as its plan was adopted on a reduced scale for the Perry Memorial Monument at Put-in-Bay. Since the World War a great international bridge proposal has been discussed again and given publicity with elaborate plans, but no bridge is yet in evidence.

In every city of steady growth, spasmodic migrations of both the business and the residential centers occur from time to time. In these particulars Detroit has shown a deplorable lack of intelligent direction and control. Early settlement clung tenaciously to the river front for many years. There were good reasons which prevented symmetrical expansion. That tiny, sluggish river, the Savoyard, which crossed Woodward Avenue at Congress Street, was one barrier, for in crossing the stream the early settler felt that he was exposing himself to danger by separating himself from the town.

North of the Savoyard the soil was wet. Its timbered areas of solid land were mingled with open springs and bogs. These might have been easily drained by ditches, but settlers preferred to build on land already cleared and drained. In 1812, when Detroit was III years old, Woodbridge Street, which was mostly made land redeemed from the edge of the river, was the principal business street. Business moved toward the river in the first 100 years instead of away from it. The aim of the citizens was to fill in and redeem more land, which they did in 1827.

In 1820, before the last invasion of the river channel, business houses and taverns began to appear on Woodward Avenue below Jefferson. When Jefferson Avenue was once built up, in 1830, it remained the principal business street for more than 20 years. It was not until 1860 that a real movement up Woodward Avenue was attempted by the retail merchants of the city. Soon they filled both sides below the Campus Martius and this was supposed to be the end of the march of business. In 1864 the store of G. & R. McMillan was built on the site of a house formerly occupied by John Owen at the southwest corner of Woodward and Fort Street, where it still stands, occupied by the oldest mercantile firm in Detroit. This was supposed to mark the last limit of business migration northward on the

west side of Woodward Avenue. Before building that store the McMillans were on the site of the Metropole Hotel. On the east side of Woodward, business houses extended a little farther north.

In the early 1870's business crossed the Campus and the section between the Campus and Grand Circus Park began shifting from a street of residences and taverns with shade trees in front to business houses, but even in the 1890's there still remained several old residences on the east side of Woodward which had been transformed into stores.

One of the reasons for this business migration was the extreme conservatism of the property owners farther down the street. As long as a building was firm on its foundation and fairly presentable in appearance the owners were reluctant about making modernizing alterations. Such a thing as an elevator for transporting passengers or goods from floor to floor was regarded as an innovation of pure laziness and degeneracy. It was in the Moffat Block, built at the corner of Fort and Griswold streets in 1871, that the first elevator in Detroit was installed. The ideas of property owners with regard to modern plumbing were equally conservative. As a natural consequence, when a merchant wanted larger quarters or a new building to attract trade he looked for a new landlord a little farther on who would build a more modern structure to suit his tenant.

When we look into the history of the older cities of Europe we find that most of them have passed through the same experience, but those which are most progressive underwent a change of heart. Old rookeries along their water fronts sometimes stood for centuries, but eventually they were torn down, and whole sections that had been long abandoned to decay have been rebuilt under civic encouragement, aid and control. This has occurred along the banks of the Seine in Paris, along the Danube in Buda-Pesth, the Spree in Berlin, the Rhine at Cologne, Düsseldorf, Mainz and other Rhenish towns, the Elbe and Alster in Hamburg, the Neva in Petrograd, nearly everywhere in fact, including the Thames Embankment in conservative old London. Some day the river front of Detroit is destined to come back to be again a fitting front door of an imperial city and gateway of the State of Michigan.

CHAPTER XCVII

TELEPHONES-LIGHTING-PARKS AND BOULEVARDS

I

N the latter part of the decade of the 1870's two notable inventions were adopted for general use in Detroit and the

era of telephone communication and electric lighting was ushered in by slow degrees. The first telephone exhibition in Detroit was made by M. C. Kellogg in the rooms of the Detroit Club on March 6, 1877. The District Telegraph Company installed a system in Detroit in 1875. This system, by means of signal boxes, furnished a messenger call, a police call, a burglar alarm and a private fire alarm. The officers were Geo. W. Balch, president; James McMillan, vice-president; S. Dow Elwood, treasurer; J. W. McKenzie, superintendent. Mr. McKenzie was succeeded by W. A. Jackson in January, 1878.

Mr. Jackson installed the first Detroit telephone between the office of the District Telegraph Company and his home, and soon after a number of business houses installed telephones. Service was begun in the basement of the District Telegraph office at 135 Griswold Street (old number) on August 15th. The central exchange was soon shifted to 15 Congress Street West and on September 1, 1880, an entire floor of the NewberryMcMillan Building at the southeast corner of Griswold and Larned streets was equipped for a central telephone exchange. In the beginning subscribers were called by name, but presently names gave way to numbers as the service increased in volume. In 1893 a large building was erected for a central exchange at Washington Boulevard and Clifford Street.

The rates were regarded as too high and a rival concern, the Detroit Telephone Company, was promoted. After a short time it was absorbed by the Michigan Bell Company. Later another corporation, the Home Telephone Company, began a rival service, but that, too, was absorbed. Service was extended over a good

part of the state in 1881, and in 1893 long distance communication was opened with New York City and Chicago. In 1916 the service became transcontinental. At the opening of that service 200 guests assembled in the Board of Commerce for a banquet. Before each guest was a telephone in communication with the Chamber of Commerce in San Francisco. In 1918, the service having grown beyond the capacity of the telephone building, a new building was erected on Cass Avenue opposite State Street. The city telephone directory, which includes several surrounding towns, now contains 160,000 names of subscribers.

First exhibitions of the electric arc light were made about the country by traveling circuses in 1879. An exhibition of the Van de Poele electric arc light was given before the Detroit Opera House on the Campus, March 21, 1880. Another exhibition was made in the fall of 1879 from an iron bracket on the corner of the old Free Press Building at the northeast corner of Larned and Shelby streets. That old bracket still remains on the upper corner of the building. In July, 1880, several arc lights were tried experimentally in the D. M. Ferry seed warehouse, but the first attempt to supply lighting service was made by the Brush Electric Lighting Company, organized by Wells W. Leggett, George N. Chase and William M. Porter. This concern installed a small generator in the basement of the Free Press Building and on September 13, 1880, supplied lights for several business houses on Woodward Avenue. Service was begun with 32 lights and at the end of 1883 the concern was furnishing 350 lights from a generating plant on Third Street between Fort and Congress streets. Prices ranged from $16 to $18 a month per light during business hours. Incandescent. lights were first used in Detroit in Metcalf's dry goods store, January 27, 1883.

Attempts to enter into contract with the city for electric street lighting were for some time balked by the combined influence of the gas companies and their employes who were engaged in lighting and turning out street lamps. The early lighting was contracted for on a moonlight schedule, which meant that on nights when the moon was due to shine the