page_title: Downtown Detroit
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Downtown Detroit / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Detroit city layout plan circa 1807—following the 1805 fire that destroyed most of the city. The map showes Grand Circus Park (top), and some of the present-day Grand Circus Park Historic District.
context_page_description: Downtown Detroit is the central business district and a residential area of the city of Detroit, Michigan, United States. Locally, downtown tends to refer to the 1.4 square mile region bordered by M-10 to the west, Interstate 75 to the north, I-375 to the east, and the Detroit River to the south. Although, it may also refer to the Greater Downtown area, a 7.2 square mile region that includes surrounding neighborhoods such as Midtown, Corktown, Rivertown, and Woodbridge.
  The city's main thoroughfare M-1 links Downtown to Midtown, New Center, and the North End.
  Downtown contains a lot of historic architecture, including prominent skyscrapers, ranging from the Renaissance Center, the Penobscot Building, One Detroit Center, and the Guardian Building. Historic churches, theatres, and commercial buildings anchor the various downtown districts. Downtown has a number of parks including those linked by a promenade along the International Riverfront. Its central square is Campus Martius Park.
context_section_description: Following the Detroit fire of 1805, the design for the downtown area was left open to a new vision. Augustus B. Woodward proposed a radial design for the post-fire city, where major streets such as Woodward, Washington, and Madison Avenue would spiral off Grand Circus Park. 
   The downtown streets still loosely follow Woodward’s original design. Business in Detroit boomed along with its growing automobile industry, leading to an increase in downtown’s population and wealth. Much of the downtown area’s architecture was built during this boom, in the late 19th century and early 20th century, and still attracts the attention of architects. Several buildings were built by the famous Minoru Yamasaki (most well-known for designing the twin towers in New York City), including the McGregor Memorial Conference Center and Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago Detroit Branch Building.
  The area where I-375 is lies on the historic site of Black Bottom and Paradise Valley. Black Bottom was one of the city’s major African American communities, historically named by French colonial settlers for its rich soil. Paradise Valley was the business and entertainment district of Black Bottom, best known for its Paradise Theatre and Hotel Gotham, where prominent jazz figures such as Duke Ellington, Billie Holiday, and Louis Armstrong performed and stayed respectively. Both neighborhoods were demolished to build I-375, and have since been replaced with Lafayette Park.
caption: Augustus Woodward's radial design plan
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