The Formidable Sanctum
When I was 12 we moved from one side of Mack Avenue to the other. It seemed a simple move at the time, only two miles or so; I remained in the same school, kept the same friends. The move was in fact considerably more complicated than it appeared. We were, after all, leaving a pleasant, unpretentious block on Detroit’s east side for the formidable sanctum of Grosse Pointe Park.
According to information made public years later, my family became the unwary subject of a clever screening process that eventually became known as the “Pointe System.” When my father decided he wanted to buy that property in the Park, a call went out to a private detective employed by a group of Grosse Pointe realtors and property owners. Armed with a battery of standardized questions, the detective then set out to gauge our worth and merit as potential Pointers by interviewing, under false pretenses, a handful of our old Detroit neighbors. Some of the things he wanted to know included the following: whether we were American’ born, and if not, how long we had lived in the good old U.S.A.; whether our way of living was “typically American”; whether our complexions were very swarthy, moderately swarthy, slightly swarthy or not swarthy at all; whether we spoke with accents pronounced, medium, slight or not at all; how we dressed, whether neat, sloppy, flashy or conservative.
Now in scoring this survey, the Sanctum Dwellers assigned each answer a certain number of points; the maximum total was 100. For many people a score of 50 was acceptable, but for certain ethnic groups the scrutiny was a little tougher. If my father had been Polish, for instance, we would have had to score 55 points. If we had been Greek, it would have been 65, and since we were Italian, it was 75. Jewishness would have raised the required total to 85, and if we had happened to be black or Oriental, they wouldn’t even have bothered to send out the detective.
Apparently we somehow managed to pass with the necessary 75 points. But those who didn’t quite measure up were told that unfortunately the property they wanted to buy had just been sold to a higher bidder or for some other reason was no longer available. Just how we managed to pass has always mildly intrigued me, since all the males in my family are pretty damn swarthy.
When the whole business blew up in newspaper headlines in the spring of 1960, a spokesman for the realtors valiantly defended the system, which had been instituted in 1945, as “fair,” “careful” and “considerate.”
That Grosse Pointe realtors continue to be among the most inventive and resourceful of their fraternity was proven again only two years ago when one of their number proposed that residents of Grosse Pointe Park effectively barricade their streets offering access to Detroit by turning them into cul-de-sacs, thereby discouraging intrusion by residents of the central city. In terms of raising property values, he said, “the biggest drawback is Detroit. Anything in it has a stigma.”
For some reason the idea hasn’t caught on. But earlier this year a number of Park residents belonging to a group called Proud of the Park (POP) demonstrated that they’ve lost none of the spiritual fervor so evident in the marvelous old “Pointe System.” It turns out that the city has applied for 58,000 federal dollars for home repair and improvement in the suburb’s northwest corner, commonly known as the “Cabbage Patch,” where lower and middle-income families have struggled for years to maintain their property. When the POPS, all of whom live at the other, wealthier end of the Park, found out about the application, they announced that the homes of the Cabbage Patchers didn’t need any repairs or improvements. They also embarked on a petition drive to scuttle the plan. Why? Said one POP member: “ … the federal government may … force’ us to take subsidized low-income housing, and spread it throughout the city.”
That there’s no room In the Park now to build anything larger than a phone booth makes no difference to POP. Neither do official denials of any strings attached to that federal money.
The irony is that in spite of the long-ago demise of the “Pointe System,” the failure of the cul-de-sac plan and the more recent furor over federal aid, property values in the Park have been rising substantially. By some reports, prices have been going up just as fast in the Park as in some of the Pointes more distant from the city. How come? According to some observers, in this era of dwindling energy and downtown rebirth, precisely because of the Park’s proximity to dreaded Detroit.