Beautiful Terrible Ruins

Beautiful Terrible Ruins PDF Author: Dora Apel
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
ISBN: 0813574099
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 229

Get Book Here

Book Description
Once the manufacturing powerhouse of the nation, Detroit has become emblematic of failing cities everywhere—the paradigmatic city of ruins—and the epicenter of an explosive growth in images of urban decay. In Beautiful Terrible Ruins, art historian Dora Apel explores a wide array of these images, ranging from photography, advertising, and television, to documentaries, video games, and zombie and disaster films. Apel shows how Detroit has become pivotal to an expanding network of ruin imagery, imagery ultimately driven by a pervasive and growing cultural pessimism, a loss of faith in progress, and a deepening fear that worse times are coming. The images of Detroit’s decay speak to the overarching anxieties of our era: increasing poverty, declining wages and social services, inadequate health care, unemployment, homelessness, and ecological disaster—in short, the failure of capitalism. Apel reveals how, through the aesthetic distancing of representation, the haunted beauty and fascination of ruin imagery, embodied by Detroit’s abandoned downtown skyscrapers, empty urban spaces, decaying factories, and derelict neighborhoods help us to cope with our fears. But Apel warns that these images, while pleasurable, have little explanatory power, lulling us into seeing Detroit’s deterioration as either inevitable or the city’s own fault, and absolving the real agents of decline—corporate disinvestment and globalization. Beautiful Terrible Ruins helps us understand the ways that the pleasure and the horror of urban decay hold us in thrall.

Beautiful Terrible Ruins

Beautiful Terrible Ruins PDF Author: Dora Apel
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
ISBN: 0813574099
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 229

Get Book Here

Book Description
Once the manufacturing powerhouse of the nation, Detroit has become emblematic of failing cities everywhere—the paradigmatic city of ruins—and the epicenter of an explosive growth in images of urban decay. In Beautiful Terrible Ruins, art historian Dora Apel explores a wide array of these images, ranging from photography, advertising, and television, to documentaries, video games, and zombie and disaster films. Apel shows how Detroit has become pivotal to an expanding network of ruin imagery, imagery ultimately driven by a pervasive and growing cultural pessimism, a loss of faith in progress, and a deepening fear that worse times are coming. The images of Detroit’s decay speak to the overarching anxieties of our era: increasing poverty, declining wages and social services, inadequate health care, unemployment, homelessness, and ecological disaster—in short, the failure of capitalism. Apel reveals how, through the aesthetic distancing of representation, the haunted beauty and fascination of ruin imagery, embodied by Detroit’s abandoned downtown skyscrapers, empty urban spaces, decaying factories, and derelict neighborhoods help us to cope with our fears. But Apel warns that these images, while pleasurable, have little explanatory power, lulling us into seeing Detroit’s deterioration as either inevitable or the city’s own fault, and absolving the real agents of decline—corporate disinvestment and globalization. Beautiful Terrible Ruins helps us understand the ways that the pleasure and the horror of urban decay hold us in thrall.

Detroit, the City Beautiful

Detroit, the City Beautiful PDF Author: Detroit Convention and Tourist Bureau
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Detroit (Mich.)
Languages : en
Pages : 100

Get Book Here

Book Description


Beautiful Wasteland

Beautiful Wasteland PDF Author: Rebecca J. Kinney
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
ISBN: 1452953392
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 257

Get Book Here

Book Description
According to popular media and scholarship, Detroit, the once-vibrant city that crumbled with the departure of the auto industry, is where dreams can be reborn. It is a place that, like America itself, is gritty and determined. It has faced the worst kind of adversity, and supposedly now it’s back. But what does this narrative of “new Detroit” leave out? Beautiful Wasteland reveals that the contemporary story of Detroit’s rebirth is an upcycled version of the American Dream, which has long imagined access to work, home, and upward mobility as race-neutral projects. They’re not. As Rebecca J. Kinney shows, the narratives of Detroit’s rise, decline, and potential to rise again are deeply steeped in material and ideological investments in whiteness. By remapping the narratives of contemporary Detroit through an extension of America’s frontier mythology, Kinney analyzes a cross-section of twentieth and twenty-first century cultural locations—an Internet forum, ruin photography, advertising, documentary film, and print and online media. She illuminates how the stories we tell about Detroit as a frontier of possibility enable the erasure of white privilege and systemic racism. By situating Detroit as a “beautiful wasteland,” both desirable and distressed, this shows how the narrative of ruin and possibility form a mutually constituted relationship: the city is possible precisely because of its perceived ruin. Beautiful Wasteland tackles the key questions about the future of postindustrial America. As cities around the country reckon with their own postindustrial landscapes, Rebecca Kinney cautions that development that elides considerations of race and class will only continue to replicate uneven access to the city for the poor, working class, and people of color.

