Detroit Historical Museum

Most cities keep their history behind glass. Detroit built a street. The Streets of Old Detroit runs below the main floor of the Woodward Avenue building — cobblestones, storefronts, and the faintly unsettling figures that every Detroiter of a certain age remembers from a fourth-grade field trip. Elsewhere, America’s Motor City puts you in front of a Cadillac “body drop” taken from the Clark Street assembly plant when it closed in 1987, and the Glancy Trains layout still does what model trains do to adults who insist they don’t care about model trains.

The permanent collection is essentially the region’s memory — fur-trading post to Arsenal of Democracy to Motown — with rotating exhibitions that keep it from calcifying. The building opened in 1951 and turns 75 this year, which the Detroit Historical Society is marking alongside the city’s 325th.

It’s a genuinely good answer to a gray afternoon in the Cultural Center, and it pairs neatly with the main library across Woodward if you want to make a whole day of it. Adults are $15, under-6 is free, and residents of Detroit, Hamtramck and Highland Park can activate a Detroiter membership at no cost — which more people should know. High on our list.