By the 1960s, Greektown’s commercial district was reduced to a block. But some stayed, living in the lofts and apartments. Over the decades, many Greeks moved from the Greektown neighborhood to various locations across Metro Detroit. In 1903, the Greektown Merchants Association was created, according to, the official website of merchants. Antoine neighborhood in the late 1800s and started opening restaurants and bakeries. Greeks began migrating to the Monroe-Beaubien and St. He adds: “Monroe will always be Greektown forever. “It’s been put on the side and forgotten now and then.” “It’s not been lost,” Yanni Dionisopoulos, vice president of the society, and owner of the Golden Fleece restaurant, says of the of ethnic identity. In September, the society plans a “Taste of Greektown,” which will involve shutting down the street for the weekend for food, drink and belly dancers. It eventually got so big it moved to Hart Plaza. In the mid-1960s, a Greek Festival on Monroe became very popular. The Greektown Preservation Society, comprised of businesses on Monroe Street, recognizes the challenges (emphasis on “preservation”), and is trying to organize more Greek events, some of which vanished over the years. It's at a crossroads.Ĭan Greektown keep its Greekness? Can it live up its namesake? Or will it simply be Greektown in name only, much like the Meatpacking District in Manhattan, which is far better known for its restaurants and clubs than its dwindling number of meat-packing houses. But unquestionably, like an assimilated second-generation immigrant, it has clearly lost some of its ethnic identity.

Not all agree that Greektown, as we know it, is dead. You cannot call” a few restaurants a Greektown. “It’s no longer Greektown,” says Nafez Jadallah, owner of the Greektown Grocery store and former owner of the Laikon, a first-rate Greek restaurant that closed this year after the casino bought the building from his landlord for additional parking. Gone too are the coffee shops - except for one hidden above a bar - and the Greek grocery stores that carried foreign-language papers and the crunchy-crusted Greek breads. The Greek residents have vanished, having died or migrated to the suburbs. Today, there’s Five Guys, a hamburger chain out of Virginia Red Smoke Barbeque Cold Stone Creamery, a chain with outlets in 19 countries a steakhouse sports bars a sprawling casino and only three – yes, three - full-fledged Greek restaurants.

It was almost as if you needed a passport at one time to come to Greektown in Detroit, the block teeming with Greek restaurants and Greek everything: coffee shops with card players and grocery stores with fresh feta, olives and lamb and Greek-speaking men on the sidewalk, cigarettes dangling from their mouths.

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