David Coates / The Detroit News
The view looking east from atop the abandoned apartments at 1977 Elmhurst in Detroit shows the block after five decades of white flight, abandonment, crime, absentee landlords and lax bureaucracy.
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Homes give way to urban prairie
Few residents remain on once-thriving block
... He brought me out by the Spirit of the Lord and set me down in the middle of the valley; and it was full of bones. He caused me to pass among them round about, and behold, there were very many on the surface of the valley; and lo, they were very dry.
— Ezekiel, 37:1-2
By Cameron McWhirter / The Detroit News
DETROIT
itting on the porch steps of 1956 Elmhurst on Detroit’s west side as a late spring evening descends is a serene experience.
A pale blue sky, showing brush strokes of white cloud, fades to purple with the coming night. Birds chirp in the distance. The metallic rubber echo of a basketball on pavement resounds from across Rosa Parks Boulevard. The occasional car drives by with rap music playing a little too loudly.
This block of Elmhurst isn’t the ghetto as portrayed on television cop shows. It’s inhabited mostly by friendly people who work hard, or used to work hard until they retired.
But the more you sit and look, the more you see how things have fallen apart. You see the overgrown lots, where homes used to stand. You see a pigeon fly out of the windowless hulk of the abandoned Shirley Apartments across the street. You notice the mounds of rotting trash in its doorway.
To the southeast, you see Irene Chow’s house, the last one standing on that section of the block. You notice the rusting barbed wire that surrounds her place. You notice the gated doors. As darkness arrives, you notice that the street lights don’t come on.
On neighborhood streets in other cities, like New York City or Chicago, you can sit on a stoop and notice how building facades have changed, or occasionally have been replaced by something modern and sleek. You see how an apartment house turned condo. You see how an old bar has been reborn as a chain coffee joint.
But in Detroit on blocks like Elmhurst, the buildings don’t transform or get replaced. Buildings here are left behind to die slow deaths in the backwater of a sprawling, prosperous region. And then eventually they vanish, to be replaced by urban prairie.
