Day in Detroit 2010

Today was the day I put the boys in the car and drive them out of suburbia and into the big city of Detroit to spend some time with their Aunt Becky, who seems to know everyone and everything around there.

First we stopped in the small city within a city of Hamtramck. We went to see Hamtramck Disneyland. If you have never seen it, you should go. This sign will help you find your way:

And this is what you will see there:






It even has Elvis!


After taking that in, we went downtown to the streets of "The D."

Becky knows a man she calls "Old George." He is the caretaker/security person for the building that used to house the Detroit Federal Reserve.


Hardly anyone besides Old George ever goes in there anymore, but we did.
Here you can see his "office" set up in the lobby, as well as those round holes coming off the balcony above which were for security guns to point through.


We got to go all through the place, even the dark parts where we needed to use flashlights. There was a cool balcony where we could see this view of the city:

And we went down into the vaults, where they used to keep the money. Jeffrey looked around, but did NOT find any leftover millions laying in the corners.


The walls of the vaults are five feet thick, and the doors are amazing. I liked the way the combination lock looked:

The hvac room was also scenic:



After that, we took a peek in the Penobscot building, where Becky explained to the boys who the Penobscots were, the style of architecture, the type of metal used, the meaning of the airplanes, and how a letterbox with a mail chute works.

We also checked out the Guardian building, an art deco architectural wonder:








Then we walked through the city center to the teen-pleasing Hard Rock Cafe.

Tim was impressed with the light fixtures in this room, and was able to quickly calculate the value of the cymbals they used to make them.


Last on our tour was this very meaningful historic place:


Where many decades ago if a lovely young typist had not caught a glimpse of the handsome delivery guy...

Okay, so my parents were nerds who met in a library. Now you know where I got it from.

The Detroit Public Library is more interesting inside than you might think:

The boys could not guess what these funny cabinets with the little drawers were for, so Becky showed them how to look up names to trace their geneology.



They also got to meet Anna, another friend of Becky's, who showed them this strange machine called a microfilm.


And that was the end of our day. As usual, it was a day of discovery, and curiously fascinating places and things to see.