Significance Statement

The proposed Aretha Franklin Amphitheater/Chene Park Historic District is significant at the local level under National Register Criteria A for Community Planning and Development for its association with local planning efforts to reclaim and redevelop the Detroit Riverfront for public use and to support economic development by enhancing the local entertainment industry with a riverfront music venue. As Chene Park, it had the distinction of being the first phase of the Linked Riverfront Parks Project.

Its period of significance is defined as 1982, when the groundbreaking ceremony took place, to 1990, when the park was reopened after undergoing site improvements.

Early History of the Detroit Riverfront

Archeological evidence suggests that Native American tribes lived along the Detroit River as early as A.D. 750.1 By the 1600s, the Anishinaabe, Wyandot, Iroquois, Fox, Miami, and Sauk tribes used the Detroit River as a place to hunt and gather. Many of the early Native American trails now trace Detroit’s major arterial roadways, including East Jefferson Avenue.

The French were the first Europeans to arrive to establish Fort Pontchartrain du Détroit in 1701 as a permanent military outpost and fur trading center with the Native Americans along the narrowest part of the strait between Lake Erie and Lake Huron. Within the first decade, the French divided land along the waterways east of the fort into ribbon or strip farms. The long narrow plots of land guaranteed water access to a maximum of settlers who farmed the land. The first grants for the ribbon farms were located east of the fort. Many of these early land grantees are memorialized in the street names that still run to the riverfront around the proposed Aretha Franklin Amphitheater/Chene Park Historic District like Chene, Joseph Campau, Dubois and St. Aubin. Water access supported a bountiful farming community and the close proximity of housing along the water’s edge provided security from frontier attacks.

Farming flourished much of the nineteenth century until industrialization took hold in the later part of the century. Silas Farmer’s 1890 History of Detroit and Wayne County and Early Michigan noted that Michigan’s manufacturing industry was supported by the abundance and quality of its iron, copper and lumber resources. Michigan possessed the largest deposits of quality iron, had the largest copper smelting works, and produced more lumber than any other state in the United States at the close the nineteenth century.

By 1885, the Detroit riverfront proved an ideal link for shipping Michigan’s abundant natural resources to America’s eastern shore. The riverfront vicinity east of St. Aubin and west of Belle Isle had transformed to predominantly lumber yards and its related industries. The area associated with the Chene Park parcel was owned by Moffat Eatherly and Company Lumber and Detroit Lumber on 1885 and 1911 maps, respectively, and the general area was filled with holding and staging areas for the lumber industry. Hugh Moffat (1810-1884), founder of Moffat Eatherly and Company Lumber, had come to the "City of the Straits" in 1837.2 He started as a carpenter and moved into the lumber trades in 1852. He served as the Mayor of Detroit from 1872 to 1876 and formed a partnership shortly thereafter with his son, Addison and Florance Darling Eatherly for the lumber company in 1878. A sawmill is the only known building on early maps (1885-1923) where the proposed Aretha Franklin Amphitheater/Chene Park Historic District is now located. The sawmill was noted in Silas Farmer’s Biographical Edition of the History of Detroit (1889) as one of Moffat’s "last enterprises" and considered one of the best in the state of Michigan.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, Detroit had become a bustling city, amassing a population of more than 2 million. With Detroit’s strategic connection to the Great Lakes, manufacturing and commerce along the riverfront thrived during the first half of the twentieth century. Several maps from 1885 to the 1920s reveal a shift in the riverfront industries from lumberyards to ship and railroad car building companies and various industries associated with iron, steel, and coal products. The 1897 Sanborn map shows a dry dock located where the Aretha Franklin Amphitheater/Chene Park parcel is today and the 1923 Baist Atlas map indicates that the Imperial Ship Company acquired most of the parcel with sandyards flanking both sides. These sandyards eventually become Medusa Concrete and Petoskey Portland Cement Company/Penn-Dixie Company servicing trade routes from Detroit along the Great Lakes to destinations in Northern Michigan, Chicago, Milwaukee, Toledo, etc.

Early City Planning Efforts for the Detroit Riverfront

With the rapid growth of urban industrialization, Americans began to seek ways to improve city living and address the increasing pollution, population, and public health concerns. Society’s upper classes were the first to champion for city parks as places contributing to better health. After 1900, supporters of social reform also held that parks were a healthier alternative than going to saloons to socialize. The concept of large urban parks promoting a better quality of living started in England in the early 1800s and was imported to New York City when Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux won a competition for their design of Central Park. Frederick Law Olmsted (1822-1903) became America’s most well-known landscape architect, going on to design numerous parks nationwide during his career including Detroit’s Belle Isle in the 1880s as the country’s largest city island park (although not fully realized according to Olmsted’s vision).

