New Episode 7: The Ernie Harwell Sports Collection at the Detroit Public Library

  Digging Detroit tours the incredible Ernie Harwell Sports Collection at the Detroit Public Library with curator Mark Bowden. In 1966, Hall of Fame radio announcer Ernie Harwell donated over 7,000 sports photos to the library and began the massive collection of sports memorabilia that also includes equipment, sports cards, clippings, broadcasting equipment and even […]

Tiger Stadium: What Makes a Ballpark

Updated post from Kevin’s blog, MyMediaDiary from April 2013. I’ve often wondered about the emotional hitching post that is a ballpark.  And when anyone says “ballpark” we all know that it’s not referring to any other sports field besides baseball’s. I only live a few miles from five little league fields that I spent five summers of […]

New Podcast: GM’s “Google Years” of the 1950s and 1960s with Ken Pickering

Ken Pickering, GM’s retired Executive Director, Engineering and Design Services, joins Digging Detroit’s Kevin Walsh and Pete Kalinski to discuss his career in the exciting years of design in the 1950s and beyond. Moving from western Pennsylvania to WWII to GM Hard work combined with some great breaks Harley Earl & Bill Mitchell How long a car […]

Episode 6: The Navin Field Grounds Crew

Professional baseball was played at the corner of Michigan and Trumbull for nearly a century.  The Detroit Tigers played their final game in 1999 and it took 10 years for the city to complete its demolition.  In just 5 years, the weeds and trash had grown so thick that few signs remained of the once manicured lawn […]

Episode 5: Detroit’s Nain Rouge

  The legend of Detroit’s ominous red dwarf goes back over 300 years, to Cadillac’s ill-advised decision to abuse the little guy while foolishly ignore a fortune teller. In Episode #5, Digging Detroit explores the legend of the little guy as he has morphed quite a bit from the mischievous house-elf of Normandy who might […]

Episode 4: Two Historic Detroit Theatres–The Redford and the DFT

Click the YouTube link below for a look at two Detroit  theatres nearing the century mark that are each employing some new techniques to increase attendance. February is the DIA’s Detroit Film Theatre biggest month as sell-out crowds have now made a tradition of attending the Oscar Shorts screenings–the only place in the state you can see […]

New Episode of Digging Detroit! Inside Detroit’s Music Vault at the DPL

In Episode 3, Digging Detroit’s Thomas J. Reed, Jr. joins curator Romie Minor as they explore the fabulous treasures inside the Detroit Public Library’s E. Azalia Hackley Collection (link). The collection and its corresponding concert started in 1943 by Detroit musicians and artists to honor the legacy of Ms. Hackley, a former Detroit Public School teacher who went on to […]

New and Old Frontiers: Above Detroit with Aerial Photographer Alex MacLean

Alex MacLean has seen Detroit from the sky at various stages since 1980.  The large green-spaces below, for example, were once crowded neighborhoods and business districts in a city’s footprint that is large enough to fit Houston, Boston and Manhattan.  These grassy fields by Google Maps might be mistaken for parks. Similar green spaces a few miles north […]