The Detroit Century Box is a time capsule that was created in the U.S. city of Detroit, Michigan on December 31, 1900. Mayor William C. Maybury organized the capsule which consists of a copper box filled with photos and letters containing the then current state of affairs in Detroit along with predictions for the future. Mayor Dennis Archer presided over the opening of the capsule on December 31, 2000.Andrea Cecil, "100-year-old time capsule opened in Detroit" Republished from the Kalamazoo Gazette (January 2, 2001). Retrieved August 13, 2013"Future Friday: Century Box Prophecies" Detroit Historical Society. Retrieved August 13, 2013
Contents At 11:20 pm on December 31, 2000, Mayor Archer opened the copper "century box" before a ceremony of Detroiters and read a handwritten letter that Mayor Maybury wrote a century earlier:
"How much faster are you traveling? How much farther have you annihilated time and space and what agencies are you employing to which we are strangers?"
He addressed the next century of Detroiters, expressing hope that the letters show "what advancement you have made from the modest beginnings to which we are witnesses."
He ended the letter with "May we be permitted to express one supreme hope - that whatever failures the coming century may have in the progress of things material, you may be conscious when the century is over that, as a nation, people and city, you have grown in righteousness, for it is this that exalts a nation."
Detroit in 1900
Predictions for the future
Notable letter writers
Annie M. Knott Charles Lang Freer Clarence M. Burton D. Augustus Straker Frederick K. Stearns James E. Scripps John M. Donaldson John Samuel Foley William C. Maybury William E. Quinby
See also
List of time capsules
References
External links Detroit Century Box - contents from the Detroit Historical Society