Piquette St. (Detroit: construction, design, wealthy)

[chisels1]

I have been trying to locate any History on the Piquette's and more particularly who and why the street was named after a Piquette?

Was the individual prominent in the area of Detroit or Michigan? Any help would be great

[animatedmartian]

The street was specifically named after Angelique Campau, daughter of Barnabas Campau, in 1876. Campau was a very prominent and large family that mainly gained wealth through farming, selling land, and treasuries. The street Joesph Campau is named after a member from this family.

Angelique Campau married John B. Piquette in 1834. I can't find much about him other than that he was a typical French businessman whose family were likely immigrants from Canada and/or France. It seems he was the one to marry a prominent figure, and subsequently gained a lot of land and estates after her father, Barnabas, died.

One of these pieces of land was the 640-acre Hog Island, or what is now called Belle Isle. Angelique died in 1872, but her husband, John Piquette still owned the island. In 1879, the City of Detroit bought Belle Isle from John Piquette for $200,000 (after Barnabas bought it many years before for $5,000). John died a year later in 1880.

The actual street was renamed in 1876 from some other name and changed to Piquette Avenue. I'm assuming in dedication to Angelique from her husband John Piquette.

In modern times, Piquette is more associated with the Piquette Plant which is a car factory that Henry Ford simply named after the street it was on. It then became a historical area because of the many factories that were along this street, most notably, the large abandoned Fisher Body plant 21.

Piquette Avenue Industrial Historic District - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

42.368056,-83.065833 - Google Maps


So to summarize, John Piquette was a very lucky Frenchmen who became wealthy through his marriage. Does that help?

[chisels1]

Animated, thanks so much for that info. I tried researching as much as I could and nothing really indicated a dedication of the street based on anything related to the Piquette family.

You see I'm a Piquette from the Northeast and when I came across this because of my interests in cars, I got real interested.

There is a street named after my uncle in Chicopee because of his work as a brick layer and other family members were prominent in the construction and building design business but it wasn't acquired it was earned as it would seem from your account in Detroit.