The 1920s inspired those with courage or hard cash (or connections to it) to forge a world that only superlatives could describe. The "War to end all wars" was won, and the powers of politics, science and industry to erase mankind's other ills were in evidence:

• Women had the vote
• "devil rum" was shackled
• two army pilots flew across America non-stop in less than 27 hours
• now, more Americans lived in cities than on farms (after all, they had seen Paree' )
• Jack Benny and Eddie Cantor commanded vaudeville, and F. Scott Fitzgerald, Eugene O'Neill, James Joyce, T. S. Eliot and Sinclair Lewis reshaped our literature
• Knute Rockne's "Four Horsemen" dominated college gridirons, and the National Football League was formed
• the world's first commercial radio station, Detroit's 8MK (now WWJ), went on the air, and a patent was sought for an electronic television transmitter.

A gay, glorious era for flappers, marathon dances and singing, "Yes, We Have No Bananas". The Teapot Dome oil scandal and the re-emergence of the Ku Klux Klan were forced to compete with the popularity of Babe Ruth and Winnie-the-Pooh. A clumsy attempt to overthrow the German government, the Beer Hall Putsch, was dismissed as the political escapade of an eccentric malcontent, Adolph Hitler.

This was also a time for building. Detroit's Penobscot Building, the General Motors Building, the Fisher Building, the Detroit Public Library, the Henry Ford Museum and Greenfield Village, Masonic Auditorium, the Buhl Building and Police Headquarters on Beaubien were only part of the construction that was reshaping Detroit's skyline.