Alter Road
Encyclopedia
Alter Road is a north-south thoroughfare of approximately four miles length in southeastern Michigan
's Wayne County
.
city limits, nevertheless it is a symbolic dividing line between the overwhelmingly African-American
City of Detroit and the likewise overwhelmingly Caucasian City of Grosse Pointe Park.
Like 8 Mile Road, another well-known thoroughfare of political, ethnic and economic demarcation in Metro Detroit, Alter Road has long been considered something of a "Berlin Wall
" to separate communities. In fact, quite literally, there are places at which concrete barriers have actually been erected so as to reduce interaction between the two cities. A prime example would be the intersection of Alter and Goethe, just south of Mack Avenue, at which—right where the City of Grosse Pointe Park's corporate limit commences—that municipality has closed off Goethe to thwart both vehicular and pedestrian movement. Along nearby Mack Avenue—another border between the two municipalities—the City of Grosse Pointe Park has likewise made some of its intersecting north-south side streets inaccessible to vehicles, so as to reduce the potential for criminal activity, with the intersection of Mack and Wayburn Avenues in Grosse Pointe Park constituting a prominent example.
In his 1987 book, Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States, author Kenneth T. Jackson
describes Alter Road as "[t]he most conspicuous city-suburban contrast in the United States...".
And in reference not only to Alter Road, but in general to all thoroughfares which separate the City of Detroit from its suburbs, author Tamar Jacoby
, in her 1998 book Someone Else's House: America's Unfinished Struggle for Integration declares: "Eight Mile Road, Alter Road, Telegraph Road and Tireman Avenue; though originally arbitrary—lines on a map—the boundary between Detroit and its suburbs had become a chasm between two social classes. In some places, usually where the road was wide, it divided slum from new, upscale housing development. At other spots, once similar houses on either side of the street now looked like pictures before and after a natural disaster."
As reported in the Detroit News of October 30, 2005, former Secretary of the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development
and former Mayor of San Antonio, Texas
, Henry Cisneros
, stated: "There is the perception that all the rich people live in Grosse Pointe and all the poor people live in Detroit, and Alter Road is the dividing line that not only denotes the physical border, but also a social border."
The four-mile (6 km) stretch of Alter Road provides some contrasts of its own. At its southernmost, below Jefferson Avenue
, are generally well-kept dwellings and the pleasant Mariner Park which hosts a still-functioning lighthouse. At one time, a major medical facility was located nearby at the "foot" of Alter Road called "Marine Hospital." This particular section of the road parallels the narrow Fox Creek and it is at this southern end that Alter Road leads to the Detroit River
and to the southern starting point for Lake St. Clair
, with Canada
's Peche Island
nearby.
North of Jefferson Avenue, Alter Road is quite blighted—as is much of the City of Detroit. However, Alter Road's northernmost blocks, between Warren Avenue and Chandler Park Drive—most especially its intersection with the meandering Outer Drive
—offer a somewhat in-between of the two extremes. In the blocks of Alter Road north of Mack Avenue, a few new houses have been built, replacing older ones which had been demolished.
Up until the late 1960s, there was little visible difference between Alter Road, and the streets immediately west of it inside the Detroit city limits, as compared with the streets immediately east of it inside the Grosse Pointe Park city limits. The southeastern corner of Detroit was majority Caucasian at the time (as was Detroit as a whole) and did not suffer the urban decay which plagues much of Detroit currently. If a motorist or pedestrian had crossed the border back in those days, he or she might not have even noticed exiting one municipality and entering the other.
There is speculation that during the early development of the City of Detroit, Alter Road became a city boundary because it was the farthest point that the Detroit Fire Department was able to offer coverage. This may well have been one of several reasons that Grosse Pointe Park then developed as a separate municipality.
-based, and internationally-known, hard rock band Alter Bridge
takes its name from guitarist Mark Tremonti's childhood experiences growing up in Grosse Pointe Park. For many years, there has been a small bridge at the intersection of Alter and Korte (over Fox Creek); as a child, Tremonti was forbidden to venture past that bridge, leaving the safety of Grosse Pointe Park and delving into the dangers lurking in the City of Detroit.
Author Doug Tanoury has published a poem—on the internet—about this thoroughfare entitled, simply enough, "Alter Road."
In 2003, the NBC television network bought a script for a new drama entitled "Alter Road," a series pilot created by former Detroit journalist and author Lowell Cauffiel
. David Schwimmer
's Dark Harbor Productions was executive producer of the project which was to have been produced at Universal Media Studios and which was to have revolved around two families separated by race and class along the Detroit-Grosse Pointe Park border. In the end, the pilot was not picked up by the network. Consequently, the project did not advance to series, or even to mini-series, status.
