Detroit Audio Walking Tour

Highlights

• 
  Ambassador Bridge

  Overhead, gray steel cables sweep toward Canada, carrying the busiest trade crossing in North America. The Ambassador Bridge opened in November 1929, just weeks after the stock market crashed, its central span the longest suspension span in the world at the time.

• 
  Ford Field

  Since 2002 Ford Field has been the domed home of the Detroit Lions, and you're beside it. Its designers did something unusual: rather than wrap the whole stadium in new construction, they built it into and around a historic 1920s Hudson's warehouse, whose brick facade still forms one wall of the concourse, an old department-store building grafted onto a modern arena.

• 
  Renaissance Center

  Seven mirrored towers, the Renaissance Center, have defined the Detroit skyline for nearly half a century, and you're at their base on the riverwalk. The Renaissance Center, designed by John Portman and completed in 1977, rose from a campaign led by Henry Ford II to revive a downtown shaken by the 1967 unrest and the flight of business to the suburbs.

• 
  Comerica Park

  Comerica Park, home of the Detroit Tigers, opened in 2000 to replace the beloved old Tiger Stadium across town in Corktown, and you're outside its gate. Comerica Park brought baseball back downtown, part of a wave of investment meant to draw the city's life back to its core, alongside the football stadium and theatres nearby.

• 
  Michigan Central Station

  Look up at the great stone face of Detroit's ambition, restored and reopened. Michigan Central Station opened in 1913, designed by the same firms behind New York's Grand Central, its Beaux-Arts waiting room rising like a Roman bath and an eighteen-story office tower climbing above it.

All 45 stops

• Michigan Central Station (Corktown)

  Look up at the great stone face of Detroit's ambition, restored and reopened.

• Most Holy Trinity Church (Corktown)

  Named for County Cork in Ireland, Corktown is Detroit's oldest surviving neighborhood, and you're at its heart.

• Basilica of Ste. Anne de Détroit (Mexicantown / Southwest)

  Notice the oldest institution in Detroit, still worshipping after centuries.

• Ambassador Bridge (Mexicantown / Southwest)

  Overhead, gray steel cables sweep toward Canada, carrying the busiest trade crossing in North America.

• Historic Fort Wayne (Southwest / Delray)

  Historic Fort Wayne was built for a war that never came.

• Hart Plaza & the Landing of Cadillac (Riverfront / Downtown)

  Picture this riverbank on July 24, 1701.

• Gateway to Freedom Memorial (Riverfront / Downtown)

  Picture the last stop on the road to freedom, just across this river.

• Mariners' Church (Downtown)

  Mariners' Church was built for those who work the water, then rolled here on rails.

• The Spirit of Detroit (Downtown / Civic Center)

  Here sits the bronze figure that has become the city's emblem, the Spirit of Detroit.

• Monument to Joe Louis (The Fist) (Downtown)

  Above you hangs a twenty-four-foot bronze arm and clenched fist, suspended from a pyramid frame at the foot of Woodward Avenue.

• Guardian Building (Downtown / Financial District)

  Detroiters call the Guardian Building, rising in orange brick, the Cathedral of Finance.

• Penobscot Building (Downtown / Financial District)

  For half a century the Penobscot Building crowned Detroit's skyline, and its red beacon still glows.

• Book Tower (Downtown / Washington Boulevard)

  Book Tower rises above you, the ornate Italian Renaissance tower the Book brothers built to remake this boulevard.

• Campus Martius & Point of Origin (Downtown)

  Every distance in Detroit is measured from the spot under your feet, the very center of the city.

• Michigan Soldiers' and Sailors' Monument (Downtown / Campus Martius)

  Detroit's grandest Civil War memorial rises in bronze and granite in front of you.

• Bagley Memorial Fountain (Downtown / Cadillac Square)

  Downtown Detroit's oldest surviving public structure is this granite fountain, and you're beside it.

• Second Baptist Church (Greektown)

  Second Baptist Church is the oldest Black congregation in the Midwest.

• Greektown / Monroe Street (Greektown)

  Monroe Street runs under your feet, the spine of Greektown and one of the last walkable ethnic commercial districts left in the city center.

