PontchDetroit

Detroit was a bustling town of business and industry in the earlier part of the twentieth century. Its CBD was centered near the Detroit River across from Windsor, the Canadian counterpart. It boasted a famous shopping district to the near north with stores and entertainment strategically situated in the necklace district, so named for the physical pattern the streets assume in a series of necklaces that lie symmetrically across Woodward Avenue. Near Woodward and State Streets, the famous Hudson, Kern and Crowley blocks catered to a hundred thousand shoppers a day anchored by Joseph Lowthian Hudson’s department store for men and boys. Automobiles were not yet prevalent and so people were relying on horse and carriage and streetcars, which ran the lengths of the major arteries throughout the city. A vast array of salt mines ran beneath the city that avoids collapse by their cavernous design. This perhaps was one of the reasons a Subway rail system was deemed hazardous and never implemented. Henry Ford’s five dollar a day promise brought people to Detroit in droves from the south and Eastern Europe. By the end of the 1910’s, gridlock became inevitable and General Motors, who were in need of a new headquarters, decided that building it downtown would cause too much gridlock especially since by 1919, many people now owned automobiles. The over congestion of the inner city actually allowed the company and others to pack up and move to a new location three miles north, appropriately titled “New Center”, in the hope of eradicating the congestion in the downtown area.(sjh) Following another playoff upset in 1953 at the hands of the Bruins, the Red Wings won back to back Stanley Cups in 1954; over Montreal, when Habs defenseman Doug Harvey redirected a Tony Leswick shot into his own net; and 1955 (also over Montreal in the full seven games). Also during the 1955 off-season, Margurite Norris lost an intrafamily power struggle and was forced to turn over the Wings to younger brother Bruce, who had inherited his father's grain business. Detroit and Montreal once again met in the 1956 finals, but this time the Canadiens won the Cup, their first of five in a row. In 1957 Ted Lindsay, who scored 30 goals and led the league in assists with 55, teamed up with Harvey to help start the NHL Players Association and, along with outspoken young netminder Glenn Hall, was promptly traded to Chicago (which, ironically, was owned by James D. Norris, Bruce's elder brother) after his most productive year.(Wikipedia)