![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Jan. 28th, 2011 01:52 pmI've said for a long time that Michigan Central Station is the saddest building I know. Now, I'm not sure. Of course, both contenders for the title are in Detroit. *sighs*
I was looking at other people's pictures of Detroit yesterday and came once again upon the Michigan Theatre. Last time I was in Detroit, I stopped by the building a couple times hoping to get in, but the two different guards both told me to come back later, even after returning the second time at the time the first guard told me to come back. Later, I pondered whether I wasn't better off for not having seen a theatre in a state like that. It must be heart-breaking, I though.
But being back in the Detroit area, I felt a yearning once again to see the space. This time I tried doing some poking around online. Searches on combinations of the street address and building name and other bits turned up a company name that sounded promising; they might be a tenant in the building, at least. I called them up yesterday and got a nice woman named Wendy on the phone. She told me I could call tomorrow between some certain hours and she'd let the guard know I was coming and have him let me in. Success!
So today, I called ahead as requested and drove out to downtown Detroit. After finding parking by the GAR building like last time, I went into the building. The guard hadn't heard of me. I would have called Wendy again, but the guard let me in anyway, which I very much appreciated. I took the elevator up to the third floor, eventually found the right door, and stepped into the theatre.
The first thing I noticed about the space was the wind. Cold permeated the space, and the occasional gust in through the screened holes in the wall whipped the chill into my face and fingers. I stepped out onto the top parking deck and looked around. The space was big, but actually smaller than I expected. I'd thought a theatre that sat over 4000 people would be wider. I would have guessed a capacity of 2000. Of course, it's hard to tell with what little is left of where seats might have been.
I couldn't see the original auditorium floor of course. Concrete covered nearly the whole interior in a sheet about thirty feet up from ground level, with two more levels of parking below. To the right, a third of the proscenium arch peaked out above it, marking where a stage once was. To the left could be seen the top of the grand lobby with it's vaulted plaster arches, and above that there was a remnant sliver of balcony wide enough to hold five or six rows of seating. In the middle of that was a projection booth, with it's little square windows still facing outward toward the stage. Vintage glass exit signs were still in place above doorways that opened out onto a thirty foot drop to the parking lot. In the opening of the proscenium, tattered red curtain fragments hung down from behind the frame, and a lone baton, wire rope still neatly secured to it with cable clips, hung from the gridiron, far overhead.
Michigan Theatre Auditorium Ruins
© Stormdog 2011
I spent a while photographing the interior and ended up with about 75 shots. I'll get more of them posted sooner or later. I thought very, very hard about climbing the remaining staircase on the front of house side upward in the hope of finding a way onto what was left of the balcony, but in the end I decided there were too many people coming in and out of the garage for smoke-breaks to chance getting caught. (Of course, in retrospect, I wonder if they'd really care that much. I probably should have. I have to get braver about these things.) I did wish I could have gone down to ground level and looked more at what was the backstage area, but I was asked not to go down the ramps.
I don't know what else to say about the building I suppose. It was, as I expected, heart-breaking. But I'm glad I saw it. Other people have commented on the irony of this building's fate. The site is the spot where Henry Ford built his first automobile. Money from the automobile industry built this theatre, and in the end, it was destroyed to serve the very machines that created it. It's a far more direct symbol than most of the changing nature of Detroit, industry, culture, and the urban landscape in general.
I was looking at other people's pictures of Detroit yesterday and came once again upon the Michigan Theatre. Last time I was in Detroit, I stopped by the building a couple times hoping to get in, but the two different guards both told me to come back later, even after returning the second time at the time the first guard told me to come back. Later, I pondered whether I wasn't better off for not having seen a theatre in a state like that. It must be heart-breaking, I though.
But being back in the Detroit area, I felt a yearning once again to see the space. This time I tried doing some poking around online. Searches on combinations of the street address and building name and other bits turned up a company name that sounded promising; they might be a tenant in the building, at least. I called them up yesterday and got a nice woman named Wendy on the phone. She told me I could call tomorrow between some certain hours and she'd let the guard know I was coming and have him let me in. Success!
So today, I called ahead as requested and drove out to downtown Detroit. After finding parking by the GAR building like last time, I went into the building. The guard hadn't heard of me. I would have called Wendy again, but the guard let me in anyway, which I very much appreciated. I took the elevator up to the third floor, eventually found the right door, and stepped into the theatre.
The first thing I noticed about the space was the wind. Cold permeated the space, and the occasional gust in through the screened holes in the wall whipped the chill into my face and fingers. I stepped out onto the top parking deck and looked around. The space was big, but actually smaller than I expected. I'd thought a theatre that sat over 4000 people would be wider. I would have guessed a capacity of 2000. Of course, it's hard to tell with what little is left of where seats might have been.
I couldn't see the original auditorium floor of course. Concrete covered nearly the whole interior in a sheet about thirty feet up from ground level, with two more levels of parking below. To the right, a third of the proscenium arch peaked out above it, marking where a stage once was. To the left could be seen the top of the grand lobby with it's vaulted plaster arches, and above that there was a remnant sliver of balcony wide enough to hold five or six rows of seating. In the middle of that was a projection booth, with it's little square windows still facing outward toward the stage. Vintage glass exit signs were still in place above doorways that opened out onto a thirty foot drop to the parking lot. In the opening of the proscenium, tattered red curtain fragments hung down from behind the frame, and a lone baton, wire rope still neatly secured to it with cable clips, hung from the gridiron, far overhead.
Michigan Theatre Auditorium Ruins
© Stormdog 2011
I spent a while photographing the interior and ended up with about 75 shots. I'll get more of them posted sooner or later. I thought very, very hard about climbing the remaining staircase on the front of house side upward in the hope of finding a way onto what was left of the balcony, but in the end I decided there were too many people coming in and out of the garage for smoke-breaks to chance getting caught. (Of course, in retrospect, I wonder if they'd really care that much. I probably should have. I have to get braver about these things.) I did wish I could have gone down to ground level and looked more at what was the backstage area, but I was asked not to go down the ramps.
I don't know what else to say about the building I suppose. It was, as I expected, heart-breaking. But I'm glad I saw it. Other people have commented on the irony of this building's fate. The site is the spot where Henry Ford built his first automobile. Money from the automobile industry built this theatre, and in the end, it was destroyed to serve the very machines that created it. It's a far more direct symbol than most of the changing nature of Detroit, industry, culture, and the urban landscape in general.