After Belle Isle Park was established in 1845, parks were included in subsequent Detroit Master Plan of Policies. Noted architect and city planner Edward H. Bennett was commissioned by the Detroit City Plan and Improvement Commission to conduct the 1915 Preliminary Plan of Detroit. Bennett was well known for his association and collaboration with Daniel Burnham on the 1909 Chicago City Plan for which he designed Grant Park. After the 1915 Preliminary Plan of Detroit was published, the City Plan Commission was created to formalize a comprehensive plan to make greenspace recommendations for "the development of parks, recreation areas, boulevards, and the riverfront." Those recommendations led to a 1927 approved Master Plan that included an idea to create a Riverside Drive near the Detroit River complete with networked parks. Unfortunately, though the networked parks concept was brought forward, Riverside Drive never met fruition.

City planning efforts for parks and recreation development along the Detroit River gradually increased in scope; the 1947 Master Plan included the riverfront from the Central Business District to the eastern city limits at Alter Road and the 1965 Master Plan included the entire riverfront.4 Emphasis on the waterfront as an important advantage for industrial development remained prevalent, although the 1963 Port of Detroit Riverfront Study prepared for the Area Redevelopment Administration for the U.S. Department of Congress concurred with the city’s objective to orient "long-range planning for the waterfront area east of the Civic Center to light industrial, commercial, or residential/recreational purposes."

As was the case in many other American cities, economic changes included a major decline in manufacturing infrastructure within Detroit after WWII. As manufacturing plants moved to the outer reaches of suburbs made accessible by an expanding freeway system, the loss of manufacturing infrastructure was detrimental to a much needed tax base. As manufacturing left Detroit, vast areas of the city were abandoned and in some places heavily polluted.

Linked Riverfront Parks Project

Mayor Coleman A. Young (1974-1994) took office in 1974 amid many challenges generated by a declining tax base. Mayor Young believed that the revitalization of the downtown riverfront using private and public partnerships with federal, state and local funds would spur additional economic and community development. During his initial run for office, Mayor Young emphasized his desire to revitalize the riverfront between the Ambassador Bridge in Southwest Detroit and the MacArthur Bridge leading to Belle Isle. The opening of Hart Plaza in 1975 and the Renaissance Center in 1977 served as anchors for his urban policy agenda.

Shortly after Mayor Young took office, an $80,000 Coastal Zone Management federal grant was awarded to provide funding for a riverfront revitalization study that would serve as the foundation of the Linked Riverfront Parks Project to "link" the Central Business District to Belle Isle along the Detroit riverfront. The Coastal Zone Management Act was passed by Congress in 1972 to provide funds to assist with planning efforts to develop wise use of coastal areas across the county, including the Great Lakes. The City of Detroit Recreation Department under Director Leon Atchison selected Detroit based architectural firm Schervish, Vogel, Merz PC (SVM) to work with Project Manager Harriet Saperstein to prepare the cohesive riverfront redevelopment plan after a request for proposal went out to the public.

Mayor Young formally introduced the Linked Riverfront Parks Project in his Moving Detroit Forward…for Urban Economic Revitalization Plan in 1977. Mayor Young’s comprehensive five-year plan for revitalizing the city included repurposing abandoned areas of the riverfront for general public use through public and private investment. The Plan was presented to President Jimmy Carter (1977-1981) in June of 1977 by an alliance of business and local government officials that included General Motors Corporation Chairman Thomas A. Murphy, City Council president Carl Levin, and U.S. Representative Charles Diggs as a sign of solidary for the ambitious 2.5 billion dollar project. On October 31, 1979 the public was presented the Executive Summary of the Linked Riverfront Parks Project.

Due to the close professional association between Mayor Young and President Carter Detroit was well positioned to capitalize on the Urban Development Action Grant (UDAG) funding package to assist American cities. The UDAG program was created by the Housing and Community Development Act of 1977 to promote economic development to distressed cities and urban counties through the stimulation of private investment, which would create permanent jobs and expand the tax base. Mayor Young believed that capturing these funds would help Detroit take major steps to transform significant portions of the historic riverfront from industrial use to public recreational use, which would then spur economic development. Detroit successfully received "$107 million in grants, more than any other city in the nation, for sixteen development projects, many of them along the riverfront."

Chene Park

Mayor Young’s Moving Detroit Forward…for Urban Economic Revitalization Plan made commitment to "re-establish the waterfront as the physical image of the city,"7 and called for a riverfront outdoor music theater component to be included within the Linked Riverfront Parks Project. He envisioned an urban waterfront music venue that would rival the suburban Pine Knob Theater8 to support Detroit’s rich musical heritage and entertainment industry. Detroit’s 1981 Riverfront Redevelopment Plan included a $1.2 million budget to redevelop Chene Park with an updated amphitheater and pavilion that would allow for larger acts. Chene Park proved to be the ideal choice for Detroit’s first riverfront entertainment venue with its scenic location. The stage is ideally located near the Detroit River’s edge, offering patrons sweeping views of Canada and boaters floating behind the stage area.

