They paved paradise

An absolute place of music legend and African-American culture, Hastings Street once stretched north from the Detroit River to East Grand Boulevard, basically where I-75 runs today. 

After Detroit's Jewish immigrant population left this area, Hastings became a thriving artery of African-American business and entertainment. From the 1920s to the 1950s, the street catered to shoppers by day and offered an array of music, stage acts and colorful folks walking the street at night. Most Hastings venues were Jewish-owned corner bars that booked small groups and bluesmen. 

Barrelhouse blues pianists, while not playing for house parties, found lucrative work along Hastings. By the 1920s, Atlanta-born pianist Paul Seminole performed at Butch's on Hastings and provided inspiration to Rufus G. "Speckled Red" Perryman, who established a reputation on the street. 

A neighborhood movie house, the Castle Theatre, at 3412 Hastings, offered music on occasion, as it did in 1933 when featuring vaudeville blues singer Mamie Smith. 

With Prohibition's repeal that same year, more venues opened along Hastings. Longtime Detroit resident and multi-talented artist, Dr. Jiam Des Jardin, recalled the street in the mid-1930s: "It seemed nothing could keep me from returning to Hastings at night — to see cars and traffic moving bumper to bumper both ways up and down the street, to smell food cooking hanging heavy in the air — barbecue chicken, shrimp, pastrami and salami — and the passing scents of perfumed women. My youthful eyes gazed at their legs covered in Queen-lace stockings. I also marveled at Oxford two-tone shoes — blue and white, brown and white, black and white." 

The street's only black-owned nightspot during the 1930s, the Cozy Corner at 4100 Hastings, was owned by the cigar-smoking, gun-toting Mac Ivey. Such places as the sawdust-floor covered Three Star Bar, featured music occasionally.

At Brown's Bar at 2800 Hastings, between Alfred and Brewster, renowned blues pianist "Big Maceo" Merriweather held forth. While playing Brown's, Maceo made trips to Chicago to record for the Bluebird label, including his 1941 race record hit "Worried Life Blues." 

The street's largest black-operated establishment, the Forest Club (700 E. Forest at Hastings), while under Sunnie Wilson's lease (1941-1951), brought in head-spinningly great national jazz and blues acts, from Charlie Parker and Woody Herman to Louis Jordan and Gatemouth Brown. These acts performed in the Forest Club's roller skating rink that doubled as a concert space. 

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