• Wright-Kay Building (Downtown / Lower Woodward)

  The Wright-Kay Building, completed in 1891, is one of Woodward Avenue's finest Gilded Age commercial buildings.

• Hudson's Site & Hudson's Detroit Tower (Downtown)

  Picture the tallest department store in the world, rising here in stages.

• Grand Circus Park (Downtown / Theatre District)

  Grand Circus Park, this green half-circle, joins Detroit's theatre district to its financial core.

• Fox Theatre (Downtown / Theatre District)

  Ten stories of extravaganza opened here in 1928 as the Fox Theatre, the largest surviving movie palace of the 1920s.

• Comerica Park (Downtown / Theatre District)

  Comerica Park, home of the Detroit Tigers, opened in 2000 to replace the beloved old Tiger Stadium across town in Corktown, and you're outside its…

• Ford Field (Downtown / Theatre District)

  Since 2002 Ford Field has been the domed home of the Detroit Lions, and you're beside it.

• Detroit Masonic Temple (Cass Corridor / Midtown)

  Nowhere in the world is there a larger Masonic temple than the one you face.

• Orchestra Hall (Midtown)

  Step inside one of the finest-sounding concert halls in America, built in nineteen weeks.

• Detroit Public Library, Main Branch (Midtown / Cultural Center)

  White Vermont marble faces this temple of learning, the main branch of the Detroit Public Library.

• Detroit Institute of Arts (Midtown / Cultural Center)

  Picture one of the great art museums in America, its white marble Beaux-Arts hall opened in 1927.

• Charles H. Wright Museum (Midtown / Cultural Center)

  Find one of the world's largest museums devoted to African American history right here.

• David Whitney House (Midtown)

  Pink jasper stone wraps the David Whitney House, the grandest surviving mansion of Detroit's Gilded Age.

• Ford Piquette Avenue Plant (Milwaukee Junction)

  Picture the modern world rolling off the line right here.

• Hitsville U.S.A. (Motown Museum) (New Center / West Grand Boulevard)

  American music changed forever inside this modest house, where Berry Gordy hung the Hitsville sign.

• Fisher Building (New Center)

  Architect Albert Kahn called the Fisher Building his greatest work, and Detroiters have long called it the largest art object in the city.

• Cadillac Place (General Motors Building) (New Center)

  One of the world's largest corporations once ran its empire from the building in front of you, now called Cadillac Place.

• Rosa Parks Boulevard & Clairmount (Virginia Park)

  Summer of 1967: at this corner of 12th Street and Clairmount, Detroit's history broke open.

• Dabls MBAD African Bead Museum (West Side / Grand River)

  Mirrors, iron, wood, rock, and beads make up the artwork you've walked into, the MBAD African Bead Museum.

• Eastern Market (Eastern Market)

  Eastern Market has operated here since 1891, the largest historic public market district in the United States.

• Dequindre Cut Greenway (Eastern Market / Riverfront)

  Trains once ran along the path beneath your feet, the Dequindre Cut.

• The Heidelberg Project (McDougall-Hunt / East Side)

  Polka dots and salvaged objects cover an entire block here, and you're in the middle of the Heidelberg Project.

• Pewabic Pottery (West Village / East Jefferson)

  Step into one of the great surviving Arts and Crafts potteries in America.

• James Scott Memorial Fountain, Belle Isle (Belle Isle)

  Belle Isle, the thousand-acre island park in the Detroit River where you are now, was designed in part by Frederick Law Olmsted, who also shaped…

• Belle Isle Aquarium (Belle Isle)

  Back in 1904 the oldest aquarium in North America opened here on Belle Isle.

• William Livingstone Memorial Light (Belle Isle)

  Only one lighthouse in the United States is made entirely of marble, and you're at its foot.

• Renaissance Center (Riverfront / Downtown)

  Seven mirrored towers, the Renaissance Center, have defined the Detroit skyline for nearly half a century, and you're at their base on the riverwalk.

• Cullen Plaza & the Detroit Riverwalk (Riverfront)

  Through most of the twentieth century, the riverfront under your feet was a wall of cement plants, rail yards, and warehouses that cut the city…

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