Photo by ...Wes
Photo by Wyliepoon
The Detroit City Council has voted to raze the along-abandoned Michigan Central Terminal in Detroit. Click here for more images of the beautiful Beaux-Arts building. King Street and Union Station – both beautiful – look like barns compared to MCT. Very sad. And people in Seattle get their knickers in a knot over a Denny’s.
Here’s a site full of photos of abandoned buildings, including glorious art-deco skyscrapers. Here’s a photo essay of 100 abandoned homes in Detroit (there are tens of thousands of them), including a couple of formerly lovely Edwardian townhomes.
Another great train station was destroyed in 1963, the Old Neo Classical Pennsylanvia Station in Midtown Manhattan (more photos here). That was under different circumstances, the train station was stilling being used, though ridership was down at the time. A New York Times Editorial lamented then:
Any city gets what it admires, will pay for, and, ultimately, deserves. Even when we had Penn Station, we couldn’t afford to keep it clean. We want and deserve tin-can architecture in a tinhorn culture. And we will probably be judged not by the monuments we build but by those we have destroyed.
I think this is one of those times for judgement.
While not as tragic as the loss of Pennsylvania Station in New York in the 1960s, this would be among the worst manifestations of our disregard for our history, architecture, transportation infrastructure and urban fabric. I understand the great station in Buffalo is also in danger – anyone have any details on that?
That’s the first I’ve heard but I’ll look into it. Buffalo’s not in permanent, extended decay like Detroit is, either.
hi lloyd, I help volunteer at the Central Terminal in Buffalo, so maybe I can be of some help. The terminal is in some danger, mostly due to decay, than by pressure to demolish it. In Buffalo there is actually a nonprofit organization designed to rehabilitate and re-use the terminal, while it is to my knowledge that Detroit doesn’t have something like this. The volunteer organization in Buffalo holds social events in the terminal often, to get as much exposer to it as possible. Now it has become one of the major icons of Buffalo. I am visiting Detroit soon.. hopefully I can help convince people to get something together to stop this tragic event. (I’m not even from Detroit, but I was heartbroken when I found this out).
Oh NO. Is this one that has been restored? Or, is it overdue and just too much to deal with?
I ask because, after Washington DC, Michigan was one of the best places for historic restoration crafts and skills. I was able to enjoy the GM and Fisher Buildings in Detroit, and also got to install and test out a computer system wearing a hardhat while these incredible craftspeople painstakingly recreated the Michigan State Capital building. I still get chills thinking about it.
Guess this is another victim of the degeneration and lack of new direction of the US auto industry…
Some of the auto industry bailout cash should go to fixing this building.
I agree with Max, this is another crime against the old style of architecture. The building should be preserved and restored to get some jobs going! That’d help the Detroit area!
So, they want to turn the site into a casino, jail or sports stadium. How wonderful. The Libertarians can support options 1 and 2. The Republicans will go for door 3.
The worst part is like many such projects in Detroit the site will likely sit vacant for years once the depot is torn down.
Sad, just sad. If it’s not too late to save Detroit, any way to help?
I just read the Wikipedia article. :::cries:::
So so sad.
The real crime is Amtrak actually used the depot until 1988. If renovated like the Fort Worth T&P station it would make a grand station for Detroit.
It’s times like this where I wish I was a rich eccentric who could swoop in and save a building like this.
One small glimmer of hope is the building is listed on the national register so it is possible someone might be able to stop or slow down the demolition with a lawsuit.
Apparently they want to use stimulus funds to tear it down.
Some stimulus. You’d think restoring and renovating the building would provide more jobs. Not to mention giving Detroit something it could be proud of rather than another vacant lot.
Right. And if you really, really want to make a casino there, why not turn that building into a casino?
Exactly, that building would make a great hotel and casino. It would be expensive to do, especially considering the poor state of the structure but it could be done.
Again it would give Detroit something to be proud of.
The Michigan Central Station caught my attention a few years ago during a trip to Detroit. I was surprised because the very next weekend I saw Transformers and instantly recognized the building I had just seen in Detroit.
It’s interesting that people who don’t appear to have any interest in actually creating solutions for urban issues come to be elected or otherwise placed in positions to make decisions of this nature.
Anyhow, hopefully something can be done.
