The cemetery that was swallowed by a GM plant

November 27, 2018 12:48 PM

General Motors recently announced a series of plant closures in the US and Canada, which include its Detroit-Hamtramck Assembly Plant. When that plant was built in 1981, it displaced Detroit's Poletown neighbourhood. Left intact was the Beth Olem Jewish cemetery, which now sits on the grounds of the Detroit-Hamtramck facility: A peek inside Beth Olem, the cemetery that was swallowed by a GM plant.
posted by mandolin conspiracy (7 comments total)

I really feel for Jacob Litman. Looks like he planned to share that site with someone...
posted by Halloween Jack at 1:27 PM on November 27, 2018 [4 favorites]

This reminds me of the neighborhood around my job. I work a few miles away from the Palisades Center, one of the largest shopping malls in America, and it was built around (and I do mean around) Mount Moor Cemetery, a registered historic place where African-Americans war veterans from the 1840s through the Korean War are buried.
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 2:56 PM on November 27, 2018 [1 favorite]

Flint is like empty lots blocks long with red lights in between. Weedy cracked concrete awesome for a zombie set. But GM is building a huge parts plant aw, the construction is impressive. At dark, lights narrow in a row into a skeletal frame that grows closer, dozers, cement.
Jobs for a near outmoded form of transportation.
posted by clavdivs at 3:49 PM on November 27, 2018 [1 favorite]

Detroit remains one of the best places in the world for coking coal and iron ore to come together. SOmething will emerge there.
posted by ocschwar at 6:43 PM on November 27, 2018

... read the title, expected a story about alarmingly invasive genetically modified vegetation...

(... am on balance quite relieved that Detroit does not have a triffid problem.)
posted by ManyLeggedCreature at 1:58 AM on November 28, 2018 [2 favorites]

Thanks for posting this. My maternal grandma was Polish and her family lived in Poletown for a time after they immigrated to Detroit. I was young but vividly remember the battle over Poletown. Now I practice in historic preservation in the city and wonder if we will ever learn our lesson. Black Bottom/Paradise Valley, Poletown...and most recently the historic buildings that "had" to be demolished to make way for a new hockey arena to replace one that was less than 40 years old.
posted by Preserver at 8:49 AM on November 28, 2018 [2 favorites]

I really feel for Jacob Litman. Looks like he planned to share that site with someone...

Jacob's wife Fanny died after the cemetery was closed for burials (also she had moved to Minnesota).

(I hope she was compensated for half of that headstone and burial plot she never got to use.)
posted by elsietheeel at 10:38 AM on November 28, 2018