A century after Hudson's first float, Detroit's Thanksgiving parade steps off for edition 100

Detroit's oldest downtown tradition reaches a round number this fall. The 100th America's Thanksgiving Parade presented by Gardner White steps off on Thursday, November 26. It leaves Woodward Avenue and Kirby at 8:45 a.m. and rolls about three miles south, ending near Congress and Woodward. The whole procession takes roughly 90 minutes.

The parade was founded in 1924 by Hudson's, the downtown department store, and first rolled down Woodward Avenue that year. It debuted the same year as Macy's parade in New York. Display director Charles Wendel proposed it after he watched the success of Eaton's Santa Claus Parade in Toronto. That first procession featured horses pulling a float decorated with Mother Goose, four papier-mache heads and seven marching bands.

Reaching 100 took longer than a hundred years. Because of material shortages during World War II, the parade was suspended in 1943 and 1944, so the edition count trails the calendar. Radio coverage began in 1931, followed by local television in the late 1940s, eventually reaching more than 100 million viewers nationally.

Stewardship changed hands over the decades. Hudson's ran the parade until 1980, and the Detroit Renaissance Foundation carried it for the next few years. The Michigan Thanksgiving Parade Foundation was founded in 1982 to stage and perpetuate the event. The Parade Company organizes it today with the help of hundreds of volunteers. The modern parade has grown to more than 75 units, including floats, balloons and marching bands.

The century gets its own screen moment this year. A documentary called Backstory will premiere the evening before Thanksgiving, examining the history, memories, and people who have helped shape the parade over the past century.

For anyone planning to go, the parade is free to watch along most of the three-mile route. Grandstand tickets are $67.60 and are sold through theparade.org, where they help support The Parade Company.

A hundred editions is a lot of cold mornings on Woodward. From a horse-drawn Mother Goose float to a national broadcast, the parade has stayed a Detroit fixture while the department store that started it passed into history. On the 26th, the corner where it all began is exactly where it steps off.