Picture this riverbank on July 24, 1701. On July 24, 1701, Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac came ashore near this spot with about fifty soldiers and settlers and built Fort Pontchartrain du Détroit, a stockaded outpost meant to control the strait, le détroit in French, that links the upper and lower Great Lakes. From that fur-trading fort grew a city that would one day put the world on wheels.
Today this riverfront is Hart Plaza, a sweeping civic space opened in 1975 and named for Senator Philip Hart, host to the summer music festivals for which Detroit is famous. At its center stands the Horace Dodge Fountain, a stainless-steel ring designed by sculptor Isamu Noguchi. Stand at the railing and look across the water to Windsor, Canada, then down at the plaza stones, and picture the small wooden fort that once held this ground, more than three centuries ago.