Some good photos: http://www.emporis.com/en/wm/bu/?id=118502
O snap! You’re totally right about transformers. I was wondering what that building was (“an art deco high rise abandoned in LA, I doubt it…”)
Call me a pessimist, but I’d say its too late. If the old Hudson’s building could not escape, I see no way the MCT will be saved from a similar fate. Its location is relatively far-flung–it had been located in anticipation of the city growing up around it and well the city stopped growing. I actually spent a fair amount of time wandering around the guts of this and numerous other buildings in Detroit while in high school and college. In just a few years after it closed, all the copper piping had been stripped. Marble and granite removed. And even the bricks were disappearing. 15+ years on and I sincerely doubt there’s much left to be saved that has not already been ravaged by man or nature.
While I haven’t had much of a chance to explore Detroit personally, I’ve seen various collections of great photographs of what were once elegant old buildings. Some still retain a bit of their old dignity others are clearly nothing but ruins.
There are many fine old buildings that would be worth saving in almost any other city, unfortunately in Detroit there are so many they can’t even afford to tear most of them down.
Even if there is the desire to save one there is little money for it and few potential tenants once a building is restored.
It can’t be saved, there’s no way. Matty Maroun basically let several key engineering failures happen and now saving it is impossible.
And this is the guy who owns our busiest international crossing? What the hell was Detroit thinking, aside from “he’s giving us money :)”?
I’m sure it still could be saved, it is just a question of money. After all the Cadillac Hotel in Seattle was saved and restored after partially collapsing in the 2001 earthquake.
Though in that case there was the fortunate circumstance of having the Park Service pay for most of the cost so they could have a new HQ for the Klondike NHP.
Nah, in stripping the walls and fixtures, thieves destroyed any semblance of a reliable support structure. Restoring would require a rebuild.
With the state Michigan is in right now, I doubt people will mount a campaign. I sure hope someone does. The Old Post Office, one of the most beautiful buildings on Pennsylvania Ave. in DC, was targeted for demo under the Penn. Ave. beautification project.
If the exterior structure is sound, that building could become almost anything. At least leave it alone until the economy gets better…
What is the area of town that this station is in? Looking at the grass on the sidewalk and the lack of any other structures in the picture I get the impression the reason Amtrak might have stopped using it is because it’s in a less than desirable section of town? The idea a jail should be located here reinforces that assumption.
I would say that a fair portion of Detroit is considered “undesirable” which is why everyone who had the means to move out, moved out, leaving behind concentrated poverty and an enormous, unfunded, unmanageable infrastructure. Vast stretches of the city are in ruins, with grand brick houses crumbling onto sidewalks, anonymous buildings falling in on themselves and exquisite pre-depression era architecture rotting away. Granted there are isolated pockets and signs of resurgence occasionally, but never anything substantial enough to weather the cyclical downturns of the automotive industry. Detroit and its metro region have carried on this far only because of the big three. With the big three reeling as they are, why would the MCT be singled out to be saved? Who would pay for it? Better yet, who would occupy it? I don’t mean to be so pessimistic—I was once quite taken with the strangely beautiful and fascinating city of Detroit—but now I have written it off as an anachronistic relic. For those interested in seeing more, go to The Fabulous Ruins of Detroit
Wow! A relic of the rise of the automobile and a lesson about having one (although huge and international – is NYC paying attention?) economic basis. I spent considerable time in Detroit in the 80s. Being from Dodge City (DC), we were not afraid to cruise around protected by the steel chassis of an auto, even when warned off doing that.
It made me want to scream to see such potential in the structures, major ones along Woodward and lovely old houses. Automobile culture based sprawl, decayed inner city, no alternative economic drivers. Humans wanting new New NEW instead of reuse, repurpose, reimagine. What waste. While we nicely recycle our garbage, we don’t consider the value of investment in building and infratructure, much less the social costs of lack of investment in human capital.
I am pleased that Seattle was able to purchase historic King Street Station ($10) and we are now in the process of rehabilitating it. http://www.seattle.gov/transportation/kingstreet.htm
Some years ago, when Sound Transit was looking for a permanent headquarters, we decided (I was on the Board) to renovate Union Station instead of renting plain vanilla office space. Train Stations are important landmarks in a city’s life.
Wow, Mr. Mayor is that really you? Thanks for chiming in.
I do agree that having Sound Transit use Union Station for its headquarters and having the City of Seattle purchase King Street were both excellent and far-sighted actions.
