Among the first objects of interest which attract the stranger's attention are the new City Hall and the Soldiers' Monument. The City Hall, fronting on one side of the square known as the Campus Martius, is a structure of which any city in the land might be proud. It is built of Cleveland sandstone, and faces on four streets,—being two hundred feet long on Woodward avenue and Griswold street, with a width of ninety feet on Fort street and Michigan avenue.
It is built in the style of the Italian renaissance, with Mansard roof and a tower rising from the centre of the building, adorned at its four corners with colossal figures fourteen feet high, representing "Justice," "Industry," "Arts," and "Commerce." Its height from the ground to the top of the tower is a hundred and eighty feet, and the three ample stories above the basement furnish accommodation to the city and county offices, in addition to the Circuit and Recorder's Courts. The walls are frescoed, the floors laid in mosaics of colored marbles, and the Council Chamber and other public rooms are furnished with black walnut chairs and desks, and paneled in oak. With these exceptions, there is no woodwork about the immense building. Everything, from basement to dome, is brick and iron and stone. Even the floors are built in delicate arches of brick and iron, and iron staircases follow the windings of the tower to its dizzy top. It is reckoned fireproof. The exterior is curiously carved, and two large fountains adorn the inclosing grounds. The estimated cost of the building is about six hundred thousand dollars.
From the airy outlook of the City Hall Tower, Detroit appears like a vast wheel, many of whose streets diverge like spokes from this common centre, reaching outward until they touch, or seem to touch, the wooded rim of the distant horizon. The hub of this immense wheel is the triangular open space called the Campus Martius, and the Soldiers' Monument, occupying the centre of the Campus Martius, is also the centre of this imaginary hub. Michigan avenue—one of the long arms of the wheel—loses itself in the western distance, and is called the Chicago road. Woodward avenue leads into the interior, toward Pontiac, and Gratiot avenue goes in the direction of Port Huron. Fort street, in yet another direction, guides the eye to Fort Wayne and the steeples of Sandwich, four miles away. Toward the southern or river side of the city, the resemblance to the wheel is nearly lost, and one sees nothing but compact squares of blocks, cut by streets crossing each other at right angles and running parallel and perpendicular to the river. Between the Campus Martius and Grand Circus Park there are half a dozen or more short streets, which form a group by themselves, and break in somewhat on the symmetry of the larger wheel, without destroying it. This point gives the best view of Detroit to be obtained anywhere about the city.
The Soldiers' Monument is a handsome granite structure, fifty-five feet in height, the material of which was quarried from the granite beds of Westerly, Rhode Island, and modeled into shape under the superintending genius of Randolph Rogers, of Rome, Italy. It is surmounted by a massive allegorical statue, in bronze, of Michigan, and figures of the soldier and sailor, in the same material, adorn the four projections of the monument; while bronze eagles with spread wings are perched on smaller pedestals in the intermediate spaces. Large medallions, also in bronze, with the busts of Grant, Lincoln, Sherman and Farragut, in low relief, cover the four sides of the main shaft, and higher up the following inscription is imprinted against the white background of granite:—
"Erected by the people of Michigan
in honor of the martyrs who fell
and the heroes who fought
in defence of Liberty and Union."
The bronzes and ornaments were imported from the celebrated foundry at Munich, Bavaria, and the cost of the monument—donated exclusively by private subscription—amounted to fifty-eight thousand dollars. The unveiling of the statue took place April ninth, 1872.
Another feature of the city is the Public Library, founded in March, 1865, and at present occupying the old Capitol, until the new and elegant Library building now in process of construction is completed.
WOODWARD AVENUE, DETROIT, MICHIGAN.
Beginning entirely without funds, ten years ago, it can now exhibit a muster roll of twenty-five thousand volumes, and is fairly started on the high road to fortune. There is a kind of poetic justice in the fact that its principal source of revenue accrues from county fines and penalties. Here is a knotty question for the divinity doctors, for in this case, at least, good is born of evil. The library is under the control of the Board of Education, and was given an existence from the State constitution. Some very rare volumes of Mexican antiquities have recently been purchased from England by the School Board and added to the library, at a cost of four hundred dollars. They contain a pictorial and hieroglyphic history of the Aztec races occupying Mexico when Cortes came over from a foreign shore with his Spanish galleons. The earliest date goes back to 1324, and the strange figures in the centre of the page are surrounded by devices indicating cycles of thirteen years, four of which made a great cycle, or a period of fifty-two years. The deeds of the Aztec king, Tenuch, and his successors, are here recorded, and through the efforts of an English nobleman who devoted his life to these researches, we have the translation rendered for us.