Photos of Michigan Central Station

Posted on by Michigan in Pictures

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.

The Big Dance

Posted on by farlane

The Big Dance, photo by A Dubs

The Motor City hosts the Final Four this weekend – tune in to what’s happening via Detroit Final Four on Flickr and at the 2009 Final Four web site. This is part of Alan’s Faded Detroit – City Wide set (slideshow).

Have a great weekend and Go State!*

*sorry for the double dose of Spartan fandom, but you have to support your alma mater.

Detroit’s Lafayette Building to meet the wrecking ball

Posted on by farlane

Towering Sections, photo by SNWEB.ORG Photography, LLC.

Yesterday Crain’s Detroit reported that the Detroit Economic Growth Corp. has issued a request for proposals to demolish the Lafayette Building. The building has been vacant for 12 years and although numerous people have explored renovating it, none decided to go through with it. Once concern with demolition is that American Coney Island and Lafayette Coney Island both abut the Lafayette building (photo).

Over on Flickr, southofbloor writes:

The Lafayette bldg is an early skyscraper at the corner of Lafayette and Shelby in downtown Detroit, stretching to Michigan Ave. It was built in 1923, and closed a few years ago, just in time for the Book-Cadillac Hotel to open up. The abandoned building is one of a few in town designed by C. Howard Crane, a remarkable theatre architect, and the plan of the building is one of those spectacular charcteristics unique to Detroit, sort of modified wedge shaped triangular flatiron, crowned with a great classical cornice.

You can get more at Wikipedia’s Lafayette Building entry, Emporis.com and at Skyscraper page. Here’s a link to the Lafayette Building on Absolute Michigan’s Map of Michigan.

SNWEB has some more photos of the Lafayette Building (slideshow). See a bunch more photos in this Flickr slideshow for the Lafayette Building in Detroit including a cool angle from Allan M and this gorgeous photo of the cornice by dropsheet.

Memorial for the 1971 Port Huron Water Tunnel Explosion

Posted on by Michigan in Pictures

"TUNNEL DISASTER"

“TUNNEL DISASTER”, photo by uthomie7264.

I got all excited that the 60,000th photo had been added to the Absolute Michigan pool on Flickr, but when I researched it, I found that there’s a terrible tragedy associated with it. The Detroit News relates that the events of December 11th, 1971 that resulted in the deaths of 22 workers.

Construction of the tunnel had begun in the spring of 1968 and was plagued by controversy, mishaps and plan changes from the start. The tunnel was to go five miles under the lake off Port Huron through bedrock to access fresh water for metropolitan Detroit. It was to be capable from the beginning of pumping 400 million gallons of pure drinking water per day to a thirsty Detroit, later expanding to 1.2 billion gallons to meet the demands of a rapidly growing area. The $120-million project was only three weeks from completion at the time of the blast.

“I don’t remember much about the explosion,” said one of the survivors, Richard Green, then 27. “I thought an air line broke, but it pushed the hell out of me. It seemed like a bomb. I was on top of the form (for concrete pouring) and the next thing I knew I was flying through the air.”

You can read more about the Memorial for the 1971 Water Tunnel Explosion from the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department and more about the sculpture from sculptor Paula Slater’s web site.

Be sure to check this photo out bigger too!

Remembering Detroit Pistons owner Bill Davidson

Posted on by Michigan in Pictures

The Real Fab Five

The Real Fab Five, photo by Dave Hogg.

For any successful organization or business, you have to have integrity, and you have to make everything as straightforward as you can make it.
~Detroit Pistons owner William Davidson

Sometimes when I don’t know what I’m going to post on Michigan in Pictures, it’s a happy thing. Other days, like today, it’s not.

Last night we lost a man who has done as much as anyone to bring athletic excellence to the Palace and the state of Michigan. On his photo from December of 2005, Dave wrote “These five guys have brought a lot of joy to the Motor City in the last 18 months.” I think that Detroit Pistons owner William “Bill” Davidson certainly merits consideration as a sixth man.

bill-davidson-detroit-pistons1William Morse Davidson was born on December 5, 1922 in Detroit. He played football in the Navy during World War II and was a member of the track-and-field team at the University of Michigan, where he majored in business, following it up with a law degree from Wayne State in 1949. He eventually transformed the family business, the Guardian Glass Co., into Guardian Industries, one of the world’s largest manufacturers of architectural and automotive glass.

