Law / City history / Architecture & design
Augustus B. Woodward
1774–1827 · first chief justice of Michigan Territory, city planner
First chief justice of Michigan Territory who drew up Detroit's radial street plan after the fire of 1805; Woodward Avenue bears his name.
- Born
New York City, New York- Died
Tallahassee, Florida- Birth name
- Elias Brevoort Woodward
- Detroit years
- 1805–1824
- Field
- Law, City history, Architecture & design
01 / The Detroit story
The Detroit story
Augustus Brevoort Woodward, a New York-born lawyer, was appointed by Thomas Jefferson the first chief justice of the new Michigan Territory in 1805. He reached Detroit on June 30, weeks after a fire had burned the town to the ground, and set to planning its rebirth. Inspired by Pierre L'Enfant's design for Washington, he laid out a pattern of hexagons with grand avenues radiating from circular plazas. Officials soon abandoned most of it, but Campus Martius, Grand Circus Park and the diagonal avenues downtown survive from his vision, and the main north–south road took his name. As a judge he wrote much of the territory's early law code, and in 1807 he ruled in the Denison case that enslaved people could not be freed by the court but that the territory need not return refugees who had fled to freedom in Canada. He stayed through the British occupation of 1812–1813, drafted the 1817 act creating the Catholepistemiad (the future University of Michigan) and left in 1824 for a judgeship in Florida.
Highlights
- First chief justice of Michigan Territory, 1805–1824
- Designed Detroit's radial street plan after the fire of 1805
- Woodward Avenue, Detroit's main street, is named after him
- Drafted the 1817 act founding the forerunner of the University of Michigan
02 / Their Detroit places
Their Detroit places 2
Where they lived, worked, performed and liked to hang out. Closed and demolished places stay here too, because they are part of the city's history.
Memorial
Woodward Avenue
Detroit's main street, running from the riverfront to Pontiac, named after him; a designated All-American Road.
Related place · 1807–
Grand Circus Park
Half-circle downtown park at Woodward and Adams, one of the surviving pieces of his 1807 radial plan.