A Federal Land & Water Conservation Fund Grant9 provided funds to purchase three water related outdoor recreation sites on the Detroit River. Detroit used a portion of the $2.3 million grant to acquire seven parcels along the Detroit River that became the single Chene Park parcel in 1979. The seven purchased lots once included French granted land from the original ribbon farms of the Chene, Campau and Dubois families. These three sites or nodes10 were named for their locations at the foot of Chene, St. Aubin and Mr. Elliott streets and were to be constructed in phases starting with the Chene site, which required the least amount of prep work because it lacked buildings and was used mostly for storage. The three parks were to be linked for pedestrians, bicycles and automobiles via pathways, parking and public transportation access.

Ground breaking for the park occurred on June 16, 1982 with Detroit Councilwoman Erma Henderson, Mayor Young and Detroit Recreation Department Director Daniel Krichbaum officiating. As the lead project landscape architect, David Schervish "treated the park as an environmental sculpture"11 and contoured the flat parcel with berms to disguise the remaining concrete companies that still flanked each side. Despite the early 1980s recession with double digit interest rates the project moved slowly forward. Chene Park opened in 1984 and was expanded a short time later in 1986 and again in 1990.

Mayor Young’s idea that the tax base would be increased if the city converted the riverfront with public and private money was materialized. Hart Plaza was one of the first of his riverfront endeavors, completed in 1975, and drew 6.5 million visitors to its ethnic festivals and other events like the annual fireworks show within five years.12 By the fall of 1987, the $20 million in public funds within the Linked Riverfront Parks Project limits had stimulated nearly $220 million in private funds for housing, office and commercial recreation development.

Ron Alpern was hired by the Detroit Recreation Department as the Chene Park Programs Coordinator in 1984. Alpern’s efforts to market Chene Park as a "festival park" featured both performing and visual arts. Unlike Hart Plaza that featured free public programming, Chene Park’s original vision was to be a ticketed venue like Pine Knob Theater, but covenants were placed on the property as a result of the funding and required a percentage of the programming to be free for citizens. Alpern successfully garnered contributions from major businesses like Ford Motor Company, Stroh Brewery and Coca-Cola Bottlers of Detroit, who sponsored concerts and special events. A free Saturday Children’s series was offered for several summers that included music, magic, storytellers and puppeteering. In 1985, the Detroit Recreation Department was awarded the Michigan Recreation and Park Association Innovative Park Resource Award for his contribution to Chene Park programming.

In addition to the Park’s main emphasis as a performing arts venue, the Detroit Recreation Department included a visual arts component. To support marketing efforts on a limited budget and to keep the new park in the public light, bike tours showcasing the riverfront used Chene Park as its starting location. With the assistance from the Junior League of Detroit and the Michigan Council of the Arts, Chene Park became the site of arts exhibits. In the summer of 1984, an "Artist in Residence" program was held using the newly prepped site as a blank canvas for showcasing pieces of art in collaboration with the Detroit Artist Market. Artists were on hand each weekend between June and August to educate visitors about their art. After the program was completed the two pieces of artwork on display in Chene Park were purchased and remain on display.

Jazz has played the pronounced role of musical concerts since opening in 1984. Jazz guitarist Ron English was the headliner act for the Ribbon Cutting Ceremony with Mayor Young on August 10, 1984 and Chene Park was one of several concert venues during the Montreux Jazz Festival in 1986. Other noted jazz artists include saxophonist Ornette Coleman and singer Carmen McRae who drew more than 5,000 people with a standing room only crowd. The Detroit jazz station WJZZ was a regular sponsor for jazz events and a Wednesday Night Jazz Series has become a tradition under the direction of The Right Productions CEO and President Shahida Mausi and has been held every functional year of the park’s existence.

Renowned talent such as Smokey Robinson, B-52s, Manhattan Transfer, Anne Murray, Robin Thick, Miles Davis, and Aretha Franklin have performed at Chene Park. The comedian Sinbad was the opening act on the 4th of July, 1990, after the last expansion grand opening. Classical music has also been an important musical component and the Detroit Symphony Orchestra played in Chene Park after Ford Auditorium was closed. The free Special Sundays Program featured orchestra music, folk, blues, bluegrass and a variety of other world music and dancing.

The Aretha Franklin Amphitheater has an annual attendance of 150,000 people each year and it has achieved international acclaim as one of the world’s highest ranked amphitheaters.14 In August 2018, numerous artists from Motown, Rhythm & Blues (R&B), Jazz, Bluegrass, Folk, Gospel, and Dance gathered at Chene Park to pay tribute to Aretha Franklin with a free concert the night before her funeral. On December 5, 2018, Chene Park was officially renamed the Aretha Franklin Amphitheater/Chene Park by Detroit City Council. The Aretha Franklin Amphitheater will host an Aretha Jazz Series on Wednesdays during the 2019 season.