Detroit in 1899

I know it has been a while since the last blog. I am sorry but I have been working 2 jobs and haven't had much time for blogging!

Dierk Stoetzel, a researcher who has studied emigration from Germany to the US (http://www.westphalia-emigration.de/), gave me a copy of an article when he visited Detroit last year. This article was published in the Meschede (Saurland, Germany) newspaper in 1899. It tells of a relative of my great-grandmother, who returned to Germany from a visit in Detroit. I finally had it translated (by someone named Bearinabox on the DetroitYes forums), and am posting the translation here. I think this article shows that Detroit was the envy of the world back in 1899.

An American Model City

J. Mues of Reiste, who visited the United States of America last summer, describes the city of Detroit, located on a spit of land between Lake Erie and Lake Huron, as first-rate. Although the city can count only 400,000 inhabitants, it possesses 359 hectares of public squares and parks. There are 376 kilometers of paved streets, approximately 2/3 of the distance from Berlin to Königsberg, in addition to 18 kilometers of boulevards. Naturally, there is a surplus of streetcar lines: the central city alone has 267 kilometers of "electric train" lines, as well as 118 kilometers of suburban lines. The entire streetcar network is worthy of admiration for its layout, which is unusually systematic. On each line, one can reach the center of the city in order to travel from there to another part of the periphery. The fares are unusually inexpensive, and transfers are allowed. The electric trains run at high speed without causing particularly large numbers of accidents, and are not bothered by conventional wagons like those in New York, since these are seldom seen here. As Detroit has over 10 kilometers of lake frontage, ship traffic, passenger as well as freight, is very heavy in the summer: many ships carrying copper and iron ore, as well as timber and stone building materials from the beaches of the upper lakes, as well as meat from the slaughterhouses of Chicago, pass through the city of Detroit. The city of Detroit has spent over 3 million marks on water lines; the pipes total 802 kilometers in length. Water shortages, like the ones that threatened the giant city of London last fall, are not a concern in Detroit, since over 182 million liters of water from the pipes are spent every day, and every resident of the city receives 450 liters of water daily. Although there are approximately 2000 factories in the city, such effective methods have been employed to suppress the smoke that there is almost no evidence in the city of the factories' activity. The fire department is extremely well-equipped and has few equals for a city its size, operating over 21 steam pumps, one pumping boat, six chemical fire extinguishers, and a personnel consisting of 417 career firefighters. When one also considers the exceptionally functioning canalization, which cost the city millions to construct, one can with a clear conscience issue the verdict that there is no city in America that outranks Detroit.