Detroit has received an extraordinary amount of attention over the past two years from journalists, filmmakers, photographers and urban planners. And sometimes it’s fascinating to read about the city from an outsider’s perspective.
At The Atlantic.com, writer Ta-Nehsi Coates reports on his 18-month study of Motown and how much he loves the Palmer Woods neighborhood. Most of us know that Palmer Woods, located in the Seven Mile and Woodward area, is one of the “nicer” neighborhoods in Detroit.
But I almost felt guilty reading Coates’ piece and realizing that this gem was located just a few miles away from the suburbs and most of us have never appreciated it.
Here’s how Coates describes it: “Palmer Woods now sits on a census block group that, according to the most recent available data, is 81 percent black, and it is arguably the American black elite’s most majestic enclave. When I first visited, in the fall of 2009, I was awestruck. I had seen well-heeled black neighborhoods before—the prosperous suburbs ringing Atlanta and Washington, D.C., Chatham in Chicago, Baldwin Hills in L.A. But the gates of Palmer Woods are a wormhole out of the angry city and into an opulent idyll. Sleepy curvilinear streets with names like “Strathcona Drive” and “Argyle Crescent” snake through the 188-acre hamlet and its sprawling, irregular lots.
Across Seven Mile Road sits the venerable, members-only Detroit Golf Club, which remained all-white until 1986.
Even as Detroit groaned under the weight of crime, failing schools, and high taxes, Palmer Woods held steady.”
The story includes a slideshow of Palmer Woods homes that will impress all but the most jaded suburbanites.Click here.
And make sure to click on the fullscreen mode.
