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Ethnicity in Metro Detroit |
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As of 1999 120,000 people in Metro Detroit indicated they are of Greek descent. [1] Stavros K. Frangos, author of Greeks in Michigan, stated "From the 1890s to the present all available sources agree that" about one third of Michigan's Greek Americans live in Metro Detroit. [2]
At the turn of the 20th Century the first Greek immigrants arrived. [1] The first year of entry was 1886. [2] Theodore Gerasimos was the first documented Greek immigrant. [3] Detroit's Greeks began working in automobile factories and railroads, and some others became merchants; many merchants lived above or near their stores. Very few Greeks became farmers in the United States, even though many had backgrounds in agriculture. The first Greek settlement in Detroit was between St. Antoine and Beaubien on Monroe Street. The Greeks later moved to Macomb Street. [4] In the beginning of the year 1900 the city's first Greek coffeeshop opened on 40 Macomb Street. [5]
There were 250 Greeks in Detroit in 1909. [2] In 1912 persecution of Greeks began, prompting immigration from Greece. [1] The period 1911 to 1917 was the peak immigration period from Greece. In 1914 there were up to 8,000 Greeks in the city. [2] In 1914 a wave of immigration from Greece came because Henry Ford offered his $5 per day jobs. [1] The Greek population rose to 10,000 to 15,000 by 1930. [2]
The Peloponnese was the source of most Greek immigration to Detroit. Frangos wrote that "While no other reliable statistics are available, certainly Greeks from the three islands of Chios, Crete, and Cyprus have always made up a sizeable element of the community." [2] The National Centre of Social Research in Athens, by 1972, estimated that the State of Michigan had ethnic 100,000 Greeks. [2] In 1999 The Detroit News stated that the Greeks were "well-assimilated." [1] By 2012 Detroit's Greeks moved to suburban communities. Suburbs with Greek Americans include Lincoln Park and St. Clair Shores. [6]
Historically many Greek immigrants operated Coney islands, or restaurants serving Detroit Coney dogs. [7] In the 1960s and early 1970s Greek immigrants established the Coney chains Kerby's Coney Island, Leo's Coney Island, and National Coney Island. All three chains sell some Greek food items with Coney dogs. A previous Greek-established restaurant, Onassis Coney Island, closed. [8]
The Greek ethnic enclave of Greektown is still active. [1] Because of the Greek immigration, within Michigan the most academic studies on Greek people are conducted in Detroit. [2]
As of 1951 the Greek newspapers published in Metro Detroit included Detroit Athens (Athenai), Greek Tribune , and Michigan AHEPAN . In addition the Californian , a newspaper published in California, and the Chicago-based Greek Star , Greek Press of Chicago , and the National Herald and Atlantis were other Greek newspapers distributed in Metro Detroit. [9]
A.H.E.P.A. rented middle school classrooms and church rooms to conduct Greek language classes. [9]
Metro Detroit is a major metropolitan area in the U.S. state of Michigan, consisting of the city of Detroit and over 200 municipalities in the surrounding area with its largest employer being Oakland County. There are varied definitions of the area, including the official statistical areas designated by the Office of Management and Budget, a federal agency of the United States.
A Coney Island is a type of restaurant that is popular in the northern United States, particularly in Michigan, named after the Coney Island hot dog.
Greektown is a commercial and entertainment district in Detroit, Michigan, located just northeast of the heart of downtown, along Monroe Avenue between Brush and St. Antoine streets. It has a station by that name on the city's elevated downtown transit system known as the Detroit People Mover. Greektown is situated between the Renaissance Center, Comerica Park, and Ford Field.
A Coney Island hot dog, Coney dog, or Coney is a hot dog in a bun topped with a savory meat sauce and sometimes other toppings. It is often offered as part of a menu of classic American diner dishes and often at Coney Island restaurants. It is largely a phenomenon related to immigration from Greece and the region of Macedonia to the United States in the early 20th century.
Tourism in metropolitan Detroit, Michigan is a significant factor for the region's culture and for its economy, comprising nine percent of the area's two million jobs. About 19 million people visit Metro Detroit spending an estimated 6 billion in 2019. In 2009, this number was about 15.9 million people, spending an estimated $4.8 billion. Detroit is one of the largest American cities and metropolitan regions to offer casino resort hotels. Leading multi-day events throughout Metro Detroit draw crowds of hundreds of thousands to over three million people. More than fifteen million people cross the highly traveled nexus of the Ambassador Bridge and the Detroit-Windsor Tunnel annually. Detroit is at the center of an emerging Great Lakes Megalopolis. An estimated 46 million people live within a 300-mile (480 km) radius of Metro Detroit.
St. Mary Roman Catholic Church, formally the Church of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary, is in the third oldest Roman Catholic parish in Detroit, Michigan. Designed by German-born Peter Dederichs and built for the formerly ethnic German parish of the 19th century, it is located at 646 Monroe Street in what is now considered the heart of the Greektown Historic District in downtown Detroit. It is often called "Old St. Mary's Church" to avoid confusion with other St. Mary's parishes: in the Redford neighborhood of Detroit, or in nearby Royal Oak, Monroe, or Wayne.
