The Michigan Theater

[Ryan]

This is a bit off-topic perhaps, but I had to post it... The Michigan Theater was built in 1926 and represented the grand city of Detroit and it's dedication to the arts....
To read the rest of this blog entry from The Garage Journal, click here.

[bimmer1980]

That is pretty impressive looking!!

[ratdoggy]

Google the " Fabulous ruins of Detroit".

[1948]

detroit is such a sad story... what could have been and was.....=/

[KPSquared]

Seems it was built on the original site of of Henry Ford’s first workshop. . . the irony is so thick here. Those images are amazing, but pretty much capture America's self destruction to a tee. . .

[Zeke]

You should write a book. Sign me up for a copy.

[Rich H.]

http://www.detroityes.com/home.htm

[bams50]

As a car guy to my very DNA, I have naturally been fascinated with Detroit, although I have never been there.

Check out this haunting site. In particular, go through the "St. Cyril's" story. This site always leaves me deeply moved:

http://forgottendetroit.com/

[rattlesnakehoey]

Sadly it heralds the end of another of history's great dynasties.

[oilslick]

Google Detroiturbex This guy has an awesome site. I love looking at detroit and cant help being dumbfounded by all of the great things that were and never will be again. I believe it went from 2million to 800k population now.

[softailgarage]

Somebody posted this video link earlier in the week, google search "requiem for detroit". It touches briefly on this theater and the rest of the "ruins".

[Joe B.]

Junk4dummies, I really enjoyed that post. Thanks

[junk4dummies]

Originally Posted by Joe B.

Junk4dummies, I really enjoyed that post. Thanks

It was a great time in American history.
I would ride my bike 2 1/4 miles to the hobby shop and buy slot cars and race on thier huge track. I told mom where I was going and no one ever worried. Let a sixth grader do that now days. I still have my Pitman and Stormbecker cars and all the fancy wheels chasies etc. I even have my track.

Wednesdays was lady's day at Tiger Stadium. I would skip school and go to the ball game. It was 50 cents to get in on Wednesdays which was Ladies day. I would walk by Greens barber collage. It was a 2 story barber collage. They gave the bums hair cuts on the second floor and then the general public on the first. Hair cuts when I was a kid were 15 cents. Skip was the owners son who was about 30 back then. He always gave me a hard candy. Yes I got to sin in the owners box many a time but I never asked. The buss fiar or kids was 15 cents with a nickle transfer.

My father whould drive out to Royal Oak to where we lived when I was little.That was long before seat belts. We would go on Sunday moring to the Kepliner bakery. SP? The bread was baked on Sunday morning. It came down on rollers. There was a little window before the wrapping machine. If the loaf was (Damaged) deformed the man would pull it. The hot rasen bread was so good to eat on the way home. It was only 5 cents a loaf. Yes you read that right. Gas was 16.9 and the car was a blue 1952 Ford.
I still ate a huge lunch when we got home.

The Greenfield museum in Dearborn is still a great place for cars, machinery, trains and Edisons Lab.

Henery Fort, Harvey Firestone and Edison camped all over the US and were life long frineds.

When we were littel we took field trips town to the Ford foundry on the River. At one time Ford had the worlds largest privately owned railroad.
I rememeber looking over the cat walk as and thinking how hot it was. It was fantastic to see the sheets of steel running back and forth through the rollers.

They had the Ford Rodunda which they moved from the worlds fair. At Christmas it had the worlds best animated Christmas displays. It burned in 62I still have programs and booklets about the building.

The beautiful architecture in Detroit is what inspired me to become an architect later in life.

Olympia Stadium on Grandriver was just 6 miles on the buss. I watched Gordy How Play hocky. I watched Norman Cash and All Kline play ball.
Those were the good old days and I would give anyting to have them back.
The older I get the more I live in the past.

I had the best of two worlds. My grand father had a farm in Indiana and I got in all the farm life form milking cows to gathering eggs. My E ticket on the farm was unhooking the windmill and holding onto the handle as a little boy. I would ride it up and down the short distance on the cam swing.

