Boblo Island Amusement Park
— — the summer Detroit went down the river to.
Not only on a wall.
“For nearly a century, Boblo was the day-trip that pulled Detroit and Windsor down the river. The park opened on Bois Blanc Island in 1898 and ran until 1993, reached by the great white steamers Ste. Claire and Columbia from the foot of Woodward Avenue. The dance hall held five thousand. Henry Ford's son Edsel sat on the board. The carousel turned, the screams from the Wild Mouse carried across to the Ontario shore, and the boats came back loud at dusk. The island is residential now. The boats are slowly being restored. from the studio
Boblo Island Amusement Park, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Boblo Island Amusement Park sat on Bois Blanc Island in the Detroit River, off the Ontario town of Amherstburg, near where the river opens into Lake Erie. The island is about 4 kilometres long. The park opened in 1898 as a Detroit-area picnic ground developed by the Detroit, Belle Isle and Windsor Ferry Company, and grew into a full amusement park with a carousel, a Wild Mouse coaster, a Sky Streak, the Falling Star and the largest dance pavilion in North America for much of the early twentieth century. The park closed at the end of the 1993 season.
For Detroit and Windsor, the season ran from May to Labor Day, and the day began at the dock. The steamers SS Columbia (built 1902) and SS Ste. Claire (built 1910), both designed by Frank E. Kirby, ran the eighteen-mile river trip from downtown Detroit to the island and back. At peak they carried about 2,500 passengers each. The dance hall, designed by Albert Kahn, was the largest in North America when it opened in 1913, holding around 5,000 dancers. Both vessels are National Historic Landmarks and are under active restoration.
The amusement park itself no longer exists. Bois Blanc Island has been redeveloped as a residential community since the late 1990s, with private homes and a marina along the channel. A small number of original park structures survive, including the Henry Ford-funded carousel pavilion and the old dance hall. The island is accessible by passenger ferry from Amherstburg, Ontario, on the Canadian side of the Detroit River, about 30 kilometres south of Windsor. The carousel itself was sold off in 1993 and now operates at a separate venue.