“Having sat empty for many years, the station was renovated in the late 1990s by Nitze-Stagen and Paul Allen’sVulcan Inc.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Union_Station_(Seattle)
Union station is really stunning inside. When the King street rennovation is finished, I think that’s going to make a huge difference in the public persception of transit.
Talk about cost overruns. The purchase price was ten times what the public was told it was going to be originally! (I’m kidding, I’m kidding… :+
It would be interesting to know why the price changed from the customary $1 and also to know what BNSF actually got out of the sale. I understand the cost of renovation is an expensive undertaking but the land is worth a fortune. Is the land subject to special regulations since (I’m guessing) it was deeded to the railroad originally as part of the incentive for the railroads to expand.
I wonder if they got a big tax break or something from it.
Another possibility is a release from environmental liability. Just speculation. I’m sure BNSF was looking to get out from under the property for some reason.
The station is in a strange place. It’s not near the central business district, borders a freeway which you cant quite see in those photos and is in a pretty neglected area. It’s close to the revitalized area of Corktown but not quite close enough to justify anything.
I read that the cost to renovate would be in the $100-300 million dollar range. It was supposed to house a hotel but the top floors were never finished. It’s literally been unfinished since it was built in 1918 or something.
There is another building in downtown Detroit that is in danger of demolision, the Lafayatee building. I’d rather that was saved over the MCT but I doubt either will be saved.
For some reason that station reminds me of this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:JR_Central_Towers.jpg
It absolutely has nothing in common except for the fact that there’s a high rise above the station.
But yes, it is really sad to see our history and such a grand structure be destroyed.
Reminds me of this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Twilight_Zone_Tower_of_Terror
Look, Detroit has tons of buildings that ought to be saved. But the (racist) ruling class in Detroit gave up on the city long ago and packed up to Bloomfield Hills. So don’t get your hopes up since that might mean some return of wealth from the landed gentry back to the actual city that gave them their wealth once-apon-atime.
Like Duany points out, go to the center of Detroit and the center of Berlin at 5pm local time in each city and tell me which city produced the bulk of the machinery that defeated Facism in the last great war.
You know that the answer is Detroit, but your senses will of course say Berlin.
Perhaps it is time to drop a large amount of explosive material on Detroit and start again?
Dare I say its not the city itself, but the culture that built and then abandoned it? My point–you could wipe clean the land the city occupies, but its the people who give life and vitality to otherwise inanimate forms. If those people have no interest in the city, which has been the case for many many years, then will “re-building” it from scratch really accomplish anything?
Well, innate racism was part of white flight but not all. White flight happened in many cities and in the case of Detroit it was accelerated by real estate agents who encouraged whites to flee through various tactics and who would then profit on the backside with a sale to a minority. Stoking white fears while limiting the ability of minorities to flee the city was a profitable tactic. Surprisngly, the city only became a “black” city in the 1970s.
Also, Detroit was an early 20th century boom-town where people flooded in from all over the country. Like most cities these groups then self-segregated into ethnic neighborhoods. The WASPs, jews, ethnic catholics and blacks were all mistrustful of each other.
Another factor is cultural. It wasnt just any blacks who came in the great migration. It was southern and rural blacks. Even the northern blacks in Detroit felt superior to these country folks and worried that whites would judge them by that standard. WHich of course they did. And years of resentment led the emergence of the black power movement and seperatist elements in the black community. You can see that today with the hostility and suspicion with which the city, and city council in particular, view the white suburbs.
The migrations that took place in and around Detroit are pretty interesting. It’s an example of how the melting pot doesnt always work as advertised.
I’d add that those migratory paths were made possible and persist thanks in large part to the automobile. The dominance of car culture has helped to perpetuate misunderstandings, fears and prejudices in the Detroit region. The city came of age when cars were dictating development patterns, and I believe the failure to establish a truly urban culture, where close interactions between races, religions, ethnicities could at the very least establish a means to coexist, has aided the city’s fall and prevented it from recovering in any meaningful way.
http://www.petitiononline.com/3044/petition.html
Demolishion Derby in Flint Michigan
The population would be condensed into a few viable areas. So would stores and services. A city built to manufacture cars would be returned in large measure to the forest primeval.
NPR says, Flint, Michigan Sheds Foreclosed Properties