Michigan Central Station was the tallest rail facility in the world when it opened in 1913. But the decline in train travel led to decades of decay and abandonment.
Credit: Jason Keen/Sarah Schumacher for Bloomberg
Detroit’s Michigan Central Is the Building Revival Story of 2024
Once a sign of the city’s stagnation, the long-vacant former train station is now a symbol of its revival — after a six-year restoration that cost almost $1 billion.
At 11:40 am on January 5, 1988, Amtrak train number 353 pulled out of Michigan Central Station on its way west to Chicago. It was the last time a passenger train would serve the towering Beaux-Arts structure in Detroit’s Corktown neighborhood. Thirty-six years later, the Ford Motor Company has brought the long-vacant building back to life as a place where there are no trains to catch but plenty of economic and social connections to be made.
Following a nearly six-year restoration process that cost just under $1 billion, Michigan Central, which once stood as a symbol of Detroit’s fall from prosperity, is now a sign of the city’s resurgence. The 640,000-square-foot structure, which first opened in December 1913, officially reopened on June 6, with a nationally televised concert and open house tours to commemorate the event. But in many ways, the transformation is only beginning, and other US cities with their own abandoned train stations are watching.