The Metro: Highland Park’s library has been dark for years. Residents haven’t given up

Detroit surrounds it, but Highland Park is its own city, with a rich history many have forgotten. It is the birthplace of the moving assembly line, where Henry Ford mass-produced the Model T, and where Chrysler was founded in 1925.

At its peak in 1930, nearly 53,000 people called this 2.97 square mile town home, and it was known as the City of Trees.

Then the auto industry left. Ford sold its historic plant in 1981, and when Chrysler moved its headquarters to Auburn Hills in the early 1990s, the city lost roughly a quarter of its tax base and half its budget — a setback it never recovered from.

For nearly a decade, the state controlled the city’s finances. The schools followed in 2012, handed to a private charter operator.

The McGregor Public Library — a 1926 Beaux Arts landmark — shut its doors in 2002 and never reopened. And in 2011, DTE Energy pulled down roughly 1,400 streetlights because the city couldn’t pay the bill.

Today, fewer than 9,000 residents remain, and WDET journalists have been spending time here, listening to some of those who stayed. What do they hope for the future of their small and storied city?

It is part of the ongoing series Crossing the Lines. WDET News Director Jerome Vaughn is leading the reporting. He joined Robyn Vincent on The Metro to discuss what his team has uncovered.