This website is dedicated to the city of Detroit, and all things unique to it. Detroit has undoubtedly evolved into one of the most unique places in the world. The Motor City was once the 4th largest city by population in the United States. It was the mid 1950s, and at the time, Detroit was known as "the Paris of the Midwest" because of its French ancestry and architecture. The auto industry was at its peek. Muscle cars and the Motown sound enveloped American culture. Detroit was a thriving destination city.

By the late 60's, Detroit's good days started to come to an end. White police, politicians, and big business increasingly oppressed the majority of the African Americans that lived in the segregated city. The auto industry was starting its inevitable spread outside of Detroit; the population started to leave the auto capitol with the lost jobs. In 1967 racial tensions reached the breaking point when massive riots erupted. The riots lasted 5 days, and in the course of the riots, 43 people were killed, over 2,000 buildings were burned; and 7,000 plus people were arrested as a result of president Lyndon B Johnson's deployment of the National Guard to restore order.

Brush Park, one of the most historic and upscale residential areas in Detroit was nearly totally destroyed. To this day the city has not recovered. The Archer and Kilpatrick administrations have been successful in tearing down burned out houses, but progress has been stifled by citywide corruption.

These were not the first riots in the city; in 1943 violence erupted because there was an increased demand for housing due to the wartime production of planes, tanks, and artillery. This created a massive demand for housing in the growing city. At this time, blacks and people from all over to country were arriving in Detroit to work unskilled positions in factories created for the war effort. Unfair lending practices made it nearly impossible for blacks to secure financing for a home. Segregation was at its peek, making life even more difficult to the black man who arrived in Detroit for a good wage.

After the 1967 riots, the white population suddenly made a massive exodus from the city to the suburbs. In 1973, Coleman A Young was elected Detroit's first black mayor marking a shift in local politics. With the decline and globalization of the auto industry, the population of the city dropped from nearly 2 million in the mid 1950's to less than 800,000 in present day. A shell of a once grand city has been left behind with nothing spared: skyscrapers, houses, churches, factories, schools, firehouses, marinas, police stations, theatres and stadiums. These relics are filled with artifacts from the past. It is estimated that 10,000 people move out of the city every month, and that is why they say "the last person out, please turn off the lights." Just recently the population of Detroit was revised by the Census department, marking an increase in population. Politicians don’t claim that that more people are moving into the city, but that errors were made calculating the population during the last census.

Although the future may seem bleak for Detroit, its history has transformed the city into the most unique city in the world. As the city has shrunk, the once grand buildings have been turned into charred shells, transforming the city into what it is today. Main roads through the city are lined with empty lots from where storefronts and homes once stood. These empty lots are a direct result of fires from the riots, and years of Devils night. Devil’s night is now known as Angle’s night. This volunteer campaign was the main driving force to stop arson on the night before Halloween. On this night, throughout the 80's and 90’s, city gangs and vandals started fires across the city on a massive scale. Whites also took advantage of this as an excuse to burn their property down in efforts to collect insurance money.

Out of the downfall, Detroit has become the best place in the world for urban exploring with the abundance and selection of buildings. Graffiti thrives in this environment filled with blight. As a result the city’s culture is just as unique as the environment. All these factors including music to politics, blight, and karma have combined together to create a place that can only be described as

A modern dictionary defines decay as; • (of a building or area) to fall into disrepair; deteriorate and to decline in quality, power, or vigor. A gradual rotting, festering, or decomposition of a material, and or belief.

Living and working in this city makes for interesting scenery as you go through the motions of life, but few ever take time to simply enjoy something in all of its devastating beauty. This section of onlyndetroit.com will be dedicated to accounts and pictures of some of Detroit’s most notorious woes of neglect. From the 3.5 million square foot carcass of the historical Packard, to the endlessly tall Book Cadillac and Broderick Towers, you will find stories and photos of our explorations and accounts of all things possible…only 'n Detroit.

For anyone who has spent time in Detroit either photographing, living, or working in the city you have undoubtedly encountered epic decay on a scale unseen by modern man. The sprawling 146 square miles of Detroit are littered with dumped waste, some of which is highly toxic and possibly harmful to come in contact with. Beyond the illegal dumping, there is simply widespread blight and lack of promise or willpower that causes most of the areas of the city to look like early 90s Beirut.

Even in areas that have been models for renovations and rebirth, there, lying just blocks away, some of the worst of Detroit’s ghettos and slums. Homage if you will to ancient Roman ruins, Detroit style.

