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Avoid the temptation to stick it under a chair when you're done with it

One of the more promising new developments in downtown Detroit of recent memory has been the attempt to revive the old Campus Martius. The term was a relatively forgotten one for Baby Boomers, but Detroiters of a certain age recall the plaza as the bustling focal point of a thriving city.

Campus Martius --- Latin for "Field of Mars" --- was the brainchild of the eminent Augustus B. Woodward, a judge, civic leader, and friend of Thomas Jefferson. After a devastating fire that leveled much of downtown in 1805, Woodward put together a new plan based on a spoked-wheel pattern that he knew from Washington, D.C. Woodward envisioned a central square, with all main avenues radiating out from it. For reasons political, financial, and not entirely unfamiliar, the delightful Woodward Plan was abandoned after 1818. What survived was Grand Circus Park, many of the maddeningly one-way downtown streets below it, and Campus Martius, the corner of Judge Woodward's original hexagon.

Campus Martius thrived over the next century and a half. It was the end-terminus for streetcar lines, and for decades the Detroit Central Farmers' Market was located just off one side. The buildings surrounding Campus Martius were a savvy mix of civic and commercial, including a palatial Italianate City Hall and several top department stores like Kern's and Crowley's, with the immense J.L. Hudson flagship store just a block north. The square itself was bisected by flower-lined walkways and served as a meeting place for generations of Detroiters.
 
The square's vitality declined with the city's, and when the Kern block was demolished in 1966 and left vacant and undeveloped, Campus Martius devolved into that frustrating intersection of streets and bus shelters that proved terrifying to traverse, either by foot or by car, with the immense Soldiers and Sailors Monument --- erected to honor Michigan's Civil War dead --- sitting, somewhat improbably, in the center of it all. In 1999, Farmington Hills-based computer giant Compuware announced it was relocating its headquarters to the site, which would anchor a new civic plan for the area with mid-rise buildings for mixed residential and commercial use.

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Campus Martius Park
www.campusmartiuspark.org/