The Detroit Century Box is a time capsule that was created in the U.S. city of Detroit, Michigan on December 31, 1900. Mayor William C. Maybury organized the capsule which consists of a copper box filled with photos and letters containing the then current state of affairs in Detroit along with predictions for the future. Mayor Dennis Archer presided over the opening of the capsule on December 31, 2000. [1] [2]
At midnight on January 1, 2000, Mayor Archer opened the copper "century box" before a ceremony of Detroiters and read a handwritten letter that Mayor Maybury wrote a century earlier. "How much faster are you traveling? How much farther have you annihilated time and space and what agencies are you employing to which we are strangers?". [3]
"May we be permitted to express one supreme hope - that whatever failures the coming century may have in the progress of things material, you may be conscious when the century is over that, as a nation, people and city, you have grown in righteousness, for it is this that exalts a nation."
Our buildings of today are equipped with fast running elevators, heating, lighting, power plants...
— John M. Donaldson, Rise of Architecture in Detroit [4]
In the diocese there 218 priests - 44 Regulars - 174 Seculars. 198 Churches and missions...
— John Samuel Foley, Letter to William C. Maybury [5]
We travel by railroad and with steam power from Detroit to Chicago in less than eight hours...
— William C. Maybury, Letter of William C. Maybury [6]
Of the 44 United States, 25 have limited suffrage, 4 have full suffrage, limited suffrage is granted in many foreign countries and full suffrage in New Zealand, South and West Australia, and in Isle of Man.
— Sara M. Philleo Skinner, Woman's Suffrage - Retrospect and Prophecy [7]
In AD 2000, I think it not improbable that Detroit will enjoy a population of fully four millions.
— James E. Scripps, Letter to William C. Maybury [8]
I predict further that Sandwich, Windsor and Walkerville now in Canada will be a part of the City of Detroit and that Ontario will be a state of the United States of America.
— Orrin R. Baldwin, Letter to William C. Maybury [9]
That prisoners instead of being conveyed to the several police stations in Automobile patrol wagons will be sent through pneumatic tubes, flying machines, or some similar process.
— Commissioners of the Metropolitan Police Commission, Letter to William C. Maybury [10]
