Of the 189 photos I took in Detroit last week, 17 were of the exterior of Michigan Central Depot, the city’s abandoned train station.
I’m not the only one to lavish attention on this Beaux Arts building – the question of what to do with the station, erected in 1913, and designed by the same architects that created New York’s Grand Central Station, has been the subject of local controversy and national attention.
In September, someone non-official installed an official-looking “photo opportunity” sign in front of the station – an acknowledgment that the Depot is, at the least, visually compelling. I found it breathtaking: the combination of Corinthian columns and grand arched windows with shattered glass hanging like lace, behind a chain link fence topped with barbed wire — even the scrawling graffiti seemed not out of place with the building’s stone scrolls, swags and medallions.
I only read about the “photo opportunity” sign later, I didn’t see it myself, so perhaps it was removed – along with chandeliers, marble and anything else of value that was left when the station went out of use in 1988.
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Michigan Central Depot has become an icon for Detroit’s extraordinary blight – it’s one of its 45,000 abandoned structures.
In 2009, the city council voted to tear the station down, although it is on the National Historic Register. Both major local papers issued editorials essentially in support of demolition, and a lively preservation movement emerged to save it; it now appears demolition is off the table.
I’ve been reading about the controversy, and it keeps getting more interesting – for instance, the city councilwoman who introduced the bill to demolish the Depot, and was quoted as saying she wanted it “down now”, also apparently liked to wear a tiara.
I’m not going to pretend I understand all the issues at play here.
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What I’m attempting to understand, though, is why I can’t stop thinking about the building. Musing on why the train station has become a tourist magnet, Jeff Gerrit, an editorial writer for the Detroit Free Press, wonders whether the appeal is “poverty porn”. I don’t think that’s quite it, since poverty, it seems to me, requires people. There are no people evident in the Depot.
The comparisons I’ve seen to Roman ruins seem to be more apt. “Why couldn’t we have a ruin to celebrate like the Coliseum in Rome?” asked Timothy McKay, executive director of the Greater Corktown Development Corp, in a Fox Detroit story. (Corktown is the neighborhood around the train station.) “It’s an iconic piece of architecture that needs to be regarded in a very good way…” He envisions it as a “fabulous ruin”.
Ephesus Ruins, Turkey
It’s hard to imagine rundown areas in other American cities being preserved as ruins, but it seems to me that Detroit stands apart, simply because it is so empty.
I roamed some of New York’s more distressed areas during the 1980s and saw plenty of lovely old buildings, burnt out and boarded up, but always, and not always to the benefit of my sense of safety, there were people around.
It’s unpalatable to turn a living part of a neighborhood, no matter how troubled, into a monument and memorial to failure – that’s what ruins are, after all. But there are wide swaths of Detroit that are echoingly empty – the city’s population is 910,000, half what it was in 1950.
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In December, Steidl will publish Ruins of Detroit, by French photographers Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre. On their website, the photographers write: “ruins are the visible symbols and landmarks of our societies and their changes … the volatile result of the change of eras and the fall of empires. This fragility leads us to watch them one very last time: to be dismayed, or to admire, it makes us wonder about the permanence of things.” See a Time magazine slideshow of their photographs. [Update – this book is now out of print. Try Lost Detroit instead.]
The antiquarian John Aubrey goes further: he valued the ruin as much as he did the intact structure, writes Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett in Destination Culture: Tourism, Museums and Heritage. “Ruins inspire the feelings of melancholy and wonder associated with the sublime,” she writes. “They stimulate the viewer to imagine the building in its former pristine state. They offer the pleasure of longing for the irretrievable object of one’s fantasy.”
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I returned home to New York the next day. I always enjoy the ride in from the airport, since time away allows me to see a place I know well with new eyes. What I notice depends on where I’ve been — the city’s struck me as incredibly drab (after a trip to Hawaii), fuddy duddy (after Shanghai), lavishly wealthy (post-Honduras).
After Detroit, New York seemed absurdly shiny, even sparkly. After a while, I realized that the effect came from all the windows in the buildings I passed: the glass was present, intact, unboarded. Unruined.
When I first moved to Detroit in 2003, I was always nervous about the lack of people around, but after a while I grew to love the emptiness. I would go for walks in the morning and not pass another person if I didn’t want to (of course, one street over could be different) and could walk slowly across a six-lane road during rush hour and not worry about getting hit. My husband would always tell me that when there’s no one around, there’s no one to be afraid of. I don’t quite agree, but I still love the quiet you can experience in Detroit. There’s a movement to turn the abandoned lots into urban farmland, which I love.