I would take a branch, stirng aling with a safty pin and walk a half mile to the creek and go fishing. We got our drinking water form the well outside with a hand pump. We even had a two seater out house. I put my first set of point in my grandfathers old Lawnboy reel to reel mower when I was 10. no one showed me how. It ran great. We had a couple of horses and a few sheep. It was a picture picture farm. Then I would go back to Detroit and my perfect city life.

I know many people say no one live like Believe it to Beiver and all the other TV Shows. Yes there were millions of us who grew up with mom at home and no strife at home. One would have though the TV shows were about my life.

Damn, how I hate the change.

[Norcal]

I have spent a lot of time looking at sites showing the decaying buildings of Detriot, sad that grand buildings have fallen in such a state.

Detroit is not the only place w/ decaying structures, Google "Dixie Square Mall" to see America's most (in)famous "Dead Mall".

http://www.lmgtfy.com/?q=Dixie+Square+Mall

[Frank The Plumber]

This is because we live in a disposable society. We respect nothing that is. We think we can just reproduce it at a later date. We want hot new and modern. We can plow under the next farm field, start a new town or city and leave the old one for the lesser fortunate people. Or so we like to think so. The same reason most people have more stuff in plastic tubs in their basements waiting to be tossed out after they die than any other society on the planet X 10. Detroit is a syndrome, not just a city. It's a trend towards a reality check, the first to fall. We really need to react to it, there are a lot of citys right there with it, like leaves waiting for a bit of wind to blow them down.

[I void warranties]

Originally Posted by Frank The Plumber

This is because we live in a disposable society. We respect nothing that is. We think we can just reproduce it at a later date. We want hot new and modern. We can plow under the next farm field, start a new town or city and leave the old one for the lesser fortunate people. Or so we like to think so. The same reason most people have more stuff in plastic tubs in their basements waiting to be tossed out after they die than any other society on the planet X 10. Detroit is a syndrome, not just a city. It's a trend towards a reality check, the first to fall. We really need to react to it, there are a lot of citys right there with it, like leaves waiting for a bit of wind to blow them down.

frank i agree with you, enough is never enough... then we set it aside.

[Lippyp]

I saw this last year when a couple of the specialist american car mags carried different versions of the same review of the new Camaro, very sad to see such decay. Do you not have any kind of listing system for historic buildings to protect them over there?

[Cobra Jet]

Even protected or historic buildings eventually get bulldozed and destroyed after years and years of no one doing anything with those buildings. Cash (and corruption) is king, enough of it can buy or destroy ANYTHING, whether it's protected or not.

The sad thing is, these buildings, true works of art of the past, all built with merely nothing more but creative minds, hands and hand tools of the time, can never, ever be recreated to the grandeur they once were. Once they are gone, the history is gone with them. Some only remain as a figment in an older picture of what they once were, or in current digital format to show nothing but a degraded, disrespected shell of their former glory.

Some of you should google up images of Camden NJ (both past and present) - which is essentially like a mini-Detroit - suffers the same plight and degradation of ignorance, corruption and flight of the people - leaving nothing more than a shadow of it's former self, with destruction littering it's streets.


I'm always seraching for images online of ghost towns, abandoned towns, etc, as the architecture from those eras is something to gawk at and admire - even when there's nothing more than a gutted structure, it still has some glory left to it for those of us here to witness what's left.

[junk4dummies]

Originally Posted by Lippyp

I saw this last year when a couple of the specialist american car mags carried different versions of the same review of the new Camaro, very sad to see such decay. Do you not have any kind of listing system for historic buildings to protect them over there?

To answer your question..
Yes we do. Most places are protected. If they are owned by governments local, state, or Federal they are protected under those laws. If they are in private hands there is very little one can do.

Detroit and Chicago are so corrupt that there is such a disregard for laws it would not matter what was protected.

The problem is the culture that moved in. Detroit has 4 million people living in the surounding area. The problem is that it is not safe to go into detroit, day or night. There is the bottom line for the decay. No one supports anything in the city because they do not go there. The buildings fall empty and just fall in. What does not fall in is destroyed by those who live there.

