This band shell was short-lived but part of a long tradition of musical concerts on Belle Isle.
The City’s parks department had been sponsoring concerts on Belle Isle since at least 1882, usually dozens of them each year. The Commissioners of Parks & Boulevards wrote in its 16th annual report for 1904-05 that “the music furnished in the different parks is no longer considered a luxury, but is looked upon by the people as a necessity, and on a summer evening the canal on Belle Isle park, which the band pavilion spans, might be likened to the canals of Venice, the exception being that canoes instead of gondolas are used, while the shores of the canal within hearing of the music are a surging mass of humanity.”
The early concerts were held in simple structures, but in 1902, a pagoda-like structure was built over the Loop Canal near the old Belle Isle Casino. As the city’s fortunes and population continued into the 1920s, plans were presented for a new band shell with a rounded design to be built along a canal, near the present-day site of the Nancy Brown Peace Carillon.
This wooden band shell was formally dedicated July 12, 1925, with an opening concert by the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Victor Kolar. An estimated 25,000 people turned out for the event, reportedly crowding every vantage point between the Belle Isle Pavilion and the horticultural building. “The benches seating some 7,000 were wholly inadequate,” the Detroit Free Press reported the following day.
The Detroit Symphony Orchestra would frequently perform on the stage, and its concerts would be broadcast from the island over the airwaves. The Band Shell also found itself used for nonmusical purposes, too. A year after popular radio personality Jerry Buckley was gunned down at the La Salle Hotel in a mob hit, a memorial service was held at the Belle Isle Band Shell that was attended by thousands.
But by 1935, just 10 years after it had opened, it was determined that the band shell was deteriorating. Nevertheless, the concerts at the shell continued for six more years, until it was finally condemned in 1941. Joseph P. Wolff, the City’s building safety commissioner, said things were so bad, in fact, that the vibrations from the tympani and bass drums “might bring it down.”
"It is somewhat astonishing and passing strange that deterioration of the Orchestra Shell at the island should have been called to the attention of the park commissioner in 1935 and a continuous series of shows by various nationalities, including their 'romping' dances, were permitted without a suggestion that the structure imperiled human life," Thomas W. Parker noted in a letter to the editor published in the June 14, 1941, edition of the Free Press.
The band shell would be removed the following year, but the rundown and rotted wooden stage was left in place until a replacement could be built. Because of World War II, it would be a couple of years before that would happen.
Following the war, the Department of Parks & Recreation requested in 1945 a $100,000 appropriation (about $1.8 million in 2026 value, when adjusted for inflation) for a new band shell, one large enough to accommodate 300 people at a time. That request would be approved by the Common Council in April 1946 (as would $40,000 for a band shell and comfort station at Palmer Park), but musicians would be stuck with that rundown stage for a few more years, though sometimes they performed instead in an area known as “the Belle Isle Music Grove.”
Finally, on July 13, 1950, the Jerome H. Remick Band Shell was dedicated, continuing the tradition.