Hart Plaza

Hart Plaza is a primary gathering place for Detroiters, and frequently serves as a venue for summer festivals, concerts and events. The plaza is located appoximately at the site where Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac landed in 1701 and founded the settlement that eventually became the City of Detroit.

The plaza is named after the late US Senator Philip A. Hart and was opened in 1975. Senator Hart was known as the "Conscience of the Senate" and helped shape much of the civil rights legislation that came out of Congress in the 1960s. One of the three Senate Office Buildings in Washington DC is also named after Senator Hart.

As you face the river from the plaza you are looking south toward Canada. The Detroit area is the only place in the U.S. where Canada lies to our south.

Push deeper into Hart Plaza to see Transcending (a monument to the labor industry), the Dodge Fountain (a monument to auto industry executives) and a monument to the underground railroad.