The (750-)Million Dollar Baby
This is the Michigan Central Station. It's a historic train station near downtown Detroit.
This beautiful Beaux-Arts style building was built in 1912-1913, and opened in 1914. It remained open until 1988. After that, we watched it deteriorate each day, month, year and decade, ending in ruins, the model of Detroit "architecture porn." The buildings should have been condemned and destroyed, but Ford Motor Company had another idea.
Ford Motor coughed up $90 million in 2018 to purchase the building, then spent another $740 million (probably a lot more) to rehabilitate this striking building to its former glory, reopening as a mixed-use office complex in late 2024. We all rejoiced (literally) to see it again, and to witness the uplifting effect on the City, and the entire region.
The (750-)Million Dollar Baby
This is the Michigan Central Station. It's a historic train station near downtown Detroit.
This beautiful Beaux-Arts style building was built in 1912-1913, and opened in 1914. It remained open until 1988. After that, we watched it deteriorate each day, month, year and decade, ending in ruins, the model of Detroit "architecture porn." The buildings should have been condemned and destroyed, but Ford Motor Company had another idea.
Ford Motor coughed up $90 million in 2018 to purchase the building, then spent another $740 million (probably a lot more) to rehabilitate this striking building to its former glory, reopening as a mixed-use office complex in late 2024. We all rejoiced (literally) to see it again, and to witness the uplifting effect on the City, and the entire region.