Furs, cars, and big circles

Home again, at the expense of two dead computers I have blocked out the San Pedro section pretty well. I don't assume I am done with it, but I can start to look to other parts of the chapter. What do I know about Tammany anyway? Time to learn.

As a relief to those of you waiting patiently for more I offer: Detroit.
Yeah.
In 1901 Detroit was a growing city of diverse manufacturers and a rail hub into Canada that had nothing but bright prospects ahead. Like most American cities of its size, Detroit was a magnet for immigrants and country lads looking for a future and a fortune. Oliver Zunz is the go to person for Detroit in this era, his Changing Face of Inequality is a model of social science research.  But as I am arguing here, there is another angle to the story of urban housing than segregation and slums and since it is Detroit (the ultimate corporate city) it is fitting that the origins are in America's first great corporation.

 The American Fur Company was born from a chance encounter of John Jacob Astor with a fur trader on board the ship bringing him to America from Germany in 1783. Astor left the ship determined to invest in the trade and within twenty years had already amassed a quarter of a million dollars and incredible influence over the beaver pelt trade. The lack of organized American trading companies west of the Alleghenies and particularly in the Louisiana Purchase provided the opportunity for Astor to gain even more control, and he invested heavily in land and posts throughout the Northwest Territories. In 1808 Detroit was a central hub of the business, a situation that was cemented in place when Astor incorporated the American Fur Company that year in Michigan and based his operations there. Detroit prospered under the three decades of Astor's fur monopoly, growing from a frontier town of about 1,000 residents to a city of 10,000.

J.J. Astor (1763-1848)

Forbes estimates that (adjusted for inflation) Astor's estimated $20 million worth at his death makes him the richest American who ever lived, but most of that was Manhattan real estate and none of it furs. Six years before his death came the bankruptcy of the American Fur Company, which had been losing increasingly large amounts of money as silk replaced beaver as the fashionable hat material. As part of the dissolution of the company the courts handed control of the properties to Mr. George Ehninger, the company secretary and Astor's nephew, for sale and disposal. Detroit took decades to regain its economic footing.
And so in 1842 the company that built Detroit and made America's greatest fortune ended operation. Except it didn't.

Detroit 1897

Return to 1901 when Detroit is booming once again with a population of ~290,000 persons and the American Fur Company is again an active business for a few short hours. I imagine that some speculator walking the margins of the city accidentally resurrected the company when he asked a few shanty dwellers what it would take for them to sell out and discovered that they had no title. Or perhaps our would-be developer looked into the tax records of a property he had an eye on and discovered that the lands were fifty-nine years in arrears.
There being no living heirs to Mr. Ehninger there was no competent agent to sign over the deeds to the properties or pay the back taxes. So for the time that it took for the state court to appoint an agent to the time that agent signed away the last of the company property the American Fur Company lived again and the squatters lost their homes.
You will notice what became the usual pattern as the twentieth century advanced; the squatters lost despite having more than enough tenure to claim adverse possession.

Now advance another century and some to 2010. The corporations that built the city and created some of the greatest fortunes in America have gone bankrupt. Detroit has lost its economic footing and there are thousands of unsalable vacant properties throughout the city. Result: Squatters.