Two glass-and-marble landmarks born the same day in 1904: America's oldest public aquarium, its sea-green gallery saved by volunteers, and a soaring conservatory dome with orchids gifted from wartime Britain — plus free gardens by the High Line's designer.
Pull in and park here, because this little corner is worth your feet. Two of the oldest buildings on the island sit barely thirty paces apart, both opened on the very same day in nineteen-oh-four. The low green-roofed jewel first: that's the Belle Isle Aquarium, and the Detroit Historical Society calls it the oldest public aquarium in the continental United States, founded back when this island was Detroit showing off at the top of its game. It was drawn up by Albert Kahn — the architect who'd go on to design the auto factories that built the modern world — working with George Mason. Step inside on a Thursday through Sunday, free, and you'll find a single barrel-vaulted gallery glowing sea-green, lined floor to ceiling in opalite glass tile — not Pewabic, whatever you may hear — with a carved Neptune watching over the door and the fish lit up like living art. Here's the part that aches a little: the city closed this place in two-thousand-five to save money, and it sat dark for seven years, until a volunteer army called the Belle Isle Conservancy brought it back to life in twenty-twelve. The oldest aquarium in America, saved by the people who refused to lose it — hold onto that one; we come back to it before the bridge. Now turn to the crystal dome right beside it: the Anna Scripps Whitcomb Conservatory, opened that same day in nineteen-oh-four by the same two architects, an eighty-odd-foot glass dome on the old English palm-house model — often called one of the oldest still running in the country. And its name is a gift: in nineteen fifty-five, Anna Scripps Whitcomb, heiress to the Detroit News fortune, handed the city some six hundred orchids, many of them reportedly sheltered out of wartime Britain during the Second World War — and the city renamed the dome in her honor. Outside, free any day you like, wander the lily-and-koi pond and the perennial garden laid out by Piet Oudolf, the man who designed New York's High Line. A century ago this whole campus — the fountain, the aquarium, the glass dome, the clubs out on the water — was auto-baron Detroit at the very top of its game, dressed up and showing off. Stroll the gardens, then back to the car — ahead the loop swings down to the south shore, where Canada waits a mile off across the water.
