Where To Now?

Where To Now?, photo by Mike Lanzetta.

Mike took this photo yesterday at Michigan’s largest ruins, Michigan Central Station in Detroit. Check it out bigger in the Exposure.Detroit slideshow or in the MCS slideshow on Flickr.

Seeing this and other photos prompted me to look back in on TIME Magazine’s Assignment Detroit (?) to see what one of the nation’s largest media outlets was thinking about the future of Michigan’s largest city.

They have been exploring how people in the city are grappling with the profound challenges in Detroit including rising budget deficits in the face of soaring costs, reduced public services, unemployment and  also (according to Detroit Mayor Dave Bing) a failure by many to recognize just how serious the situation is. In many ways, these are the same issues that folks in other places in Michigan are dealing with.

One feature that caught my eye and that I really feel offers the kind of thinking that it will take to raise Michigan from its current depths is Can farming save Detroit?. They talk with Detroit businessman and millionaire John Hantz, who envisions:

A large-scale, for-profit agricultural enterprise, wholly contained within the city limits of Detroit. Hantz thinks farming could do his city a lot of good: restore big chunks of tax-delinquent, resource-draining urban blight to pastoral productivity; provide decent jobs with benefits; supply local markets and restaurants with fresh produce; attract tourists from all over the world; and — most important of all — stimulate development around the edges as the local land market tilts from stultifying abundance to something more like scarcity and investors move in. Hantz is willing to commit $30 million to the project. He’ll start with a pilot program this spring involving up to 50 acres on Detroit’s east side. “Out of the gates,” he says, “it’ll be the largest urban farm in the world.”

…But still there’s the problem of what to do with the city’s enormous amount of abandoned land, conservatively estimated at 40 square miles in a sprawling metropolis whose 139-square-mile footprint is easily bigger than San Francisco, Boston, and Manhattan combined. If you let it revert to nature, you abandon all hope of productive use. If you turn it over to parks and recreation, you add costs to an overburdened city government that can’t afford to teach its children, police its streets, or maintain the infrastructure it already has.

Faced with those facts, a growing number of policymakers and urban planners have begun to endorse farming as a solution. Former HUD secretary Henry Cisneros, now chairman of CityView, a private equity firm that invests in urban development, is familiar with Detroit’s land problem. He says he’s in favor of “other uses that engage human beings in their maintenance, such as urban agriculture.” After studying the city’s options at the request of civic leaders, the American Institute of Architects came to this conclusion in a recent report: “Detroit is particularly well suited to become a pioneer in urban agriculture at a commercial scale.”

Can you see the halls of massive ruins like Michigan Central Station, the Packard Plant or any of the countless other abandoned buildings across the state filled with green growth and warm light? Michigan is already a leader in agricultural diversity, producing an amazing array of crops. Rampant unemployment is a huge drain on our public services. Why not try and recover some of what we’re spending everywhere in Michigan by putting folks to work growing food and paying them in part in food?

Definitely check it out and offer your thoughts in the comments.

Michigan Central Station panoramic tour

Michigan Central Station, photo by jeanpierrelavoie.

Let’s go for a ride, shall we?

Chris Sebok sent me a link to this amazing panoramic walkthrough of Detroit’s Michigan Central Station by Montreal photographer Jean-Pierre Lavoie (part of his Detroit set). It’s an extremely cool walkthrough that you have to see to believe!

NOTE: There is sound on this so turn it down if you’re surfing on the sly!

Check out more on MCS from Michigan in Pictures.

Photos of Michigan Central Station

Michigan Central Station, photo by Grant Zoschnick Photography.

On Tuesday the Detroit City Council passed a resolution for expedited demolition of Michigan Central Station alias Michigan Central Depot alias MCS alias Detroit’s largest ruin.

