charlie ledoff is a journalist, writer, television reporter. used to be two million people. that was rubber. that guy was steel. that guy was a doctor. this was what made america. the road started here. the automobile. frozen peas started here. credit on a mass scale started here. >> what was this like just before this? 20 years before? >> it was insane. in this one it was like twice as many people here. this is a consequence because all the whites went. they took their money. they took their factories. the black middle class maintained for a while. then it got too rough for them. so there's little pockets of feral hippies, older black folks, a couple of white folks and arabs. but this is 140 square miles. you're going to get tall grass. it's back to the wild. >> it is one of the most beautiful cities in america. it speaks of those industrial-age dreams of an endlessly glorious future. the people who built these structures, they were thinking big. >> they were. >> they were looking at a new rome and they built it, actually. it's awesome here. ♪