From William Davidson’s Wikipedia entry, I learned that Davidson was only the second owner the Pistons have ever had and that his name is on the Palace floor along with Piston legends who all played during his tenure: Dave Bing, Bob Lanier, Bill Laimbeer, Vinnie Johnson, Chuck Daly, Joe Dumars and Isiah Thomas. The Detroit Pistons web site tells the story of his involvement with the Pistons and the WNBA’s Detroit Shock:

Mr. Davidson owned the Pistons since 1974 and won three NBA Championships (1989, 1990, 2004), three WNBA Championships (2004, 2006, 2008) and one NHL Championship (2004). He became the first owner in sports history to win championships in three different professional sports leagues during the 2003-04 calendar year (NBA – Detroit Pistons, NHL – Tampa Bay Lightning and WNBA – Detroit Shock). In September 2008, Davidson’s contributions to the game of basketball were honored when he was officially enshrined into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame.

In 1988-89, the Pistons began play in The Palace of Auburn Hills, a state-of-the-art arena built with Davidson’s financial support: a privately-financed facility, which when combined with the Pistons, formed the foundation of his entertainment business.

…The Pistons have played in the postseason in 19 of the past 25 years, including 11 of the past 13 seasons. Davidson acquired the Detroit Pistons in 1974 from the late Fred Zollner, the man who founded the team in Fort Wayne, Indiana in the 1940s. With a franchise-record seven straight seasons of recording 50 or more wins, the Pistons have won 384 regular season games (.669 wining percentage) since 2001, including a franchise-record 63 wins in 2005-06. The club has compiled 73 playoff wins in that same span and made six consecutive trips to the Eastern Conference Finals for the first time in franchise history. Detroit has won six Central Division titles in the last seven seasons and nine overall since 1987-88. Only the San Antonio Spurs have won more division titles in the same 20-year span.

The Detroit Shock joined the Washington Mystics as the first two expansion teams in the WNBA in 1998 and the team was an immediate success in the upstart league. The Shock have won three championships since their inception (2004, 2006, 2008) and set a WNBA attendance record (22,076) in Game 3 of the 2004 WNBA Finals while also becoming the first team since 1890 to go from the worst team in a professional sports league to the best team.

The Detroit Free Press has a nice article on Bill Davidson that tells more of how Davidson presided over the transformation of a team that was “basically a laughingstock” into one that has won 3 championships and appeared in the post-season far more often than not. You probably will be happiest, however, with Mitch Albom’s September 2008 interview with Bill Davidson. They also have a nice photo gallery as does the Detroit News (the second photo in the gallery is great!)

Be sure to check the above photo out bigger and see more great work from Dave in his Your Favorites slideshow.

More Detroit Pistons from Michigan in Pictures.

I’ll take the Luck of the Irish over Friday the 13th!

Posted on by Michigan in Pictures

cheese

cheese, photo by n.elle.

I suppose I should have dug out a photo of a black cat or a broken mirror, but I think that I’d rather rely on a little Leprechaunish luck to carry us through the day.

Royal Oak, Michigan

Posted on by Michigan in Pictures

Royal Oak, Michigan

Royal Oak, Michigan, photo by paulhitz.

Be sure to check Paul’s photo out bigger and see more of Royal Oak photos in his slideshow. You can also check out about 400 more Royal Oak photos from the Absolute Michigan pool.

On their History page, the City of Royal Oak explains that:

In 1819, Michigan Gov. Lewis Cass and several companions set out on an exploration of Michigan territory to disprove land surveyors’ claims that the territory was swampy and uninhabitable. The beginning of their journey seemed to support those claims until they reached a desirable area of higher ground near the intersections of Main, Rochester and Crooks Roads. Here they encountered a stately oak tree with a trunk considerably wider than most other oaks. Its large branches reminded Cass of the legend of the royal oak tree, under which King Charles II of England took sanctuary from enemy forces in 1660. Cass and his companions christened the tree, the “Royal Oak.” And so Royal Oak received its name.

