WPA Michigan – Ahead of Its Time in 1941

I found myself reading the Detroit section of the WPA Michigan A Guide to the Wolverine State. Of course I never vacation in Michigan without it!
Here I found my words explaining the shortcomings of this city in print decades before I drew the same conclusions. I would point out my thoughts when people made statements about returning Detroit to the great city it was. Huh? I maintained it never was a great city.
So I read this anonymous writer in the Guide elaborating on peculiarities of the city. “A visitor may spend weeks in Detroit without receiving the impression that he is in a city of more than 1,500,000 inhabitants…There are crowds of pedestrians downtown, as in any big city, but these crowds soon thin out. Where, then, are all the people?” You need to go to the factories at the end of a shift. There is a flood of cars filling the streets. Detroit had the highest registration of autos to people second to Washington D.C. The figure includes taxi cabs, exclude them and Detroit is number 1.
But now the factories have left. And long gone are any crowds of people.
“Detroit has grown away from the river in haphazard fashion.” Further regarding the river frontage, “Detroit has turned its back on it….The stream now flows, almost unobservable from the city, past a rampart of warehouses, elevators, and other buildings.”
For years I found it strange that having the river blocked off from use by residents. City planners and developers have tried to change that but for too many years what should have been highest priced real estate was instead filled with monolithic buildings hiding the view with no public access along the river.
But the writing is wonderful! This is true of all the WPA Guides. Check out this sentence from the Detroit section: “The city grew at an unprecedented pace, its pulse beat quickening to the staccato rhythm of the riveters, as steel swung into place and grimly functional factories reared up almost overnight.” I love it! Now put this in perspective, read this and look at Diego Rivera’s giant mural of the factory in the Detroit Institute of Arts.
Detroit was nothing before it became a factory town. It just became a very large factory town growing quickly like western mining boom towns. The mentality was of a factory town – meaning dull. It never was a great city so it can never go back to being a great city.

Guidebooks to Beat all Guidebooks

Ah, my collection of WPA books! However, the Michelin guides are strong competition for this distinction. What are the WPA guides? These are the books issued by the Federal Writers’ Project, renamed Works Progress Administration in 1939, a/k/a American Guide Series. This was part of the New Deal under Roosevelt, putting to work writers and photographers. The history has been aptly covered elsewhere, no need to repeat here – use Google or go out and actually BUY a book of the history such as Mangione’s The Dream and The Deal.
My introduction came at university in my geography classes. Field trips with Doc Goodman used a state guide as the bible. When we reached a significant site, cars would pull to the shoulder, everyone clamber out, smoke of weed emanating from one vehicle, and we would gather ’round Doc as he did a reading. It might be about the history of the interurban tracks, ruins just barely visible.
There is no other single source that provides history, tours, photos, stories, sections on art, agriculture, Indians, etc. all line one book. You get tales lost now as to how a town got its name. Remember in 1930 you still had Civil War soldiers alive, and people were closer to the tales of early pioneers. The information was not as diluted and now forgotten.
The books make places come alive. I understand the reason they settled here, learn that economies are constantly changing and you can’t fight it. They explain the landscape to me.
And they are well written, often by writers whose names are now familiar to every American literature class. Sometimes they were controversial, sections taken out, like some of the books discussion of Negros.
There is a guide for ever state and some territories. There are city guides, region guides, ethnic guides, and more. Sometimes they worked to maintain records of events and data, rather dry technical reading.
Why use outdated guides you ask? Sounds pretty silly. But history doesn’t change! And there is no other source to get that information. I like to travel back roads, the blue highways. I want to understand what I’m seeing. Example is a trip to get to route 66 in Illinois. I was in the eastern section, well south of Chicago. Off the road I noticed large conical hills sticking out of the flat fields. Being a superbly trained geographer, I of course realized these are not natural formations. Pulling off the road, I grabbed my Illinois Guide. There I learned I was in coal mining country! These hills were mine talus. I also learned about the miners union. Also, could clearly see that industry was a thing of the past, only the talus piles remaining.
The individual tour sections are great to follow, getting you off the nondescript highway into towns often now abandoned but telling a story. Sometimes you stumble on small gems of stores, scenery, and interesting people.
I have all the state guides, most first editions with dust jackets. And I have many other Writers’ Project books. I take them along on my travels and spend afternoons or evenings reading about where I’ve been and plan where to go tomorrow. As happens with collectors, it does become an obsession. But if you aren’t picky about edition, printing date you can pick up books cheap on eBay. Or go to your library where there will surely be at least a small selection and likely your own state sitting back on a dusty shelf.