It is the same reason eveyone left Detroit. They did not want to live with the eliments and culture that took over the city. It is not hard to understand.

Property taxes are still out of site. You can buy a very nice home there for $15,000. Less than the price of a car. You can buy homes in the best neighborhoods for 50 grand. Anywhere else in the country the house would be 5 to 10 time the price.

Pontiac foot ball stadium was in Pontiac north of Detroit. The stadium was empty and it sold for $100,000. along with several hundred acres. Yes you read it right. 100 grand for a pro football stadium, parking, land and all.

There are wealthy areas around Detroit that are nicer than most of the country. Detroit has a problem but there is still money there. The problem is the high business tax and that the cost of public and union retirement funds can not be supported. They never could be. The dung has hit the wall all across the nation. The public worker now makes about twice what his counter part in the private sectore makes when it comes to pay and life time benifits. There is no more money to tax and give away. Before the influx of foreign cars they could pass on all the cost of union demands onto the public because there was no competitoin. The public had no choice.

I left Michigan in January of 1972 when gas was 19.9 cents per gallon and tomato soup was 6 cents a can. I did not think twice about leaving the city I loved. I moved to the Seattle area before moving to California. I hate California. It is wall to wall people with no common sense. LOL Thank goodness I have a farm in Indiana.

Detroit only has a 25 percent highschool graduation rate. I know all about the school system there. My father was a highschool principle in Detroit. He retired in 1972. Now the best High School in the city has been closed. It is not even in the bad part of the city. It is out on the edge of the city. It is so bad the state will not help Detroit pay thier bills. Liberalism sure works doesn't it. It creats poverty buy taking away the incentive to work. So much for LBJ's great society.

[bams50]

Originally Posted by junk4dummies

To answer your question..
Yes we do. Most places are protected. If they are owned by governments local, state, or Federal they are protected under those laws. If they are in private hands there is very little one can do.

Detroit and Chicago are so corrupt that there is such a disregard for laws it would not matter what was protected.

The problem is the culture that moved in. Detroit has 4 million people living in the surounding area. The problem is that it is not safe to go into detroit, day or night. There is the bottom line for the decay. No one supports anything in the city because they do not go there. The buildings fall empty and just fall in. What does not fall in is destroyed by those who live there.

It is the same reason eveyone left Detroit. They did not want to live with the eliments and culture that took over the city. It is not hard to understand.

Property taxes are still out of site. You can buy a very nice home there for $15,000. Less than the price of a car. You can buy homes in the best neighborhoods for 50 grand. Anywhere else in the country the house would be 5 to 10 time the price.

Pontiac foot ball stadium was in Pontiac north of Detroit. The stadium was empty and it sold for $100,000. along with several hundred acres. Yes you read it right. 100 grand for a pro football stadium, parking, land and all.

There are wealthy areas around Detroit that are nicer than most of the country. Detroit has a problem but there is still money there. The problem is the high business tax and that the cost of public and union retirement funds can not be supported. They never could be. The dung has hit the wall all across the nation. The public worker now makes about twice what his counter part in the private sectore makes when it comes to pay and life time benifits. There is no more money to tax and give away. Before the influx of foreign cars they could pass on all the cost of union demands onto the public because there was no competitoin. The public had no choice.

I left Michigan in January of 1972 when gas was 19.9 cents per gallon and tomato soup was 6 cents a can. I did not think twice about leaving the city I loved. I moved to the Seattle area before moving to California. I hate California. It is wall to wall people with no common sense. LOL Thank goodness I have a farm in Indiana.

Detroit only has a 25 percent highschool graduation rate. I know all about the school system there. My father was a highschool principle in Detroit. He retired in 1972. Now the best High School in the city has been closed. It is not even in the bad part of the city. It is out on the edge of the city. It is so bad the state will not help Detroit pay thier bills. Liberalism sure works doesn't it. It creats poverty buy taking away the incentive to work. So much for LBJ's great society.

Brilliant post; and, sadly, dead on. Thanks for taking the time to post it.

Watch out. With that kind of clear thinking you're liable to run out of CA on a rail. Or a Prius.