As early as 1891, when Royal Oak was a small village, there were only a few hundred residents. In the 10-year span from 1900 to 1910 the population grew to over 1,000. By the time Royal Oak was incorporated as a city in 1921, the population had exploded to over 6,000. This was due in large part to new jobs created by the booming auto industry. The development of the super highway, Woodward Avenue, led to greater population expansion. Woodward Avenue replaced the old Indian road, Saginaw Trail, as the connection between Detroit, Pontiac, Flint and Saginaw, making Royal Oak more accessible. Today, the 28-mile Woodward Avenue (M-1), bridging 10 communities from the Detroit River north to downtown Pontiac, holds the honorary designation of Michigan Heritage Route. The designation was awarded because of the historical and cultural significance of some 350 sites along Woodward Avenue, including 42 historic churches.

You can get tons more great Royal Oak history & historic photos from Historic Royal Oak by Dr. David G. Penney.

Wikipedia’s Royal Oak entry says that as of 2000, the city had a total population of 60,062, making it Michigan’s 18th largest city. Michigan in Pictures has a lot of photos that involve Royal Oak (apparently there’s some sort of Photographic Guild that exhibits there).

Check out Royal Oak on Absolute Michigan’s Michigan Map.

Play Ball! Detroit Tiger tickets on sale today!

Posted on by Michigan in Pictures

Comerica Park

Comerica Park, photo by Mario.Q.

Tickets for the Detroit Tigers’ 2009 regular season home games at Comerica Park go on sale today (March 7) at 10 AM. Opening Day tickets are available – there’s a four ticket per person limit on Opening Day tickets. To get your tickets, head over to the Detroit Tigers web site. There’s a great Tiger highlight video there but I wonder why they’re saying “don’t miss Miguel Cabrera and company in action at Comerica Park” on the site. Placido? Magglio? Carlos? Did I miss something?

Check out Mario’s Detroit Tigers photos (slideshow) – like this one they’re all uploaded wallpapery delicious! Also have a look at the Tigers’ baseball show from the Absolute Michigan pool.

And oh yeah: GO TIGERS!

Ignited

Posted on by Michigan in Pictures

Ignited

Ignited, photo by Jesse Speelman.

Be sure to check out this photo larger and in Jesse’s Portfolio set (slideshow).

Hope your weekend is at least this much fun.

Your Diet Is About To Meet Its Nemesis (or why it’s called Fat Tuesday in Detroit)

Posted on by Michigan in Pictures

Your Diet Is About To Meet It's Nemesis ( or why it's called Fat Tuesday in Detroit )

Your Diet Is About To Meet It’s Nemesis ( or why it’s called Fat Tuesday in Detroit ), photo by Derek Farr ( DetroitDerek ).

Derek was kind enough to basically write Michigan in Pictures for me today. I will use the extra time to eat Paczkis. He writes:

Meet the Paczki, a 400 calorie deep-fried Polish Treat enjoyed in Detroit every year around this time. Much larger than a bismarck or jelly donut (about 2 times the filling), they are filled with fruit or custard and lines for this treat, traditionally sold/eaten on Fat Tuesday, can start 24 hours in advance in Polish suburbs of Detroit such as Hamtramck. Hamtramck is the only city that has a Paczki Day Parade every year, although the day is also celebrated in Chicago, Milwaukee, and South Bend. New Orleans celebrates it on a Thursday.

The good news is I got mine ( some places run out quick ) and they’re Raspberry and they’re delicious. The bad news? I thought TODAY was Fat Tuesday, so now I have to eat 6 of these AND eat some more next week when it’s actually Fat Tuesday. Argh.

Dive into the history of the paczki from the Hamtramck web site and get 1000% of the USRDA of Paczki over at Absolute Michigan … and happy Fat Tuesday to you all!