Michigan
Michigan is a U.S. state located in the Great Lakes Region of the United States of America. The name Michigan is the French form of the Ojibwa word mishigamaa, meaning "large water" or "large lake"....
's Wayne County
Wayne County, Michigan
-History:Wayne County was one of the first counties formed when the Northwest Territory was organized. It was named for the American general "Mad Anthony" Wayne. It originally encompassed the entire area of the Lower Peninsula of Michigan, as well as small sections that are now part of northern...
.
Basic History
Although Alter Road itself is completely within the DetroitDetroit, Michigan
Detroit is the major city among the primary cultural, financial, and transportation centers in the Metro Detroit area, a region of 5.2 million people. As the seat of Wayne County, the city of Detroit is the largest city in the U.S. state of Michigan and serves as a major port on the Detroit River...
city limits, nevertheless it is a symbolic dividing line between the overwhelmingly African-American
Black people
The term black people is used in systems of racial classification for humans of a dark skinned phenotype, relative to other racial groups.Different societies apply different criteria regarding who is classified as "black", and often social variables such as class, socio-economic status also plays a...
City of Detroit and the likewise overwhelmingly Caucasian City of Grosse Pointe Park.
Like 8 Mile Road, another well-known thoroughfare of political, ethnic and economic demarcation in Metro Detroit, Alter Road has long been considered something of a "Berlin Wall
Berlin Wall
The Berlin Wall was a barrier constructed by the German Democratic Republic starting on 13 August 1961, that completely cut off West Berlin from surrounding East Germany and from East Berlin...
" to separate communities. In fact, quite literally, there are places at which concrete barriers have actually been erected so as to reduce interaction between the two cities. A prime example would be the intersection of Alter and Goethe, just south of Mack Avenue, at which—right where the City of Grosse Pointe Park's corporate limit commences—that municipality has closed off Goethe to thwart both vehicular and pedestrian movement. Along nearby Mack Avenue—another border between the two municipalities—the City of Grosse Pointe Park has likewise made some of its intersecting north-south side streets inaccessible to vehicles, so as to reduce the potential for criminal activity, with the intersection of Mack and Wayburn Avenues in Grosse Pointe Park constituting a prominent example.
In his 1987 book, Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States, author Kenneth T. Jackson
Kenneth T. Jackson
Kenneth Terry Jackson is a professor of history and social sciences at Columbia University. A frequent television guest, he is best known as an urban historian and a preeminent authority on New York City, where he lives on the Upper West Side....
describes Alter Road as "[t]he most conspicuous city-suburban contrast in the United States...".
And in reference not only to Alter Road, but in general to all thoroughfares which separate the City of Detroit from its suburbs, author Tamar Jacoby
Tamar Jacoby
Tamar Jacoby is known primarily for her writing on immigration-related issues. She is also president and CEO of ImmigrationWorks USA, an organization self-described as "a national federation of small business owners working to advance better immigration law." Jacoby was named a 2012 Bernard L....
, in her 1998 book Someone Else's House: America's Unfinished Struggle for Integration declares: "Eight Mile Road, Alter Road, Telegraph Road and Tireman Avenue; though originally arbitrary—lines on a map—the boundary between Detroit and its suburbs had become a chasm between two social classes. In some places, usually where the road was wide, it divided slum from new, upscale housing development. At other spots, once similar houses on either side of the street now looked like pictures before and after a natural disaster."
As reported in the Detroit News of October 30, 2005, former Secretary of the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development
United States Department of Housing and Urban Development
The United States Department of Housing and Urban Development, also known as HUD, is a Cabinet department in the Executive branch of the United States federal government...
and former Mayor of San Antonio, Texas
San Antonio, Texas
San Antonio is the seventh-largest city in the United States of America and the second-largest city within the state of Texas, with a population of 1.33 million. Located in the American Southwest and the south–central part of Texas, the city serves as the seat of Bexar County. In 2011,...
, Henry Cisneros
Henry Cisneros
Henry Gabriel Cisneros is a politician and businessman. A Democrat, Cisneros served as the 10th Secretary of Housing and Urban Development in the administration of President Bill Clinton from 1993 to 1997...
, stated: "There is the perception that all the rich people live in Grosse Pointe and all the poor people live in Detroit, and Alter Road is the dividing line that not only denotes the physical border, but also a social border."
The four-mile (6 km) stretch of Alter Road provides some contrasts of its own. At its southernmost, below Jefferson Avenue
Jefferson Avenue (Detroit)
Jefferson Avenue is a scenic road along the eastern part of the Detroit metropolitan area in the U.S. state of Michigan. It travels alongside Lake Erie, the Detroit River, and Lake Saint Clair. This road also provides access to many recreational facilities in the area...
