2024-09-16
10 分钟Mandy Sinclair explores the story of a disused rail station in the car capital of the US, which has been given a new lease of life by the automobile giant that calls Detroit home. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Perhaps it makes sense that Michigan Central Station, a train stop in a city and state so synonymous with the car, had spent 30 years of its life derelict and disused.
What may be surprising, though, is that it was the Ford Motor Company, Michigan's famous automobile manufacturers, that brought this historic train station back to life.
You're listening to Tall Stories, a Monocle production brought to you by the team behind the Urbanist.
I'm Andrew Tuck.
In this episode, Mandy Sinclair unpacks the history of Michigan Central Station and explores the facility's new mixed use personality.
When I was last here at Michigan Central Station in Detroit, the Beaux Arts building retained an element of grandeur.
Despite being surrounded by barbed wire fencing, not having any windows in the 18 story tower above, the exterior fixtures had been largely removed, and there was little movement on the vast plot of land surrounding the once grand train station.
That was in 2015.
The building's original architects, Warren and Wetmore and Reid and Stem, also designed New York City's Grand Central Station, with construction starting at the Detroit site in 1910.
And in 1913, when the doors to Michigan Central Station in Detroit opened, it was touted as one of America's most spectacular transportation hubs, with up to 4,000 passengers making their way through the station on a daily basis.
But following years of declining interest in rail travel, the last train left the station on January 5, 1988, and the station was shuttered.
Over the years, it became a place for graffiti artists to leave their mark, DJ sets and parties that weren't exactly sanctioned.
And as the building open to the elements deteriorated further, its future started to look bleak.
I met with Dan Austin from Michigan Central Station during the last weekend of summer at the station, an event held on weekends since the station reopened in June, with up to 8,000 people per day queuing up to step inside and preview the newly restored station and relive its history.
This building means so much to so many people.
It had been a symbol of Detroit's decline for more than a generation, for like 40 years.
And to take that symbol of decline, disinvestment, the downfall of Detroit, as some might say, and turn it into a symbol of Detroit's rebirth and reed and statement as a leader in innovation, it's an incredibly powerful message.
And that's not even taking into account all of the people whose families arrived in Detroit at the station to come work in Henry Ford's auto factory.
Construction started on the station in 1910.
Detroit had about 465,000 people, far fewer than it has even today, 10 years later.