Its
sidewalk overgrown and doors smashed, the Magnus
Butzel Branch Library is glows in the light of
the rising sun.
Butzel
Library
In
the early 1980's General Motors built a new auto assembly plant
on the site of the former Dodge Main plant.
Hailed for being the first new plant in Detroit in decades,
it was unlike its predecessor.
The
previous plant was set in a neighborhood, woven into the fabric
of the houses and businesses surrounding it.
The
new plant is a windowless facility set back hundreds of yards
from any neighborhood and its employees are mostly suburban
commuters.
The
demand for land to construct it required the relocation of thousands
of residents and hundreds of small business in an area known
as Poletown after the Polish immigrants who populated it and
supplied the labor for Dodge Main.
The
Magnus Butzel Branch Library serviced that bygone neighborhood.
