Campus Martius Park

Description

The park is located at the intersection of Woodward Avenue and Michigan Avenue, four blocks south of Grand Circus Park. The original park covered several acres and was a major gathering area for citizens. The park was lost in the 1900s as the city's downtown was reconfigured to accommodate increased vehicular traffic.

Hart Plaza, along the riverfront, was designed to replace Campus Martius as a point of importance. But as Hart Plaza is a primarily hard-surfaced area, many residents came to lament the lack of true park space in the city's downtown area. This led to calls to rebuild Campus Martius, the site of the Civil War-era Michigan Soldiers' and Sailors' Monument, located across from the new Compuware Headquarters.

The park is also where the point of origin of Detroit's coordinate system is located. 7 mi north of this point is Seven Mile Road; 8 mi north is Eight Mile Road, and so on. The point of origin is marked by a medallion embedded in the stone walkway. It is situated in the western point of the diamond surrounding the Woodward Fountain, just in front of the park's concession building.

The new Campus Martius Park was dedicated November 19, 2004, and includes two performance stages, sculptures, public spaces and a seasonal ice skating rink. At 1.2 acre, the park is smaller than its predecessor, as a full restoration of the original would have required the demolition of several buildings. However, the city increased the amount of park space in the area by constructing the new Cadillac Square Park, which opened in summer 2007, immediately to the east of Campus Martius.

The park's skating rink is designed to resemble the Rockefeller Center rink in New York City but is larger in size. Since its opening the rink has been operated by Magic Ice USA, Inc. Campus Martius Park is the home of the annual Motown Winter Blast, an event that has drawn more than 450,000 people to the downtown area every year and it has become the site of the city's annual Christmas-tree-lighting celebration, held the Monday before Thanksgiving. Thousands come to hear Christmas music and countdown to the lighting of the city's official Christmas tree and other decorations to mark the start of the holiday season.

Cadillac Square Park

Cadillac Square Park is another re-established park in the area. It lies immediately to the east of Campus Martius Park. Until 2001, the area where the park is located was occupied by a bus-transfer station constructed in the 1960s. From 1841 until 1891, Cadillac Square was the site of the Detroit Farmer's Market. The new park is the site of the relocated Bagley Memorial Fountain which previously occupied a spot on Campus Martius.

In January 2008, the city of Detroit announced plans for a new Cadillac Centre, a $150-million mixed-use residential entertainment-retail complex attached to the Cadillac Tower. Designed by architect Anthony Caradonna and patterned after the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, the contemporary steel-and-glass twenty-four-story skyscraper complex to be located on Campus Martius Park, was planned to begin construction in the fall of 2009, but was indefinitely postponed by the city in October of that year when the developers failed to meet key agreements with the city.

Gallery

File:BarlumTowerDetroit.jpg|Cadillac Tower, looking up from Cadillac Square File:Michigan Soldiers' and Sailors' Monument 2.jpg|Michigan Soldiers' and Sailors' Monument File:ChaseBuildingDetroit.JPG|Detroit Financial District from Campus Martius File:Detroit December 2015 22 (Campus Martius Park).jpg|Campus Martius Park skating rink File:ViewupWoodwardfromCampusMartius.jpg|Looking north up Woodward Avenue File:Cadillac Square Detroit 1899.jpg|Cadillac Square in 1899, City Hall is on the left and the Majestic Building is to the right File:CadillacSquareParkdetroit.jpg|Same view of Cadillac Square in 2007; One Kennedy Square stands on the site of the old City Hall and 1001 Woodward has replaced the Majestic Building

References

References

1. Poremba, David Lee. (Sep–Oct 1999). "Detroit's Field of Mars: Campus Martius".
2. Farmer, Silas. (2005). "History of Detroit and Wayne County and Early Michigan: A Chronological Cyclopedia of the Past and Present". S. Farmer & Company.
3. "Campus Martius Park - Point of Origin medallion". campusmartiuspark.org.
4. "Campus Martius Park site plan". campusmartiuspark.org.
5. Aguilar, Louis. (January 2018). "Detroit Bus Station Work Set to Start". [[The Detroit News]].
6. Deeb, Ed. "Market History". [[Eastern Market, Detroit]].
7. (6 January 2008). "Detroit Gets New Era in Downtown Living with Iconic $150 Million Cadillac Centre on Campus Martius Park". Northern Group, Inc..
8. Gallagher, John. (3 October 2008). "Cadillac Centre project in trouble". [[Detroit Free Press]].