The way Detroit’s struggling preservationists fight their annual battles with the wrecking ball, you’d think the battle to save Detroit’s architectural legacy was always between lovers of history and art and the industrial-demolition complex. But it wasn’t always so. A century ago, the main enemy of architectural continuity wasn’t progress, it was fire.
A case in point would be the lovely Detroit Opera House, which burned in a spectacular fire 117 years ago today that spread through the city block, causing considerable damage.
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