Wandering around Belle Isle on a windy Sunday afternoon: statues, abandoned structures, and an elaborate marble fountain watch over an empty island, save for the occasional jogger. Sheets of ice bleed out across the Detroit River and I remember how, growing up, I only knew Belle Isle as a good place to get shot on a Saturday night – yet none of those frightening headlines square with the scene here, which was defined by superstar landscape architect Frederick Law Olmstead in the 1880s (see also NYC’s Central Park and DC’s Capitol grounds). Paths meander, hills roll, and in the distance a glass and aluminum dome soars above the trees; you are reminded that Belle Isle was once a place of elegant spectacle, of promenades and elaborate picnics. It’s coming back.

Like many of Detroit’s public facilities, I expected the Conservatory to be closed for renovations that will never come, but it was open and very much alive. Designed by Albert Kahn in 1904, the Conservatory was reopened last year by the Belle Isle Botanical Society and it’s dripping with humid air and green exotica with ridiculous names (Fried Pies, Blue Chalk Sticks, Dwarf Banana, Plush Plant, etc). Why isn’t this place packed with people? There’s a beautiful jungle in Detroit and it’s open every day for everybody and it’s free.