When I was a student at Wayne State University, my friends and I frequented Pegasus in Greektown. We loved their traditional Greek cuisine and music, the staff who mostly had a Greek or Arab accent, the open kitchen and cozy atmosphere and the periodic shouts of “Opa!” and the flame that we worried would catch our long Mediterranean hair.

But Greektown was not always Greek. In the 1830s, German immigrants settled in that area. Little by little they began moving out and in the 1880s Greek immigrants began taking their place. By the 1920s, the area was becoming primarily commercial rather than residential, and the Greek residents began moving out. Yet their restaurants, stores, and coffeehouses stayed put. In 1960 the Greektown neighborhood was reduced to one block, beside it the big Greek Orthodox Church that was founded in 1910.