check out history - Harper Woods, MI. | WikiXM

Though a relatively new city, Harper Woods has played a role in the cultural history of Metro Detroit. For many years, the city was home to the East Side Drive-In (located at 19440 Harper Avenue, near 7 Mile Road), the first drive-in theater in Metro Detroit and one of the first in the Midwest. The East Side opened May 26, 1938, with The Big Broadcast of 1938, starring W.

C. Fields and Dorothy Lamour. Automobile capacity in later years was listed at 970 vehicles. The East Side closed in 1977 and was demolished a year later.The Hideout (located at 20542 Harper Avenue, at Beaufait Street) was a popular teen dance club in the mid-1960s. Many Detroit-area music acts - including some that would go on to national prominence - performed at the club.

Among them were Bob Seger, Mitch Ryder, Ted Nugent, Glenn Frey (later of the Eagles), and Suzi Quatro. One performance at the club by the MC5 was described by their manager John Sinclair. The Hideout spawned a local record label, Hideout Records. A 2001 compact disc, Friday at the Hideout: Boss Detroit Garage Bands 1964-1967, documents the scene.

One of the first bands to play at the Hideout, The Underdogs, wrote Friday Night at the Hideout. Dave Leone is credited as the writer on the record. Another venue for local bands in the 1960s and 1970s was Notre Dame High School. According to various accounts, "All the Motown artists used to come and lip-sync to their records.

Local neighborhood bands got to play live." Among the local performers of note who played dances and concerts at the school were The Amboy Dukes (featuring Ted Nugent), Bob Seger and the Last Heard, Frijid Pink, The Frost, Salem Witchcraft, Toby Redd, The Almighty Strut, and other acts. U.S. Poet Laureate Donald Hall's 1970s poem, "Poem With One Fact", alludes to the city.

Similarly, in 1986, the critically acclaimed crime fiction writer Loren D. Estleman unflatteringly portrayed the city in his Amos Walker novel Every Brilliant Eye. Among other works, the Detroit-area crime fiction writer Elmore Leonard mentions the city in his 2000 novel, Pagan Babies. Jeffrey Eugenides' bestselling 1993 novel The Virgin Suicides as well as his Pulitzer Prize-winning Middlesex also mention Harper Woods. Betty Bahr, an early local television personality, Leonard H.

Bahr, a fine press printer and publisher (Adagio Press), Helen Filarski, professional baseball player from 1945-1950, Laura Joh Rowland, author of historical mystery fiction, and Angela Ruggiero, 2006 Olympics bronze medal winner (ice hockey), have been among its better known residents. Dave Coulier, a popular television and voice actor, graduated from Notre Dame High School. For decades, Eastland Center dominated the cultural and commercial profile of the suburb.

The mall housed a celebrated work of public sculpture, "The Lion and Mouse", by Marshall Fredericks.