David Kohrman’s Forgotten Detroit has tons of historical photos and a detailed history of Michigan Central Depot that begins:

When the old Michigan Central Depot burned on December 26, 1913 the still unfinished structure off of Michigan Ave. was called into service. Designed by noted hotel architects Warren & Wetmore and engineers Reed and Stem, the MCS was an exceptionally beautiful building. The style of choice was beaux-arts neoclassical. Flanking massive arched windows were pairs of Corinthian columns, a hallmark of the style. Inside the rooms were modeled after an ancient Roman bathhouse, particularly the massive main waiting room. With an impressive vaulted ceiling this room was the most imposing in the building.

All Aboard: A Retrospective of the M.C.S. is a fantastic look at Michigan Central Station as it was in 1973 and as it is now. Be sure to check this one out.

Michigan Central Station on Wikipedia notes that the building was designed by the Warren & Wetmore and Reed and Stem firms who also designed New York City’s Grand Central Terminal.

Here’s the Michigan Central Station slideshow on Flickr. In Exposure Detroit, many of the photographers whose work is featured in that slideshow are discussing the city council’s vote and how to save MCS and the Save Michigan Central Station Group.

You might also like Detroit’s Michigan Central Station from Michigan in Pictures and watch this great old video on YouTube.

Be sure to check Grant’s photo out bigger and see more of his shots from Michigan Central Station (slideshow).

UPDATE (April 14): Heather Pennington has cool post titled Save Michigan Central Station in which she has some photos and eloquently wonders:

There is much debate on what should be done with this amazing structure. What cannot be debated is the fact that there are countless other structures that are “dangerous, open to the elements, and open to trespassers”. There are so many houses, and former businesses that are abandoned and burned that should be torn down for the safey of the city. The Detroit Fire Department lost one of its own last year when Walter Harris died after the roof of a charred vacant house collapsed on him (read article from Fire Rescue 1 here). Why???

Wouldn’t it cost less than $3.6M (that the city does not have) to demolish vacant and burned homes?

Let’s take some time to clean up the rest of the city; make it safe for all that live, work, and play here. And in the meantime, let’s try to find a reasonable fate for Michigan Central Station.

Detroit’s Michigan Central Station

The introduction to Detroit’s Michigan Central Station says the Michigan Central Station was designed by Warren & Wetmore and Reed & Stem, the firms who were the architects of New York’s Grand Central Station. It opened in 1913, and by the time this 1921 photograph (above) was taken, the Beaux Art ideal had been reached. The unique road configuration leading up to the Michigan Central, as well as the fine ambiance Roosevelt Park contributed to the scene, reveals itself to be absolutely necessary to complete the designers’ vision. (Courtesy of Manning Brothers Historical Photographic Collection)

By 1967 the main waiting room (right, click for larger view) was closed to travelers and used merely for storage; it is difficult to conceive of these splendid benches being relegated to use as a mere shelving system. Hanging on by a thread, the Michigan Central continued to operate without its restaurant or even the main park entrance. (Dave Jordano, Courtesy of the Burton Historical Collection)

In case you’re wondering, here’s a photo of the waiting room in its current state and here’s another.

The photos and captions are reprinted with permission from Detroit’s Michigan Central Station by Kelli B Kavanaugh. In addition to some history on Michigan Central Station and great old photos of the station and activity, the book includes some floorplans of MCS. It’s available from the publisher online at www.arcadiapublishing.com or by calling 888-313-2665.

View other excerpts from Arcadia Publishing’s Michigan books at Michigan in Pictures and also be sure to check out MCS 7.2.7: Transformers co-star Michigan Central Station on Absolute Michigan for more photos and some great videos too!!

Endless Columns

Endless Columns, photo by Allan M.

Allan writes:

The details on the MCS are amazing, especially considering that they were placed where most people would never see them. It was done simply for the sake of art.

The Michigan Central Depot opened in 1913. It closed in January 1987, as Amtrak decided that the station was too large for their operations, and too costly to maintain. It went through many owners, until it ended up in the hands of local businessman Manny Moroun. Manny owns the Ambassador Bridge, as well as the train station and a large amount of land in Southwest Detroit.

Read more and/or check out his Michigan Central Depot photo set. Allan is also involved with UrbanPlanet.org, a great forum for discussion of the cities of Michigan, the US and the world.