Campus Martius Park in downtown Detroit is defending its title as the nation’s Best Public Square in USA Today’s 10Best Readers’ Choice Awards.
Anyone can vote for the Detroit landmark once each day by visiting here until noon on April 8.
Recipient of other honors for public space design, management, operations, placemaking, and programming, Campus Martius Park will be a central site of the 2024 NFL Draft from April 25-27, when hundreds of thousands of football fans are expected to descend on the park as well as neighboring blocks, Woodward Avenue, and Hart Plaza.
During the winter months, the area hosts The Rink at Campus Martius Park presented by Visit Detroit from November to March. The world’s best Olympic and U.S. champion athletes perform and skate at the Rink annually, including gold-medalists Meryl Davis and Charlie White and U.S. champions Mirai Nagasu, Ashley Wagner, Jeremy Abbott, Karen Chen, and many others.
It also is the site of the city’s official Christmas tree, which is placed above the park’s main fountain, the award-winning Parc Restaurant, the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Monument, which is set on a fountain pedestal, along with other sculptures, water features, and landscaping.
During the summer months, 400,000 pounds of sand and lounge chairs are brought in to create a beach atmosphere where guests can build sand castles with the family or attend the Friday Night Beach Parties with live entertainment.
The park was created in 2003 at the Point of Origin, which was set in 1806 following a massive fire that consumed Fort Detroit on June 11, 1805 (where today sits the 150 W. Jefferson Building at Shelby Street). Most residents in Detroit lived inside the fort, which had been built in 1701 by the city’s founder, Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac and a regiment of 100 men. Over the years, the fort had been rebuilt.
Following the fire, it took Judge Augustus B. Woodward more than a year to design a new street system, much of which is intact today. It was at what is now Campus Martius Park, by an Act of Congress, that the town would be measured from an equilateral triangle, each side measuring 4,000 feet.
The basis for the starting point of the Point of Origin was 84 feet, 10 ¼ inches from the northwest corner of the home of Charles Curry.
