclaves almost entirely surrounded by Detroit?

Hamtramck and Highland Park both boomed with auto plants a century ago and fought off annexation; they share only a short border with each other, and Detroit surrounds them on every other side.

Detroit News outlet WWJ, on air since August 1920, claims to be the world's first what?

Commercial radio station is the title WWJ has disputed with rival KDKA for a century; it began as 8MK in the Detroit News building, and its first advertised programme, on August 31, 1920, carried election returns.

The Detroit Free Press Marathon boasts the world's only official international what?

The underwater mile runs through the Detroit–Windsor Tunnel on the way back from Canada; runners cross to Windsor on the Ambassador Bridge and return beneath the river.

The QLine streetcar on Woodward Avenue takes its name from which company?

Quicken Loans, Dan Gilbert's mortgage lender, bought the naming rights in 2016; the 3.3-mile line opened in May 2017, six decades after Detroit's original streetcars stopped running in 1956.

What gives the 'bumpy cake' from Detroit's Sanders its name?

The ridges of buttercream on top, piped onto devil's food cake and sealed under chocolate ganache, make the bumps; Fred Sanders, who had first set up shop in Chicago, opened his Woodward Avenue candy store in 1875.

Detroiters parade each spring to chase out which legendary creature, said to have cursed Detroit's founder?

The Nain Rouge, French for 'red dwarf', is said to have cursed the founder after he struck it with his cane; the tale first appeared in print in 1883, and the Marche du Nain Rouge has run each spring since 2010.

The Detroit Grand Prix began in 1982 as a round of which racing series?

Formula One raced around the Renaissance Center from 1982 to 1988 on a punishing street track; when a plan for a new circuit fell through, the Grand Prix left for Phoenix and Indy cars took over the Detroit race.

Kathryn Bigelow's 2017 film 'Detroit' dramatizes the 1967 police killings at which motel?

The Algiers Motel on Woodward Avenue was where Carl Cooper, Aubrey Pollard and Fred Temple, three Black teenagers, were shot dead on the night of July 25–26, 1967; three policemen and a guard were charged, and all were found not guilty.

Which musician paid $142,000 of the Detroit Masonic Temple's back taxes in 2013?

Jack White's $142,000 gift, anonymous at first, stopped a tax foreclosure; he was repaying the temple, which had given his mother work as an usher when she needed it, and one of its theatres now bears his name.

The ornate Michigan Theatre of 1926, downtown on Bagley, was gutted and turned into what?

It became a parking garage in 1977 after office tenants in the attached building threatened to leave without parking; cars sit beneath the ruined plasterwork of a Rapp & Rapp movie palace.

Detroit's 1943 race riot, which killed 34 people, began with brawls where?

The fighting started on Belle Isle on the evening of June 20, 1943, among youths at the crowded park, spread onto the bridge to the mainland, and false rumours carried it across the city for three days.

Which celebrated attorney defended Dr. Ossian Sweet in his 1925 Detroit murder trial?

Clarence Darrow, hired by the NAACP, defended Sweet after he and his friends fired on a white mob outside his new house; a hung jury was followed by his brother Henry's acquittal and the charges were dropped.

Who coached the Red Wings' 'Russian Five' to the 1997 Stanley Cup?

Scotty Bowman, in his fourth season behind the Detroit bench, guided the Russian Five to the 1997 Cup; six days after the win, defenseman Vladimir Konstantinov was critically injured in a limousine crash that ended his career.

Detroit's Packard Plant pioneered which building material for American car factories in 1905?

Reinforced concrete, first used in Building 10 in 1905, opened up the floors and let in daylight through huge windows; the plant built Merlin aircraft engines in WWII, and most of it was demolished by 2025.

Which architect designed Detroit's Fisher Building and the Packard Plant?

Albert Kahn's firm, known for its car factories, was hired by the Soviet Union in 1929 to design hundreds of plants there; at home, his Fisher Building is called 'Detroit's largest art object'.

Which Tigers pitcher won three complete games in the 1968 World Series?

Mickey Lolich won Games 2, 5 and 7, pitching the finale on two days' rest after the Tigers had fallen behind three games to one against St. Louis, and was named Series MVP.

Which civil rights leader was known as 'Detroit Red' in his hustling days in 1940s Harlem?

Malcolm X, who grew up in Michigan, got the name for his reddish hair and home state; it told him apart from a fellow Harlem dishwasher called 'Chicago Red', the future comedian Redd Foxx.

Detroit's razed Black Bottom neighborhood took its name from what?

Its dark, fertile soil, the bottomland of a river buried as a sewer in 1827, gave the area its name long before it became a Black neighbourhood; it was razed around 1960 for a freeway and the Lafayette Park housing.

The Penobscot Building, Detroit's tallest until 1977, is named for a river in which state?

Maine's Penobscot River was where lumber baron Simon J. Murphy worked in his youth; he gave the name to his first Detroit office block in 1905, and his family kept it for the 47-storey tower of 1928.

Which American general surrendered Detroit to a smaller British force in 1812?

William Hull gave up Fort Detroit on August 16, 1812, after Isaac Brock and Tecumseh bluffed him with a smaller force; a court-martial sentenced him to death for cowardice, but President Madison spared him.

Which Woolworth Building architect designed Detroit's marble Main Library?

Cass Gilbert got the commission in 1912, after a gift from Andrew Carnegie spurred the city to build; the First World War held up the work, and the white marble library opened only in 1921.

Who centred the Red Wings' famed 'Production Line' between its two star wingers from 1947?

Sid Abel, the veteran captain, was put between the team's two best young wingers by new coach Tommy Ivan in 1947; in 1949–50 the three finished first, second and third in league scoring.

What did Mayor Hazen Pingree have residents grow on vacant lots in the 1890s?

Pingree's 'potato patches' of 1894 let the unemployed grow potatoes and other vegetables on vacant city land during the depression; the shoe magnate put horses of his own up for sale to help pay for seed and tools.