Leapin' Lilacs.  A bouquet of springtime floral fragrance.
You'll swear you have a lilac bush in the house

Yet another Detroit name with a pronunciation that confounds outsiders, Livernois Avenue runs from the Detroit River all the way north to the city's border with Ferndale. Halted near Nine Mile it reemerges as Main St. in Royal Oak and Clawson, and finally gives up the fight altogether when it meets up with Rochester's Paint Creek.

Hallmarks along Livernois's Detroit route make it one of the most fascinating capsules of Motor City history. It takes its name from one of earliest settlers to Fort Detroit du Ponchartrain, Francois Benoit, called Livernois, who arrived at the New France settlement on April 2, 1707. A century later, land-claim documents show a large swath of land near the foot of Livernois listed to his descendant. Some of that was requisitioned by the federal government in the early 1840s when the Patriot Rebellion broke out in Canada. Fearing a British-backed invasion, the U.S. government planned a series of border defense fortifications that would stretch from New England all the way to Minnesota. One of the few built was Fort Wayne, which has garrisoned thousands of U.S. soldiers from the Civil War until World War II eras, but whose cannons have never fired a shot.

Livernois Avenue also hosts another historic Detroit treasure: Baker's Keyboard Lounge, the world's longest running jazz club. Opened in 1934 as a neighborhood bar near 8 Mile when the area was largely farmland, Baker's has hosted luminaries from the world of jazz from Art Tatum to John Coltrane. Baker's famous keyboard-shaped bar even inspired a visiting Liberace to install a piano-shaped pool at his Beverly Hills palace. Baker's is still thumping after seven decades in business and remains the last of the city's once-legendary jazz joints along with the vaunted Bluebird Inn on Tireman Avenue.

Livernois Avenue was also known for decades as Detroit's "Avenue of Fashion" for its blocks of posh clothing retailers like B. Siegel. Though many of the original stores are gone and largely forgotten, a stretch near 7 Mile retains some of the old retail flavor.

Read more:

Save Historic Fort Wayne
http://www.savefortwayne.org/

Baker's Keyboard Lounge
http://www.bakerskeyboardlounge.com/