Determined that the river would be spanned, he approached C. Among Fowler’s most-ardent supporters was John W. Scott organized an investment scheme for Fowler’s project that not only failed to get the bridge financed, but devoured $2 million of Scott’s own money. Its 110-foot center height would give only marginal clearance for shipping.

Public guarantees for the financing would be needed. The rail approaches for the $28 million structure would begin a mile inland. He organized two companies in the early 1920s – the Canadian Transit Company and the American Transit Company – and had gained the support of both Parliament and Congress for his franchise. Shortly after World War I, a prominent New York civil engineer, Charles Evan Fowler, came forward with a proposal to build a bridge that would accommodate cars, trains, street cars and pedestrians. Detroit’s Penobscot Building, the General Motors Building, the Fisher Building, the Detroit Public Library, the Henry Ford Museum and Greenfield Village, Masonic Auditorium, the Buhl Building and Police Headquarters on Beaubien were only part of the construction that was reshaping Detroit’s skyline. A clumsy attempt to overthrow the German government, the Beer Hall Putsch, was dismissed as the political escapade of an eccentric malcontent, Adolph Hitler. The Teapot Dome oil scandal and the re-emergence of the Ku Klux Klan were forced to compete with the popularity of Babe Ruth and Winnie-the-Pooh.

The world’s first commercial radio station, Detroit’s 8MK (now WWJ), went on the air, and a patent was sought for an electronic television transmitter.Ī gay, glorious era for flappers, marathon dances and singing, “Yes, We Have No Bananas”.

Knute Rockne’s “Four Horsemen” dominated college gridirons, and the National Football League was formed.

Eliot and Sinclair Lewis reshaped our literature Scott Fitzgerald, Eugene O’Neill, James Joyce, T.

Jack Benny and Eddie Cantor commanded vaudeville, and F.

Now, more Americans lived in cities than on farms (after all, they had seen Paree’).

Two army pilots flew across America non-stop in less than 27 hours.

The “War to end all wars” was won, and the powers of politics, science and industry to erase man-kind’s other ills were in evidence: The 1920s inspired those with courage or hard cash (or connections to it) to forge a world that only superlatives could describe.

7 days to die drawbridge dimensions