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urrounded on all sides by the City of Detroit, Hamtramck, Michigan, a city in
Wayne County, was named after a French Revolutionary War hero, Colonel
Jean Francois Hamtramck, and originally settled by French émigrés from
Quebec. By the early 1900s, it was a German-American farming village of
about 500 people. Then, with the opening of the Dodge Brothers automo-
bile plant in 1914, Hamtramck attracted large numbers of Polish laborers and its popu-
lation swelled from about 3,600 in 1910 to over 46,000 by 1920.
Hamtramck became a city in 1922, to protect itself from being annexed by Detroit.
However, legal separation from its bigger, sister city could not prevent its economic
fate from being intertwined with it, as well as with that of the American automobile
industry. The decline of that industry, which had kept Hamtramck’s economy healthy
through much of the 20th century, coupled with the Great Recession of the early 21st,
has had a tremendous impact on the entire southeast Michigan region–Detroit and
Hamtramck, included. In fact, both metropolises are considered to be “distressed com-
Hamtramck, Michigan
The city within a city
Michigan