That time Yoko Ono planted a ‘Wish Tree’ in Detroit
The story of an ill-fated gingko, a forgotten park and a Black communications pioneer
In 2000, artist Yoko Ono came to Detroit to plant a “Wish Tree” downtown in Robert L. Hurst Jr. Park. It’s still there. Sorta.
I can almost hear you now. Wait, what? What is a “Wish Tree,” and what happened to it? Why did Yoko Ono of all people pick Detroit of all places? And where on Earth is Hurst Park?
Buckle up, dear readers, because we’ve got the story for you, just like any good “Paperback Writer” would.
For many, Ono needs little introduction, but for the younger folks in the crowd … Ono was thrust into the global consciousness in the late 1960s by her marriage to Beatles superstar John Lennon. However, she was - and remains - a visual artist and musician in her own right. Her work tends to lean toward the avant garde. One such example was her “living sculptures” of trees meant to make people pause, reflect and make a wish.
Ono had taken her “Wish Tree” installations around the world, but these others had been potted. The one in Detroit was to be the first “permanent art installation.”
“I believe we can create a more positive future through wishing," Ono said in explaining the piece for an April 27, 2000, article in The Detroit News. “My wish for Detroit is that the city becomes beautiful and prosperous. …
“I feel good about my connections to Detroit. I don't always go to cities where my Wish Trees are placed. But Detroit is special to me.”
On the morning of April 28, 2000, about 300 people gathered at Cass Avenue near Bagley Street to watch Ono dedicate Detroit’s Wish Tree. The artist gave a short speech and said she hoped the tree would bring “happiness, peace and joy.”
The gingko tree - which was called a “symbol of faith in Detroit” - was accompanied by a large granite boulder with a plaque that reads, “Wish tree for Detroit. Whisper your wish to the bark of the tree. - Yoko Ono.” The artist said she chose the ginkgo because its distinctive, fan-shaped leaves turn yellow in the fall, “and I think of yellow as the color of light.”
Detroit’s Wish Tree was sponsored by art patrons Gilbert and Lila Silverman of Bloomfield Hills, who had developed a friendship with Ono over the years.
Maxwell’s Silverman Hammer
Gil Silverman was a real estate developer and board member of the Detroit Institute of Arts, Cranbrook Academy of Art and Museum and the Museum of Modern Art in New York (MOMA). In the 2000s, ARTnews listed the Silvermans among the top 200 art collectors in the world, thanks largely to their appetite for works tied to the Fluxus movement. Fluxus was a loosely knit band of avant-garde musicians, visual and performing artists during the 1960s and ’70s who “blurred the line between life and art.” Ono had been a member of the troupe, and because the Silvermans spent over three decades amassing what MOMA calls “the largest and most important (collection of Fluxus art) in the world,” it made sense that they’d become friends.
The Silvermans housed their Fluxus collection in a gallery space in the Parker-Webb Building at 400 E. Grand River Ave. The story goes that during a visit to the Silvermans’ gallery a few years earlier, Ono looked out a window at the park and decided then and there that she wanted to plant one of her Wish Trees on the site. The Silvermans agreed to pick up the tab.
Three years after the Detroit Wish Tree was planted, the couple helped bring Ono’s “Freight Train” to the Detroit Institute of Arts. The piece was created in 1999 as a response to a tragedy 12 years earlier involving Mexican migrant workers smuggled across the Texas border being locked in a boxcar and left to die. The piece featured a 1930s boxcar riddled with bullet holes, and when illuminated at night, light pierced them and up through the top to represent spirits escaping to the heavens. It was accompanied by a musical piece Ono penned aimed at creating a sense of anxiety, but also hope.
It was unveiled in November 2003 on the DIA’s front yard, where it remained until April 2004. At the time, the Free Press noted that the Detroit Wish Tree was thriving.
The Silvermans donated their Fluxus collection to the MOMA in 2009. Gil Silverman died in 2016; Lila passed in 2020. Yet they both managed to outlive the Wish Tree they helped bring to Detroit. More on that in a bit.
