Mariners' Church / U.S. Topographical Engineers

Mariners' Church was organized in 1842 according to the will of Julia Ann Anderson to serve the spiritual needs of Great Lakes seamen. Anderson had come to Detroit in 1818 with her husband, John, a brevet lieutenant colonel with the U.S. Topographical Engineers. Designed by Calvin Otis of Buffalo, New York, the Gothic Revival church was built in 1849 on the northwest corner of Woodward Avenue and Woodbridge Street. In 1955 it was moved to make room for Civic Center Plaza, hauled 880 feet along steel rails to this site, and the 3,000-ton limestone structure blocked Woodward Avenue traffic for 21 days. The church was immortalized in the 1975 ballad “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” as the “cathedral” where “the church bell chimed 'til it rang 29 times,” and it is in the National Register of Historic Places. When Michigan became a state in 1837, the Detroit office of the U.S. Topographical Engineers was headquartered on this site. First appointed in 1813, the engineers surveyed land, canals, railroads, and harbors, platted military positions relative to roads, villages, rivers, and ravines, constructed lighthouses, and played a vital role in Great Lakes navigation before the Civil War. During the 1820s and 1830s engineers from the Detroit office built roads to Toledo, Saginaw, and Chicago, opening Michigan’s interior to new settlement and helping increase the state’s population from 8,000 in 1820 to 200,000 in 1840.

Detroit, Michigan · United States