I wonder what would happen if Detroit cultivated and even promoted that feeling of emptiness and quiet as a scarce resource in an urban setting.
I kept thinking of Dan’s point about no one around/no need to fear while I was there — that is contrary to my New Yorker instinct, no one evident = someone’s hiding and ready to ambush. 😉 I mean, obviously, Detroit’s crime statistics are pretty high so there are bad things happening somewhere but it was hard to feel endangered when it was so quiet in downtown that I could hear a cigar rolling around on a manhole cover.
Really enjoyed this Alison.
Though I haven’t lived in the greater Detroit metropolitan area since I was 18–man, that makes me feel old–all of my family is still there, I visit a few times a year, and of course stay up on as much of the news and issues as I can; my attachment to the people and area is still a strong one, to be sure, even if I don’t care to live there anymore myself.
From what I gather, there are a lot of ideas–some good, some not so good–with unfortunately little cohesion to them as far as what to do with the grand plan of rebuilding Detroit. It’d be a shame to demolish marvelous architectural landmarks such as this, though… one of many left languishing in relative anonymity downtown.
I will say, however, that it’s worth noting that the whole of downtown Detroit isn’t deserted, desolate, an unsalvageable wasteland (and of course, not at all saying that you’re insinuating that is, Alison). A lot of it is, sure, but it’s a HUGE city, and there are more and more people turning to Detroit for nights out on the town and considering it, ever so slowly, as a possible place to live.
My dad, for one, loves going downtown for dinner, drinks, to catch a game or concert at Comerica Park or Ford Field, and making a weekend of it (the rates at places like the Renaissance Center are ridiculously affordable). He absolutely loves staying at the semi-recently restored Cadillac Hotel (http://www.bookcadillacwestin.com/).
In short, there are good things afoot in Detroit. Baby steps in the right direction…
Brian I hope so — the architecture is incredible. Plus, taking this out of the travel perspective, as you point out, there are still hundreds of thousands of people living there…
The one head scratcher I had, though: that People Mover. One of the strangest public transit set-ups I’ve ever seen!
Dear Ms. Stein,
Thank you so much for this post.
Seeing this masterpiece from the Beaux Arts Era in such a disgraceful state of ruin made me sad indeed.
Why is it that Americans (and assorted government ghouls and vampires) refuse to cherish our glorious architectural heritage?
It is to our national collective shame.
One only has to think of the glorious, beaux-arts masterpiece, Pennsylvania Station.
Money hungry land developers and the greedy local NYC government smelled blood in the water. They couldn’t wait to demolish it for the almighty tax dollar and what was erected in its stead? The monstrosity that is now Madison Square Garden. Remembering the glory that was Penn Station grieves me still.
Then there were the mansions, Lynnewood Hall and Whitemarsh Hall just outside of Philadelphia. These two breathtakingly beautiful masterpieces were our American Versailles.
Whitemarsh Hall was demolished to put up an ugly nondescript sub-division and Lynnewood Hall sits in a state of ruin.
Seeing the Michigan Central Depot in such a profound state of destitution is truly grievous.
That we do NOTHING to protect these jewels of architecture makes us a less noble nation.
Thank you again for this post.
Cheryl Spiegel
Alison,
Nice piece. I’ve lived in Detroit most of my life, and now spend half the year in Mexico and do a lot of traveling. When I see the energy an vibrancy of life in New York, Berlin, Paris and Mexico, I can’t help feeling sad about Detroit. It’s not the ruins and empty streets – it’s the hopelessness. Try spending some time on the streets in Highland Park, as I did recently. Yesterday on the radio I heard a piece about the 30 year successful effort to recreate Pittsburgh and tried to imagine the same thing happening to Detroit. 30 year? 50 years? It will be a grand urban experiment, that’ for sure.
Charles
thanks for this thoughtful post, Alison. Corktown has long been a center for the Irish American community in Detroit. interesting to hear a perspecctive on this part of it.
Cheryl, thanks for your comment. I do think that we in America have had the sense of buildings and neighborhoods as provisional – perhaps it’s the underbelly of upward mobility, a tendency to shed vestiges of the past without much thought…
Charles, you do make a good point. I read this disturbing story when I was researching this piece. http://motherjones.com/politics/2010/11/aiyana-stanley-jones-detroit The troubles aren’t just about architecture and infrastructure…
And Kerry: thank you.
Very well done post Alison. I’ve also heard rumors about converting vacant lots to farmland, but nothing very recent. Do you have any current information about this?
Thanks, Jared —
I have heard about urban farming projects in Detroit — there was a spate of stories about a year ago. This organization seems to have info and resources: http://www.detroitagriculture.org/GRP_Website/Home.html