There was a time when the Detroit Waterfront was home to the fleets of several maritime transportation companies, like the Detroit & Cleveland Navigation Company, the Cleveland and Buffalo Transit Company, the Georgian Bay Lines and the Canada Steamship Lines. The ships of these organizations were large, comfortable, and efficiently carried passengers all over the Great Lakes. In addition, they operated cruises that allowed inhabitants of the states around the Great Lakes an opportunity to experience their region from a new, watery perspective. Explore the fascinating world of steamship travel on the Great Lakes with author and architect Bruce Allen Kopytek – who will tell the story of the companies, their crews, their passengers, and their ships, all of them marvels of the Marine Architect’s art.

Hamtramck, Michigan born Bruce Allen Kopytek nurtured a love of history while achieving two degrees in Architecture from the University of Detroit. He built a career that lasted forty-five years and designed a number of significant buildings spread throughout the world. In retirement, Bruce launched Editions BK, LLC to publish books on topics that have fascinated him throughout his life, remembering the values bestowed upon him by his parents, who taught faith, education, accomplishment, and culture above most everything else. After writing several books for a publisher, this book, his second self-published work, comes after the wild success of his Hudson’s: Detroit’s World Famous Department Store, now in its third printing. His wife Carole has been his partner in all these endeavors and so much more to boot!

If you missed Bruce’s presentation during our May Member Program, or would like to see it again, we encourage you to join us for this encore showing at 10:00 AM (ET) on Saturday, June 6, 2026.

(Image: Bruce Kopytek)

From 1890 to 1921, 2.5 million Jews fled discrimination and violence in Eastern Europe. Many settled on the Lower East Side and today’s East Village. How such migration was possible is complicated. It would have been impossible except for the unusual collaboration of three titans of business: Jacob Schiff, managing partner of Kuhn, Loeb, and Co., Albert Ballin, managing director of the Hamburg-American Line, and J.P. Morgan, the mastermind of the International Mercantile Marine trust.

STEVEN UJIFUSA is a historian who chronicles the confluence of American business, social, and maritime history.  His third book, The Last Ships from Hamburg: Business, Rivalry, and the Race to Save Russia’s Jews on the Eve of World War I, tells the story of Eastern European Jewish immigration to America in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It was released by HarperCollins on November 21, 2023, and named by Publishers Weekly as one of the best books of the year.

(Photos and Image: Steven Ujifusa)