A freeway ripped the heart out of Black life in Detroit. Now Michigan wants to tear it down.

This story is published in collaboration with BridgeDetroit.

In 1945 in Detroit, Michigan, a man who is believed to be the first African-American independent record producer opened up a blues and gospel record store called Joe’s Record Shop. The store was lined with vinyl records and music posters, with a big, upright piano in the back. Joe Von Battle started the business by selling records from his personal collection. Later, he remodeled the store to include a recording studio. His shop was a focal point for the music scene on Hastings Street — the center of Black business and entertainment in 1950s Detroit

“People sang up and down the street, they played their guitars on the corner, they sang gospel,” said Von Battle’s daughter, 67-year-old Marsha Philpot, “so my dad began to record these people.” Von Battle recorded blues artists like John Lee Hooker and was the first person to ever record Aretha Franklin. At one point, Joe’s Record Shop had 35,000 albums in its inventory and generated the present-day equivalent of $2.5 million in revenue. “My father had been very, very successful in his record business,” Philpot said. But in 1960, Von Battle was forced to close his shop and relocate to make way for I-375 — a giant, four-lane sunken freeway. Over a mile of Hastings Street and its surrounding land was turned over to developers, dismantling the once thriving epicenter of Black life in Detroit in order to create a high-speed thoroughfare from downtown to the surrounding suburbs. Hastings Street was home to more than 300 Black-owned businesses, including restaurants, doctors’ offices, and even eight grocery stores. Hundreds were forced to relocate or close permanently. Today, there isn’t a single Black-owned grocery store in Detroit, the Blackest big city in America. 
a man in a black and white photo leans against a tall stand in a record store
Joe Von Battle stands inside Joe’s Record Shop in the 1950s. Courtesy of Marsha Philpot
After his building was demolished, Von Battle moved his record shop from the east side of Detroit to the west side, on 12th Street. The business struggled. Von Battle battled alcoholism and was soon diagnosed with Addison’s disease. Eventually, he permanently closed the shop after it was destroyed in Detroit’s 1967 race riots. Philpot and her siblings believe the shop’s forced displacement from Hastings Street was likely the catalyst for their father’s alcoholism. “He was very despondent,” Philpot told Grist, describing on her website that he “drank himself to death.”  In June 1956, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the Federal Interstate Highway Act into law, spurring a multi-decade national infrastructure building boom. In cities across the U.S., these new roadways were disproportionately routed through communities of color. From Detroit to New Orleans to Miami, this construction helped contribute to the decimation of the culture, political power, and economies of Black America amidst the peak of the Civil Rights movement.  “Throughout the country, urban freeways were routed through Black neighborhoods, resulting in the malicious division and forced displacement of Black neighborhoods, as well as local Black economies,” said Regan Patterson, an environmental engineer and current fellow at the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation.  But this infrastructure is hitting the end of its lifespan, and communities are now debating what to do with their legacy highways. In Charleston, South Carolina, officials decided to double down, spending $3 billion to widen a freeway through predominantly Black and brown neighborhoods. Others, however, are questioning whether to remove them altogether, righting some of the wrongs done when communities were bifurcated so many years ago. 
Marsha Philpot, seen here as a child, stands in front of her father’s record store in Detroit’s Black Bottom neighborhood. The business was forced to close in the 1960s as part of the construction of I-375. Photo courtesy of Marsha Philpot
Detroit has chosen the latter. Rather than rebuild or repair I-375’s aging bridges, the Michigan Department of Transportation, or MDOT, announced in 2017 that it would replace the sunken, four-lane highway with a street-level boulevard lined with sidewalks and bike lanes. The initiative, called the I-375 Improvement Project, would reconnect the local neighborhoods along where Hastings Street once stood, as well as create a thoroughfare from Detroit’s downtown to two of its biggest cultural hubs: the RiverWalk area and Eastern Market, the largest historic public market in the country.  Detroit joins the ranks of cities including San Francisco, Seattle, Milwaukee, and Boston in choosing to remove problematic roadways. Even more cities could soon follow suit.  Earlier this month, Congress passed the long-awaited bipartisan infrastructure bill. It includes $1 billion slotted for removing roads, bridges, and highways that cut through communities of color like Hastings Street.

Detroit’s Monroe Street bridge provides a good look at I-375 in both directions. Here, the freeway spans 350 feet wide, with grassy banks on either side sloping down to the sunken concrete roadway. A barrier separates the north and southbound lanes. Monroe Street is one of 14 vehicular bridges that stretch across the 1-mile length of I-375, all of which will be taken out when the highway is removed, explained Jonathan Loree, a senior project manager for MDOT. He is standing on the bridge, looking through a chain-link fence onto the highway below. It is a warm early summer morning.  

Today, the area around I-375 contains almost no trace of its historic roots. The highway is surrounded by parking garages, churches, and office buildings. Cracked sidewalks line nearby streets, but go largely unused. A juvenile detention facility and a casino sit just one block away. There are a few small apartment buildings, but otherwise no residential amenities like restaurants or stores. The I-375 Improvement Project is expected to cost around $270 million. Officials have a target start date of 2027, but they say it will likely get underway even sooner. Federal funds are expected to cover 80 percent of the project’s budget, with the state contributing the other 20 percent. Detroit itself will pay for the construction of city streets that need to be rebuilt to fit into the new at-grade boulevard’s design. So far, the Michigan Department of Transportation has submitted a preferred design for the boulevard and a draft environmental assessment, as well as held a public hearing for community input. Transit officials expect final approval of the project from the Federal Highway Administration in December. 
A rendering of the proposed plan for I-375 in Detroit, Michigan. Michigan Department of Transportation
The new road will be six lanes and transition to four in the last portion of the boulevard, closest to the river. It will be lined by protected bike lanes and more sidewalks, measuring 22 feet across, that will double as gathering spaces. It will also open up about 12 acres of land to be used for housing, retail, or green space — details that will be determined in the next phase of the project.  For decades, the expressway interchange fractured Detroit’s walking and bike routes, making it almost impossible to travel safely in that part of the city without a motorized vehicle, Todd Scott, executive director of the Detroit Greenways Coalition, told Grist.  “It just changes everything,” he said. “It really connects the downtown to the surrounding area. If it’s filled with local businesses and multi-use, maybe it could make a lot more walkable destinations for folks who live nearby.”  Bonnie Leone has been a member of Holy Family Church, which sits just off of I-375, for more than two decades. She’s attended several community meetings for the project in the last few years. “We see it as kind of putting the neighborhood back together,” she said.  Loree and community advocates say there’s also potential to incorporate stormwater infrastructure in the boulevard’s design, something that Detroit desperately needs. The city’s many sunken highways are susceptible to flash flooding, which can leave people stranded in their cars. Currently, water from I-375 goes into the city’s combined sewer system, which is easily overwhelmed during intense rainfall. When the system is overloaded, homes flood and raw sewage is released into waterways. The newly designed boulevard, and its more direct connection to the riverfront, could help manage excess water both today and under future climate scenarios, Loree said.  While the I-375 Improvement Project will have a lot of benefits, can it ever recover what was lost by the highway’s creation in the 1960s? And how can it protect current residents against gentrification? 

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