Hart Plaza

We found Hart Plaza in Detroit by accident. It was the Fourth of July, we were walking downtown with no particular plan, and we wanted to see Canada from across the water. We looked up and we were standing in the middle of it — a wide sweep of concrete at the foot of Woodward, the river right there, Windsor sitting close enough to feel like a neighbor rather than another country.

That’s the thing about this place. You don’t have to plan for it. It’s free, it’s open, and it’s the point where downtown finally runs out of buildings and hands you the river.

What you’re actually looking at

The centerpiece is Isamu Noguchi’s Dodge Fountain — a stainless steel ring on two legs that looks like it landed here rather than got built here. Noguchi designed the plaza in the 1970s, and it still reads as a piece of the future somebody imagined a long time ago. Nearby is the Monument to Joe Louis, the fist, which is the photo everyone takes and takes for good reason.

Why it’s on every Detroit calendar

Hart Plaza is where the city throws its parties. Movement, the electronic music festival, takes it over every Memorial Day weekend — it started here in 2000 as the DEMF, bringing the genre Detroit invented back to Detroit. The Detroit Jazz Festival lands over Labor Day weekend. Summer fills in with ethnic heritage festivals, and the riverfront draws crowds for the fireworks.

But the ordinary days are underrated. On a Tuesday in October you’ll have most of it to yourself.