Lafayette Park

01 / The story of this place

Make time for these

Lafayette Park is a modernist landmark people actually live in. It rose in the late 1950s and 1960s on land cleared from Black Bottom, the heart of Detroit's African American community, razed in the name of urban renewal, a loss the city has never forgotten. Developer Herbert Greenwald brought in Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, with Ludwig Hilberseimer on the site plan and Alfred Caldwell on the landscape, and the result is glass-and-steel towers and townhouses tucked into a big wooded park. The Mies section became a National Historic Landmark District in 2015. East of Orleans Street, Elmwood Park adds a sports fieldhouse, a youth theater and two cemeteries founded in the 1840s, while the Dequindre Cut greenway runs right along the edge.

1. Stroll Lafayette Plaisance, the central park, past Mies's Pavilion and Lafayette Towers and the low townhouses hidden in the trees.
2. Drop down onto the Dequindre Cut and walk or bike south to the river or north to Eastern Market.
3. Wander the shady lanes of Elmwood Cemetery, founded in 1846, and the even older Mount Elliott Cemetery next door.
4. Book a field or grab a drink at the clubhouse bar of the Detroit City Fieldhouse.
5. Catch a show by the teens of Mosaic Youth Theatre or by The Players, a club over a century old, on East Jefferson.