The financially strapped city has shown no real progress in the area of cleaning up these areas of blight and squalor. With the exception of a stretch of riverfront between Bell Isle and Downtown, many promises were made by an ambitious Kilpatrick administration but fruition of these seemingly empty vows has lead us to the point of dismal spoil.

Detroit has and always will be a haven for inspired artists and thinkers. The traditions of bringing contemporary art to the public goes all the way back into the 1940s and 50s when architects started combining Old World Gothic and New Modern Art Deco styles. This blending of old and new has become a trademark of Detroit and its unique look. That unique spirit is conveyed and pushed further today by artists living in the city, as a way to vent and deal with the bleak outlooks surrounding them.

Nowhere is this more apparent than in the Graffiti sub-culture, and Detroit’s Urban Art movement. A movement that asks not for permission, but for a reaction. In your face, love it or hate it, it’s become a staple of living in the city. From the undeniable talent of artists getting up in Dequindre cut, to the world renowned murals of Wyland and his “Whaling Walls” to the cores and colorful stickers being slapped on toilet stalls around the D you must recognize the time and effort that goes into this un-bashful art form. Onlyndetroit.com is dedicated to archiving and sharing Graffiti and other Urban Art from around the city and profiling prolific Detroit artists so they can receive the recognition they deserve.

Each and every abandoned building has some level of Graffiti, those with larger concentrations are Detroit’s equivalent of “Street Art Gallery’s.” In this section you will find Building Profiles and Graffiti, archived broken down by “gallery.” High- resolution prints of all the art on onlyndetroit.com will soon be available for purchase through this site. Enjoy and be careful exploring.

Raves…ahh, even the simplest of four letter words can conjure up memories and nostalgia of Detroit parties, stretching back all the way to the early 80’s. Parties of such importance, they are now legendary across the world and back. Detroit Techno has been our biggest export to the world over the last 20 years. A genre of music that has changed the face of this city forever. From the infected masses that swarm Hart Plaza dancing every year at the annual Detroit Electronic Music Festival, to the back alley bars and after-hours that keep us bouncing into the early morning, Techno is king in Detroit.

Paying homage to a day when the future of Detroit was as mysterious and new as the sounds created, mixed, and blended by Juan Atkins years ago. Rave parties are the ultimate manifestation of this electronic movement as it grew and expanded overseas and back. Starting as social soirees in the early eighties between west side high school kids and east side party crews quickly escalated into a united scene of Detroit dance music culture. Taking notes and queues from the Detroit pioneers, London and Manchester scenes overseas morphed the idea of this social event into a full-scale interactive dance music experience.

This section of onlyndetroit.com is our way to pay homage to the pioneers of the Detroit parties and events that shaped the scene as we know it today. This page will contain and display rave flyers from the year 2000 and earlier. To help us archive and share these artifacts of Detroit rave culture feel free to send us high-resolution scans and pictures from any parties posted or not yet posted. We need and appreciate your help, please enjoy… now rave on.

The over flowing bursts of steam that billow out of manholes throughout the landscape of Detroit are the result of an almost ancient infrastructure that used to supply steam generated heating to the Victorian era homes here. Today, big oil and global energy corporations have phased out the need for steam heat. The city still continues to produce the steam for residents to heat their homes, and as a power alternative for industrial manufacturing. The excess steam is then vented out through a system of underground pipelines leading to vents on the street. Even though several people every year are badly burned or even killed by vents that are too hot for release, the city does nothing and residents get BURNED.

Parts of Detroit… dead, gone, demolished and forgotten. The buildings that made old Detroit what it was are now just memories and stories, a picture here and there. The footprints of these giant structures that made up Detroit’s colorful and sorted past are scatted throughout the city as parking lots and newer more modern buildings. The era of gothic architecture is over; never will buildings of this caliber be built again. The ones that survive will lay testament to a way of life long forgotten and distant in almost every aspect. From the way streets used to be lined with vintage marquees to the trolleys that no longer run, to the buildings that lie silent; we are going to try reviving the dead.

Here in the "Rest In Pieces" section you will find descriptions and pictures of the buildings that made up Detroit’s grand and historical past. We currently have exhausted the resources we have to provide more pictures and first hand accounts of buildings no longer around for exploring. If you can help us by providing original pictures, artifacts or stories of explorations from these forgotten treasures we ask that you donate these items for documentation. Sharing this with others will help people understand Detroit, where we come from, and where to go from here. Please click the link below for contact information.