Hub-and-spoke design modeled after Washington, D.C.
Campus Martius Park, located a few blocks north of the Detroit River
Fort, Grand River, Gratiot, Jefferson, Michigan and Woodward Avenues radiate out like a sunrise from Campus Martius Park. The avenues don't radiate out in all directions because the hub is located just north of the Detroit River.
- Pierre Charles L’Enfant created the hub-and-spoke design in Washington, D.C.
- Judge Augustus Brevoort Woodward chose L'Enfant's design as a model
The first thing to understand about downtown Detroit is that it has a unique street layout that may very well have you scratching your head and losing direction. Unlike the grid pattern of other major cities, Detroit was modeled after the hub-and-spoke design in Washington, D.C.
When the city was very young, Augustus Brevoort Woodward from Washington, D.C., was appointed as one of only three judges in the new Michigan Territory. Unfortunately, he arrived shortly after the 1805 fire that razed most of Detroit. Woodward ended up choosing the plan for the city as it was rebuilt: the hub-and-spoke design created by Pierre Charles L’Enfant in Washington, D.C.
The hub-and-spoke design was meant to create a hexagon with a park in the middle. From the park, streets radiate out like spokes in a wheel. In Detroit, the main hub of the design is Campus Martius Park, which is located a few blocks north of the Detroit River waterfront. From the hub, broad diagonal avenues radiate outward into what is now the Detroit Metro Area. The main avenue, Woodward, is named after the Judge himself and runs north/south. The others include Fort, Grand River, Gratiot, Jefferson and Michigan Avenues.
In theory, additional hexagons are added as a city grows so that the street intersections form "circuses." In Detroit, Grand Circus Park forms its own mini-hub a few blocks north on Woodward Avenue from the Campus Martius hub; however, Grand Circus Park's spokes only radiate out southward.
As often happens in city politics, the hub-and-spoke design was not carried out in its entirety, and a traditional grid pattern was overlaid on top of the existing streets. Streets running east to west now intersect the spoke avenues at one mile intervals from Campus Martius. They’re named by their distance away from the downtown center, although some of the streets change names through various cities/townships just to make things interesting. "8 mile" Road, the now recognized perimeter of the city, is the most notorious of the mile roads after serving as a location in Eminem’s movie of the same name.
The original spokes of Woodward’s chosen design continue to exist today, stretching from the downtown hub and serving as links to the surrounding suburbs. As often happens with urban sprawl, and especially in the Motor City, freeways developed to add yet another overlay to the street pattern. While the freeways provided an easier commute to and from the suburbs, they resulted in the decline of the “spoke” avenues that originally served the purpose.
Sources:
- The Woodward Project, Fall 2005 Newsletter, Michigan Supreme Court Historical Society
- Detroit's street names honor early leaders by Mary Bailey, The Detroit News
- Lesson Plan No. 4: Detroit's Story, Detroit Historical Society