, are generally well-kept dwellings and the pleasant Mariner Park which hosts a still-functioning lighthouse. At one time, a major medical facility was located nearby at the "foot" of Alter Road called "Marine Hospital." This particular section of the road parallels the narrow Fox Creek and it is at this southern end that Alter Road leads to the Detroit River
Detroit River
The Detroit River is a strait in the Great Lakes system. The name comes from the French Rivière du Détroit, which translates literally as "River of the Strait". The Detroit River has served an important role in the history of Detroit and is one of the busiest waterways in the world. The river...
and to the southern starting point for Lake St. Clair
Lake Saint Clair (North America)
Lake St. Clair is a fresh-water lake named after Clare of Assisi that lies between the Province of Ontario and the State of Michigan, and its midline also forms the boundary between Canada and the United States of America. Lake St. Clair includes the Anchor Bay along the Metro Detroit coastline...
, with Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
's Peche Island
Peche Island
Peche Island , is an uninhabited, currently Canadian-owned island in the Detroit River, at its opening into Lake Saint Clair. It is 1.2 miles east of U...
nearby.
North of Jefferson Avenue, Alter Road is quite blighted—as is much of the City of Detroit. However, Alter Road's northernmost blocks, between Warren Avenue and Chandler Park Drive—most especially its intersection with the meandering Outer Drive
Outer Drive
Outer Drive is a bypass road which encircles both the eastern and western portions of the Metro Detroit area. It resembles a jagged horseshoe and was not originally intended to move traffic as much as to provide a pleasurable drive around Detroit. This drive would include travel through beautiful...
—offer a somewhat in-between of the two extremes. In the blocks of Alter Road north of Mack Avenue, a few new houses have been built, replacing older ones which had been demolished.
Up until the late 1960s, there was little visible difference between Alter Road, and the streets immediately west of it inside the Detroit city limits, as compared with the streets immediately east of it inside the Grosse Pointe Park city limits. The southeastern corner of Detroit was majority Caucasian at the time (as was Detroit as a whole) and did not suffer the urban decay which plagues much of Detroit currently. If a motorist or pedestrian had crossed the border back in those days, he or she might not have even noticed exiting one municipality and entering the other.
There is speculation that during the early development of the City of Detroit, Alter Road became a city boundary because it was the farthest point that the Detroit Fire Department was able to offer coverage. This may well have been one of several reasons that Grosse Pointe Park then developed as a separate municipality.
In popular culture
The FloridaFlorida
Florida is a state in the southeastern United States, located on the nation's Atlantic and Gulf coasts. It is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the north by Alabama and Georgia and to the east by the Atlantic Ocean. With a population of 18,801,310 as measured by the 2010 census, it...
-based, and internationally-known, hard rock band Alter Bridge
Alter Bridge
Alter Bridge is an American rock band that was formed in 2004 in Orlando, Florida by lead guitarist Mark Tremonti, bassist Brian Marshall, and drummer Scott Phillips, who are all also members of Creed. Lead vocalist and rhythm guitarist Myles Kennedy, formerly of The Mayfield Four and the frontman...
takes its name from guitarist Mark Tremonti's childhood experiences growing up in Grosse Pointe Park. For many years, there has been a small bridge at the intersection of Alter and Korte (over Fox Creek); as a child, Tremonti was forbidden to venture past that bridge, leaving the safety of Grosse Pointe Park and delving into the dangers lurking in the City of Detroit.
Author Doug Tanoury has published a poem—on the internet—about this thoroughfare entitled, simply enough, "Alter Road."
In 2003, the NBC television network bought a script for a new drama entitled "Alter Road," a series pilot created by former Detroit journalist and author Lowell Cauffiel
Lowell Cauffiel
Lowell Cauffiel, born in Michigan, USA, is an American writer and TV producer.An award-winning reporter with the Detroit News and Detroit Monthly Magazine in the 1970s and 1980s, Cauffiel began his bookwriting career in 1988 with Masquerade: A True Story of Seduction, Compulsion and Murder. That...
. David Schwimmer
David Schwimmer
David Lawrence Schwimmer is an American actor and director of television and film. He was born in New York City, and his family moved to Los Angeles when he was two. He began his acting career performing in school plays at Beverly Hills High School. In 1988, he graduated from Northwestern...
's Dark Harbor Productions was executive producer of the project which was to have been produced at Universal Media Studios and which was to have revolved around two families separated by race and class along the Detroit-Grosse Pointe Park border. In the end, the pilot was not picked up by the network. Consequently, the project did not advance to series, or even to mini-series, status.