The Long and Winding Road to a Name
The park where the Wish Tree was planted dated back to 1842, and was originally called West Park, one of a series of green spaces downtown that included Grand Circus, Centre, East, Middle and North parks. After the Detroit Times built its new headquarters and newspaper printing plant next door in 1929, it was renamed Times Square Park (and is why there is a street called Times Square there.)
The Times was bought out and folded into The Detroit News in 1960, but The News continued to use the building’s printing presses until 1975. The News tore the Times Building down in 1978, and the site became a parking lot. With no Detroit Times to justify a Times Square Park, some of its neighbors approached the City about renaming the half-acre slab of green space.
The Michigan Bell Building (today known as AT&T’s Michigan headquarters) stands across the street at 1365 Cass Ave. The phone company’s community relations team pitched the name Telephone Pioneer Park, and the City agreed. The switch became official around 1980, though it was usually shortened to Pioneer Park; many others still called it Times Square. Either way, the Telephone Pioneers of America adopted it and planted shrubs and grass there. In 1994, however, it was renamed yet again, this time to Robert L. Hurst Jr. Park.
Being for the Naming Benefit of Mr. Hurst
Robert L. Hurst became the first Black president of Michigan Bell in June 1992. He was a native of Magnolia, Miss., but grew up on Stanford Street on Detroit’s west side and graduated from Northwestern High School in 1960.
He attended South Carolina State College in Orangeburg, where he encountered racism like he'd never experienced back home. “I grew up feeling equal to everybody I knew,” he told the Free Press for an Aug. 24, 1992, article. “It just happened that everybody I knew was Black.” But in South Carolina, Jim Crow was still alive and well. Hurst joined the civil rights movement, even getting arrested at a demonstration in 1963. He kept an old copy of Jet magazine in his office that had a photo of himself being carted off to jail.
He joined Michigan Bell in 1969 as a sales manager and worked his way up. Just a year after being named president in Detroit, he was named president of Ameritech Network Services in Chicago in July 1993, overseeing some 42,000 employees. He also served as chairman of the Henry Ford Hospital Board of Trustees and was a board member of the Michigan Opera Theatre and a director of the Metropolitan Detroit Convention and Visitors Bureau.
As one of the highest-ranking African-American executives in corporate America at the time, he was celebrated as a role model for Black youth and mentor to Black business owners and corporate leaders. He also worked with the United Negro College Fund, the Michigan Black Caucus Foundation and the Lula Belle Stewart Home for Pregnant Teens (today known as the Lula Belle Stewart Center).
Upon becoming the head of Michigan Bell, Hurst told the Free Press that “I think young African Americans need to see other African Americans in positions of success. They can begin to realize it can happen to them if they work hard.”
Sadly, Hurst died of a heart attack on Aug. 8, 1994. He was only 51 years old.
At the time, Bob Warfield, the executive vice president of Alpha Capital Management in Detroit, said Hurst “broke the mythical notion that Blacks who achieve forget from whence they came. He truly was a rising star, and yet, he did not forget his roots.”
That same year, the Pioneers voted to honor Hurst by renaming the park in his honor. It was dedicated Oct. 10, 1994.
The tribute wouldn’t be a long-lasting one.
Let it Be a Bus Terminal
Most of Hurst Park was consumed by the City’s new $22.5-million Rosa Parks Transit Center. Design work began in 2005, with construction starting in March 2007 on a 2-acre, triangular site that was also home to the legendary sports bar the Lindell AC. The only sliver of the park that was spared was the section with Ono’s Wish Tree.
With its 15 bus bays, the 27,500 square-foot facility opened July 14, 2009.
Though the Wish Tree site was preserved, the tree itself didn't survive. It turns out that a bus depot, with its heavy traffic and exhaust fumes, isn’t the most hospitable spot for a tree. The City tried several other species, but they, too, died, and a granite boulder telling people that Yoko Ono wanted them to whisper to a nonexistent tree likely led to some head-scratching.
The City’s forestry service finally planted a resilient linden tree on the site on Nov. 21, 2017, next to the boulder and plaque for Detroiters’ wishing pleasure.
What are your wishes for Detroit? Tell us in the comments below.
Excellent article. Thank you!