Detroit's ballpark came with a Ferris wheel, a tiger carousel and the skyline for a backdrop. Comerica Park at 2100 Woodward Avenue opened on 11 April 2000 - a 36-degree, snow-dusted afternoon on which the Tigers beat Seattle 5-2 - ending 88 seasons at the corner of Michigan and Trumbull, where Tiger Stadium had stood since 1912. The 300-million-dollar, HOK-designed park rose on the old Detroit College of Law site as the anchor of a downtown revitalisation plan that also produced Ford Field next.....

Patrons once fed live macaws in the lobby while banana trees grew beside a goldfish pond - the Fisher Theatre opened in November 1928 as one of the most extravagant rooms in America. It sits inside the Fisher Building at 3011 West Grand Boulevard, Albert Kahn's 30-storey Art Deco "Cathedral to Commerce" in Detroit's New Center, financed by the Fisher brothers with the proceeds of selling Fisher Body to General Motors. The theatre itself, by Chicago architects Graven and Mayger, was a 3,500-seat.....

An entire 1920s department-store warehouse forms one wall of the stadium - the Lions literally play football against a building where Hudson's once stored furniture. Ford Field, at 2000 Brush Street in downtown Detroit, opened in 2002 as the NFL franchise's return to the city after 27 years in the Pontiac Silverdome, a 500-million-dollar domed stadium that made adaptive reuse its signature. SmithGroup's design sank the field 45 feet below street level and folded the six-storey Hudson's warehous.....

A six-storey lobby lined with vermillion columns, glass jewels and a colossal chandelier - hidden for decades under grime until a 12-million-dollar restoration pulled back the curtain in 1988. The Fox Theatre at 2211 Woodward Avenue in downtown Detroit opened on 21 September 1928 as film mogul William Fox's flagship: at more than 5,000 seats, the largest theatre in the city and today the largest surviving movie palace of the 1920s anywhere. C. Howard Crane designed it in an "exotic" style all i.....

Detroit put both of its winter franchises under one roof and sank the bowl below street level to do it: the ice sits 40 feet down, and the gondola seating hangs from the rafters. Little Caesars Arena, at 2645 Woodward Avenue in the District Detroit, opened on 5 September 2017 as the 863-million-dollar home of the Red Wings and Pistons. The building ended two eras at once: the Red Wings left Joe Louis Arena after 38 years, and the Pistons returned to the city from the suburban Palace of Auburn H.....

They tore out eight bowling lanes, rolled in ten pool tables, and accidentally built the room where Detroit's garage rock revolution staged itself. The Magic Stick, on the second floor of the Majestic Theatre Center at 4120 Woodward Avenue in Midtown Detroit, opened in 1992 above America's oldest operating bowling alley. The complex is a family century: the Zainea family - in the building since buying the 1913 Garden Bowl - assembled a full city block of entertainment, buying the neighbouring 1.....

An anonymous donor paid the building's 142,000-dollar back-tax bill in 2013 and saved it from foreclosure - it turned out to be a rock star whose mother had ushered in these aisles. The Masonic Jack White Theatre, formerly the Cathedral Theatre, is the second stage of the Detroit Masonic Temple at 500 Temple Street - the largest Masonic building in the world. The building beggars belief: George D. Mason's Gothic Revival colossus - 14 storeys, 1,037 rooms, three theatres, two ballrooms, a chapel.....

It was the first legal casino ever opened in Detroit - built inside a converted IRS office in 1999 while the 800-million-dollar real thing rose a few blocks away. The MGM Grand Detroit, at 1777 Third Street downtown, opened its permanent resort on 3 October 2007, with the Event Center as its 1,200-seat entertainment engine. The history tracks Detroit's casino gamble: after the city legalised gaming, MGM's 235-million-dollar temporary casino of July 1999 became the first of the three Detroit hou.....

The club's theme is Jack and the Beanstalk - a comedy room in the middle of Hockeytown built on the idea that a little belief and a lot of hustle can grow something extraordinary. Mic Drop Comedy Detroit, inside the Hockeytown Cafe at 2301 Woodward Avenue, is the Motor City outpost of a boutique comedy-club family. The lineage runs through San Diego: partners Hillary Hutson and Casey Currier built the original Mic Drop Comedy in California - reviving a shuttered 30-year comedy institution there.....

On the historic Woodward Avenue corridor in downtown Detroit immediately south of the celebrated Grand Circus Park, the Museum of Illusions Detroit is the Michigan branch of the rapidly expanding international Museum of Illusions chain. The 6,000-square-foot Detroit venue opened in August 2023, joining the global Museum of Illusions chain that originated with the celebrated 2015 Zagreb (Croatia) original and has since expanded to more than 50 cities across North America, Europe, Asia, the Middle.....