Today, the Department of the Interior and the National Parks Service designated Lafayette Park as one of four new national historic landmarks. Lafayette Park's 78 acres, developed in the mid-1940s, represented an attempt to replace Black Bottom, which the city viewed as a slum. Now considered one of the most successfully realized urban renewal projects in the US, Lafayette Park was planned by one of the 20th century's master architects, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Lafayette Park includes many low-rise apartment buildings and townhomes, a small neighborhood center, and two Mies-designed high-rises in the international style (simple lines, lots of metal and tinted glass) which continue to house hundreds of Detroiters today.
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