Beautiful and Dynamic Detroit

Beautiful and Dynamic Detroit PDF Author: Detroit Convention and Tourists Bureau
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Detroit (Mich.)
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book Here

Book Description


Detroit's Historic Places of Worship

Detroit's Historic Places of Worship PDF Author: Marla O. Collum
Publisher: Wayne State University Press
ISBN: 0814334245
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 273

Get Book Here

Book Description
In Detroit's Historic Places of Worship, authors Marla O. Collum, Barbara E. Krueger, and Dorothy Kostuch profile 37 architecturally and historically significant houses of worship that represent 8 denominations and nearly 150 years of history. The authors focus on Detroit's most prolific era of church building, the 1850s to the 1930s, in chapters that are arranged chronologically. Entries begin with each building's founding congregation and trace developments and changes to the present day. Full-color photos by Dirk Bakker bring the interiors and exteriors of these amazing buildings to life, as the authors provide thorough architectural descriptions, pointing out notable carvings, sculptures, stained glass, and other decorative and structural features. Nearly twenty years in the making, this volume includes many of Detroit's most well known churches, like Sainte Anne in Corktown, the Cathedral of the Most Blessed Sacrament in Boston-Edison, Saint Florian in Hamtramck, Mariners' Church on the riverfront, Saint Mary's in Greektown, and Central United Methodist Church downtown. But the authors also provide glimpses into stunning buildings that are less easily accessible or whose uses have changed-such as the original Temple Beth-El (now the Bonstelle Theater), First Presbyterian Church (now Ecumenical Theological Seminary), and Saint Albertus (now maintained by the Polish American Historical Site Association)-or whose future is uncertain, like Woodward Avenue Presbyterian Church (most recently Abyssinian Interdenominational Center, now closed). Appendices contain information on hundreds of architects, artisans, and crafts-people involved in the construction of the churches, and a map pinpoints their locations around the city of Detroit. Anyone interested in Detroit's architecture or religious history will be delighted by Detroit's Historic Places of Worship.

Detroit Hustle

Detroit Hustle PDF Author: Amy Haimerl
Publisher: Running Press Adult
ISBN: 076245735X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 274

Get Book Here

Book Description
Journalist Amy Haimerl and her husband had been priced out of their Brooklyn neighborhood. Seeing this as a great opportunity to start over again, they decide to cash in their savings and buy an abandoned house for 35,000 in Detroit, the largest city in the United States to declare bankruptcy. As she and her husband restore the 1914 Georgian Revival, a stately brick house with no plumbing, no heat, and no electricity, Amy finds a community of Detroiters who, like herself, aren't afraid of a little hard work or things that are a little rough around the edges. Filled with amusing and touching anecdotes about navigating a real-estate market that is rife with scams, finding a contractor who is a lover of C.S. Lewis and willing to quote him liberally, and neighbors who either get teary-eyed at the sight of newcomers or urge Amy and her husband to get out while they can, Amy writes evocatively about the charms and challenges of finding her footing in a city whose future is in question. Detroit Hustle is a memoir that is both a meditation on what it takes to make a house a home, and a love letter to a much-derided city.

Beautiful Detroit, Illustrated

Beautiful Detroit, Illustrated PDF Author: Detroit convention and tourists bureau. [from old catalog]
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Detroit (Mich.)
Languages : en
Pages : 48

Get Book Here

Book Description


Beautiful Detroit, as Viewed Through the Camera

Beautiful Detroit, as Viewed Through the Camera PDF Author: L.H. Nelson Company
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Church buildings
Languages : en
Pages : 50

Get Book Here

Book Description


Beautiful and Dynamic Detroit ..

Beautiful and Dynamic Detroit .. PDF Author: Detroit Convention and Tourists Bureau
Publisher: Legare Street Press
ISBN: 9781021914958
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book Here

Book Description
Discover the beauty and vitality of Detroit with this stunning guide. Featuring breathtaking photography and detailed information about the city's history, culture, and attractions, this book is a must-have for anyone planning a visit to Detroit. This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

Secret Detroit

Secret Detroit PDF Author: Karen Dybis
Publisher: Reedy Press LLC
ISBN: 1681060752
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 311

Get Book Here

Book Description
Detroit is known for its automotive heritage, the Motown sound, and American's first mile of concrete highway. But this cityon the river has more than three hundred years of history, and most of it iseasy to experience if you know where to look. There's the Michigan Theatre, theornate movie house turned parking garage with a grand stage looming over itscars. Picturesque Alfred Brush Ford Park once stored nuclear missiles among itsplaygrounds and fishing spots. Then there are incredible landmarks like Detroit'smassive salt mines and a monument to urban graffiti known as the Dequindre Cutas well as the world's oldest operating jazz club. Secret Detroit explores thisgreat American city to investigate everything that is odd, unexpected, andextraordinary. Detroit is the kind of city you need to see and experience tounderstand why locals brag about being from the Motor City. Full of stories andtall tales, this book is a must-have for urban explorers, history buffs, andtravelers of all experience levels