Greek-American cuisine is the cuisine of Greek Americans and their descendants, who have modified Greek cuisine under the influence of American culture and immigration patterns of Greeks to the United States. As immigrants from various Greek areas settled in different regions of the United States and became "Greek Americans," they carried with them different traditions of foods and recipes that were particularly identified with their regional origins in Greece and yet infused with the characteristics of their new home locale in America. Many of these foods and recipes developed into new favorites for town peoples and then later for Americans nationwide. Greek-American cuisine is especially prominent in areas of concentrated Greek communities, such as Astoria, Queens and Tarpon Springs, Florida.
National Coney Island is a Coney Island-style restaurant based in Michigan that specializes in Greek-American cuisine. It is a corporation that has more than 20 National Coney Island locations in the Metro Detroit area.
As of the census of 2010, there were 5,196,250 people, 1,682,111 households, and 1,110,454 families residing within the Detroit–Warren–Ann Arbor Combined Statistical Area. Within the Detroit–Warren–Dearborn Metropolitan Statistical Area, there were 4,296,250 people residing. The census reported 70.1% White, 22.8% African-American, 0.3% Native American, 3.3% Asian, 0.02% Pacific Islander, 1.2% from other races, and 2.2% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 6.2% of the population. Arab Americans were at least 4.7% of the region's population.
The Detroit metropolitan area has one of the largest concentrations of people of Middle Eastern origin, including Arabs and Chaldo-Assyrians in the United States. As of 2007 about 300,000 people in Southeast Michigan traced their descent from the Middle East. Dearborn's sizeable Arab community consists largely of Lebanese people who immigrated for jobs in the auto industry in the 1920s, and of more recent Yemenis and Iraqis. In 2010 the four Metro Detroit counties had at least 200,000 people of Middle Eastern origin. Bobby Ghosh of TIME said that some estimates gave much larger numbers. From 1990 to 2000 the percentage of people speaking Arabic in the home increased by 106% in Wayne County, 99.5% in Macomb County, and 41% in Oakland County.
In 2002, there were 6,413 people of Japanese origin, including Japanese citizens and Japanese Americans, in the Wayne-Oakland-Macomb tri-county area in Metro Detroit, making them the fifth-largest Asian ethnic group there. In that year, within an area stretching from Sterling Heights to Canton Township in the shape of a crescent, most of the ethnic Japanese lived in the center. In 2002, the largest populations of ethnic Japanese people were located in Novi and West Bloomfield Township. In April 2013, the largest Japanese national population in the State of Michigan was in Novi, with 2,666 Japanese residents. West Bloomfield had the third-largest Japanese population and Farmington Hills had the fourth largest Japanese population.
Ethnic Chinese and Chinese American people comprise one of the major Asian-origin ethnic groups in the Wayne–Macomb–Oakland tri-county area in Metro Detroit. Troy, Rochester Hills, Madison Heights and Canton Township are hubs of Chinese residents in the metropolitan area.
The Hungarian people and Hungarian Americans immigrated to Metro Detroit in the 20th century. Historically they populated Delray in Detroit but moved to the Downriver area in the 1960s. There were four historic waves of Hungarian immigration to Detroit.
In 2023, Polish Americans are most heavily concentrated in the Upper Midwest and Northeast regions of the United States. As the second most Polish populated state, Michigan follows closely behind Wisconsin with 784,200 people identifying as Polish, or 7.82% of the state's population, identifying as Polish. Many of these Polish Americans live in the Metro Detroit area of Michigan.
The National Italian American Foundation estimated that in 1990, Metro Detroit had 280,000 ethnic Italians.
A 2013 report by the Global Detroit and Data Driven Detroit stated that of the immigrant ethnic groups to Metro Detroit, the largest segment is the Indian population. As of 2012, the Indian populations of Farmington Hills and Troy are among the twenty largest Indian communities in the United States. As of the 2000 U.S. Census there were 39,527 people with origins from post-partition India in Metro Detroit, making them the largest Asian ethnic group in the Wayne County-Macomb County-Oakland County tri-county area. People of those origins are found throughout Metro Detroit, with the majority being in Oakland County. Across the border, there is an equally large and growing Indian Canadian community in Windsor, Ontario, Canada.
In 2004 58.5% of the people of Hispanic origin in the Wayne County-Macomb County-Oakland County tri-county area were Mexicans.
Metro Detroit has the following ethnic groups:
The organization Global Detroit stated that the largest group of ethnic Albanians not in Europe is in Metro Detroit. As of 2014, 4,800 ethnic Albanians live in Macomb County, making up the fourth-largest ethnic group in that county, and the highest concentration of Albanians in Metro Detroit. There are also several thousand in Wayne County, with most living outside Detroit city limits; Hamtramck and St. Clair Shores are plentiful in Albanian American and Kosovar-Albanian American communities. There are at least ethnically 30,200 Albanian people in Michigan, consistuting 0.3% of Michigan's population.