Detroit's Belle Isle: Island Park Gem

by Michael Rodriguez, Thomas Featherstone

Overview

Find out how Detroit's Belle Isle withstood the test of time and became a haven where cultures came together to relax, celebrate and play.

One of the most unique urban parks in the world, Belle Isle has long been a source of civic pride in Detroit. In 1879, just as its population, land area, and industry were flourishing, the city of Detroit purchased this 700-acre island for use as a park. Famed landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted was soon commissioned to transform the island into an idyllic retreat from the industrial city. This book uses remarkable images drawn from the Walter P. Reuther Library to document Belle Isle's distinctive history throughout the city's periods of accomplishment, economic flux, and social turmoil.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780738523156
Publisher:	Arcadia Publishing SC
Publication date:	02/28/2003
Series:	Images of America Series
Pages:	128
Sales rank:	1,044,921
Product dimensions:	6.50(w) x 9.25(h) x 0.31(d)

About the Author

Michael Rodriquez is a humanities librarian at Michigan State University. Thomas Featherstone is an audiovisual archivist at the Walter P. Reuther Library at Wayne State University in Detroit, and the co-author of another Arcadia title, Labor in Detroit: Working in the Motor City.

Table of Contents

	Acknowledgments	6
	Introduction	7
1.	"It will Rise From the Ashes" Origins of a Park and its City	9
2.	"Genius of the Place"	27
3.	Island in the City's Age of Experience 1900s to 1960s	57
4.	Seasons in the Park	93
	Bibliography	128