Thursday, December 10, 2009

Flint Postcards: Burroughs Park





6 comments:

  1. Amazing photo. Any idea when this was taken? Last time I was in Flint the city couldn't afford to cut the grass in Burrough's Park let alone plant and maintain flowers.

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  2. An old friend of mine Jim Berger was married in that park in 1974.

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  3. The formal gardens were gone by the mid-seventies, at least, if not long before that. They continued to show up on aerials, though, for many years thereafter until the ravages of neglect completely obliterated them. One of my UofM-F geography instructors offered extra credit to his students if they could resolve the photographic mystery as to the strange circles and vegetation changes as viewed from above. My fellow students, teenagers, of course, had no clue, but being older and married at the time, I got the answer from an even older dude and a co-worker -- George Liljeblad -- as to the history of the park and the gardens.

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  4. Used to collect leaves with my aunt in Burroughs Park when I was a kid in the early 70s, and then later played tennis there in the mid 80s with Brooke Decker.

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  5. Spent some lunchtime there when I worked at Whittier and Central. Quiet and beautiful. Looks like it did in the sixties.

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  6. HOLY COW! I used to walk my dog in Burroughs Park. I had no idea this is what it once looked like. Wow. Tears.

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Thanks for commenting. I moderate comments, so it may take a while for your comment to appear. You might enjoy my book about Flint called "Teardown: Memoir of a Vanishing City," a Michigan Notable Book for 2014 and a finalist for the 33rd Annual Northern California Book Award for Creative NonFiction. Filmmaker Michael Moore described Teardown as "a brilliant chronicle of the Mad Maxization of a once-great American city." More information about Teardown is available at www.teardownbook.com.