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At the corner of Michigan Avenue and 18th Street stands a structure that attests to rise, ruin, and possible rebirth in Detroit. Michigan Central Station, built in 1913, was the vision of architects Whitney Warren and Charles Whetmore. Once a flourishing hub, the station has long stood abandoned to elements of nature and humanity. Yet, even in decay, the structure still imbues the city with its grandeur. While architectural ruin is prominent in Detroit, Michigan Central Station remains the most visible example. References to the historically important building are found in the works of authors who strive for realism in their depictions of the city.

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In Harriette Arnow's The Dollmaker, Michigan Central is a pivotal setting of the story in which the protagonist, Gertie (arriving from the hills of Kentucky) is overwhelmed by the hustle of the modern urban environment:

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Gertie had no time to think of where she went or why. The press of people so hurried her up the long steel ramp that Cassie, clinging to her coattail, screamed with fright. Though she already had two split baskets on one arm and Amos on the other, she tried to pick up the child, but could not bend among the pushing, tightly packed bodies. (156)

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Arnow poignantly depicts the sight and sounds of the train station: "Then overheard, like thunder speaking unknown tongues, voices boomed" (158). Separated from their mother, Gertie's children stand "on a bench, looking at her over the heads of the people" (157). The massive depot is not necessarily a place of comfort: "Gertie's feet were cold on the dirty cement floor, puddled with snow water. Gusts of cold from opening doors hit her legs and went up her dress tail like wandering icicles"(158). While the experience for the family in Arnow's novel is unpleasant, the reference to a once bustling train station is evidence that Detroit once was a destination.

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The characters in Joyce Carol Oates's Them also see Detroit as a destination. Set in the 1950s and 1960's, Oates' story of a dysfunctional family reflects the state of the city. Arriving by bus, Loretta Wendell and her two children found that "getting to Detroit was not easy. They began entering a city and kept entering it..." (71). The family eventually settles in the shadow of Detroit Central Station, but not before they are displaced from their first home which is slated for demolition: "They moved from the house on twentieth street to another like it on a street named Labrosse, still in the same neighborhood but closer now to Tiger Stadium and not far from the New York Central railroad terminal, a great gothic building with hundreds of windows" (116-117). 

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Desdemona and Lefty Stephanides, the matriarch and patriarch of the Detroit Greek family at the center of Jeffrey Eugenides’s Middlesex, arrive at the Michigan Central station in 1922. Although the novel identifies the station by the name of the city’s downtown train station, “Grand Trunk, the building described—“now a ruin of spectacular dimensions” (83)—is clearly the Michigan Central Station.

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A photograph from Kelli Kavanaugh's book, Images of America: Detroit's Michigan Central Station captures the scene from Oates's book. Taken in 1932, the picture shows the proximity of the train station to the Corktown neighborhood (35).

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Under the ownership of Matty Maroun, Michigan Central Station long stood waiting; a subject of controversy. Photojournalist Camilo Jose Vergara writes: "If you are down and out or mentally ill, this is a place to buy tickets to nowhere, to draw angels or write graffiti to pace, to stay out of the rain and wind. More than any other derelict space I've seen, this fine neoclassical structure says, 'We were once a great city'" (214).

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Detroit poet Ella Singer responds to the ruin in her poem, "15th and Dalzelle Streets."

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 at the corner of fifteenth and Dalzell streets                                                                                                

stands the old union train station                                                                                                                 

now abandoned;                                                                                                                                             

each shattered window                                                                                                                                         

a broken dream                                                                                                                                            

corinthian columns stand ancient graceful                                                                                                      

flanking corridors no longer crowded                                                                                                         

now dark                                                                                                                                                          

now dank                                                                                                                                                           

now dangerous....                                                                                                                                                   

the marble walls have become                                                                                                                            

the canvas of urban artists                                                                                                                              

the receptacle of poets prattle                                                                                                         

abandoned building                                                                                                                                      

standing mute                                                                                                                                                     

as a still life waiting... (Boyd and Liebler 338-9)

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The work of these authors attests to the historical importance of Michigan Central Station.                 

 

Postscript: In 2018, the Ford Motor Company purchased the station from Mr. Maroun and is restoring it to become the center of a new Corktown campus with a focus on autonomous vehicle research and development.  John Gallagher’s November 18, 2019 Detroit Free Press article provides a progress report. 

 

Maggie Burbo graduated with an English major from Marygrove College in 2002 after completing her senior seminar project on ruin in Detroit poetry. After receiving an MA in special education at Oakland University, she taught for many years in the Austin Texas Independent School District.

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Works Cited

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Boyd, Melba Joyce and M.S. Liebler, eds. Abandon Automobile: Detroit City Poetry 2001. Wayne State University Press, 2001.

Eugenides, Jeffrey. Middlesex. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2002.

Gallagher, John. “Things Are Still Raw inside Michigan Central Station, but Progress Is Happening.”

Detroit Free Press 18 Nov. 2019, https://www.freep.com/story/money/business/john-gallagher/2019/11/18/michigan-central-station-detroit-train-depot/4229592002/. Accessed January 2020. 

Kavanaugh, Kelli B. Images of America: Detroit's Michigan Central Station. Arcadia, 2001.

Oates, Joyce Carol. Them. Fawcett Crest, 1969.

Vergara, Camilo Jose. The New American Ghetto. Rutgers University Press, 1999.

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Photos by Anna Fedor (2003)

First posted in 2003, updated in January 2020

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