HIGHLAND PARK, MI – Nearly everyone knows that Detroit, which had been a medium-sized town for two centuries, became a huge industrial metropolis when Henry Ford started mass-producing the Model T on the industry’s first assembly line.
Within thirty years, Detroit went from fewer than 300,000 people to more than a million and half. But what many don’t realize is that the event that defined Detroit didn’t happen in Detroit.
Ford’s vast factory and world headquarters were in Highland Park a century ago, a tiny, less than three-mile square enclave. Highland Park became a city of beautiful tree-lined streets, with pretty brick homes where middle managers lived.
Detroit wanted to annex the little town that could, but Highland Parkers resisted. They were better off than the big city, and didn’t want to pay Detroit’s higher tax rates.
That was a century ago.
But today, Highland Park mostly looks and feels like hell.
The decline started long ago. It was gradual, at first. Ford left in the late 1920s, moving to a complex in Detroit called the Rouge, though it still made tractors in Highland Park till 1973.
Chrysler, which also had moved its headquarters to Highland Park back in the day, then became the little city’s main tax base till it, too, left, this time for the far northern suburbs in 1992.
Dutch elm disease killed most of Highland Park’s trees in the 1960s and 70s. Poverty and a lack of jobs then largely killed the city, which has continued to spiral downward.
When Detroit went through economic chaos and bankruptcy a decade ago, Highland Park was already under emergency management. The state wanted to annex it to Detroit.
But this time, Detroit resisted. As troubled as Motown was, Highland Park was worse in virtually every way, including crime and poverty. During the city’s boom years, Highland Park went from 4,000 people to 50,000 in barely a decade.
By 2010, there were only 11,776 left, a number that almost certainly has shrunk further still. The U.S. Census bureau estimated three years ago that 46.5 percent of residents were below the poverty line — and that was before COVID-19.
Today, a drive through the city down Woodward Avenue is fairly depressing. The fossils of Ford still exist; the still-attractive old red-brick administration building, with Pewabic tiles set along its top.
Twenty years ago, it was still well-maintained. The city had used a final payment from Chrysler to create something called HPDevco, which was supposed to attract new business and jobs. Pointing to the Ford building, Harriet Saperstein, who then ran HPDevco, told me “as long as the windows aren’t broken out, there is hope.”
When one was broken, she said, it was immediately repaired. Today, many of the windows are smashed out, leaving gaping holes facing the elements. Behind it sits the hulking remains of what was the great Model T plant, now labeled the “Highland Industrial Complex.” It has been for sale for years.
But no one wants to buy it. These buildings put the nation, and then the world, on wheels. If they existed elsewhere, they might well have been converted into an interactive museum.
In Highland Park they rot.
There are a few bright lights. At the beginning of 1921, a Greek immigrant couple named Thomas and Kalliopi Nikolson arrived in Detroit. They had landed in New York, discovered Coney Island hot dogs, and fell in love with them.
Rather than go to work on the assembly line, Thomas reasoned, why not make a living feeding the workers? So they bought a small storefront on Victor Street, barely a block from the plant, came up with their own chili recipe, and started making dogs for the hungry workers on their lunch break. They called their place “Red Hots.”
Exactly a century later, the same family is still running the joint, The plant is a ruin, as is the neighborhood, but the diner is still going strong, with a plastic Coca-Cola ad featuring Babe Ruth over the counter. Red Hots got a makeover a few years ago when it was featured on the Food Network’s show American Diner Revival.
But COVID has hurt it, too. It was closed for months, and is now just open for lunch. Richard Harlan, the great-nephew of co-founder Kalliopi runs the place these days, with his wife Carol.
They planned a big 100th birthday celebration, but the pandemic put that on hold. The Harlans are in their late 60s, and thinking about retirement, and it’s not clear what will happen after that. “Our daughter works here sometimes, but our kids don’t want to run it,” Rich said after serving me a coney. “This may be the end.”
But A.J. O’Neil doesn’t think the end is coming for either Red Hots or Highland Park. A.J., who can often be found in a booth at Red Hots, is the founder and “chief bean officer,” of Highland Park’s biggest recent success story, Detroit Bold Coffee.
Detroit Bold, billed as “awesome coffee for hard-working humans everywhere,” was the brainchild of O’Neil, a former roofer and café owner who a few years ago decided to create his own brand of coffee, mostly in flavors with iconic Detroit names like “Woodward Avenue” and “Eight Mile.”
The coffee caught on, buoyed by a sudden turn in popular culture that made Detroit chic. He processes and bags it at a plant in Highland Park, and has given work to people formerly homeless. O’Neil, 58, thinks he already sees signs of Highland Park’s rebirth. “This is the cradle of the American working class,” he said while demolishing a plate of chili fries.
“This is ground zero for the return of the working class economy.” Maybe, just maybe. You never say never.
But don’t hold your breath.
-30-
