A Unique Way of Bringing the Past to Life

When you walk around the town that you live in,  do you ever think about what originally stood where that modern gas station now stands?
Have you thought about how the busy concrete intersection may have once been a dirt road?
How about that building over there?  What was there before?
I think these thoughts all the time.
Even while waiting at a red light in my car I look around and wonder what this exact spot looked like 100 or more years ago.
You see,  most of the buildings from a century  (and before)  in my city of Eastpointe have been long torn down;  I'm an old soul living in a very modern suburban city.
So I decided to do some super-sleuthing and find out about the ghosts of buildings past - to find the original location of the buildings pictured in the old photographs I've seen in the books about the history of my city  In that way I can somewhat  *see*  what was originally in that very same spot so long ago,   thus allowing me to live out  (to an extent)  my fantasy of traveling back in time while in my own hometown.
To take it a bit further,  I took photographs as close as possible to where the photographers once stood way back when.
The following photographs are my results:

NW corner of Gratiot Blvd & 9 Mile Rd THEN
St. Peter's Lutheran Church
This church was razed and the cemetery was relocated to the new St. Peters located almost directly across Gratiot Blvd. Halfway was the original name of my hometown of Eastpointe. It was changed to East Detroit in 1929 and then to Eastpointe in 1991.

NW corner of Gratiot & 9 Mile NOW - A BP gas station
(though Big Boys is no longer Big Boys)

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9 Mile Rd looking west from Gratiot Blvd THEN
It was just a country lane known as School Road because there were multiple schools along this road within a relatively short distance from each other.  Note the wood-plank sidewalk. This photo was taken around 1900.

9 Mile Rd looking west from Gratiot NOW.  No longer a country lane,  9 Mile and Gratiot is a very busy intersection.  And schools are still located along this strip.

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This was the west side of Southbound Gratiot THEN.
  Eastpointe was a rural country town,  even to the point where one could
buy,  sell,  or trade horses here. 

Here is the exact same location of the previous picture - the west side of Southbound Gratiot NOW.
The horse market is long gone...
  That spot is now part of the parking lot of a shopping plaza

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SE corner of Gratiot Blvd. and 9 Mile THEN.  "Then"  being in the 1930's.  If you look to the left of the brick Kaiser building you will see a framed structure.  That was the original school house that was moved from its location along  9 Mile to here in the 1920's.  It has since been moved back to within 100 feet of where it was originally stood and id now beautifully restored  (see link at bottom of post)

SE corner of Gratiot Blvd and 9 Mile NOW
The original Kaiser building was razed a few years ago and a Rite Aid
has been built in its place

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Gratiot Blvd. just south of 9 mile THEN.
This is even before the brick Kaiser building from the above  "THEN"  photo!
How cool it would be to see my hometown during the late 19th or early 20th century!

Gratiot just south of 9 mile NOW.
Bland and boring...

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 Is it just me or are modern cities sterile looking?  They all just seem to run along the lines of never-ending conformity from one to another,  sameness abounding,  never knowing where one city ends and the next one begins,  whereas in the old days each town or village had a unique style and character of its own,  separated by miles of farm land or untouched forests...a beginning and an end.
I guess I have an old soul indeed.

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Here we show a 2013  "then and now"  casualty of Eastpointe:

Oakwood Jr. High School,  on the very first day that it was open for class back in
September of 1953.  This was my Jr. High back in the 1970's.  I also worked here
as an adult.

Due to dwindling population,  it was decided that this grand building,  renamed Oakwood Middle School,  was to close after the 2009/2010 school year.  Here is a photo that I took on the very last day Oakwood was open for classes - June 17,  2010.  I tried my best to line it up exactly as the previous picture.

Now,  this next picture is actually pretty sad,  especially for those of us who attended Oakwood and worked here as well:

This is the front of Oakwood from a different angle after most of the building had been razed in the summer of 2012.  Yes,  it was sad.

And now, here is what was built where most of the Oakwood building stood:

I took this photo roughly from the same angle as the first two pics of Oakwood.  

So there you have a few then and now photographs of our fair city,  from horse barns to gas stations.  I suppose as a historian I look at things with a vision of the past and see the changes - both good & bad - that occur over time.  It's interesting to note where we've been,  where we are,  and where we're going...

To learn more of  Eastpointe as it was in the 19th century, please click HERE

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