A visit to the former Packard automobile plant is de rigueur for any architectural historian or any lover of abandoned buildings. While Packard closed in 1956, the complex was never truly abandoned, as far as I could find, until 1999. As so often has happened, a manufacturing plant with an august history was relegated to…
Author: Chris Naffziger
Former Ford Piquette and Fisher Body Plants, Detroit
Henry Ford’s Piquette Avenue Plant remains one of the most important locations in industrial and consumer history, serving as the factory where the famous Model T, as well as a whole other alphabet or earlier prototypes were manufactured. While not the first place Ford operated, it is still of critical importance. Located north of downtown,…
Belle Isle, Detroit
As I drove onto Belle Isle, connected to the City of Detroit by the MacArthur Bridge, I blew by a small booth. Thinking I should stop after all, I backed up and talked to the woman and realized I had to pay $11 for the honor of driving my car around the park for around…
Woodlawn Cemetery, Detroit
Founded in 1895 on Woodward Avenue, Woodlawn Cemetery relieved pressure on the smaller cemeteries such as Elmwood or Mount Elliott cemeteries deeper into the city. It is big, clocking in at 140 acres, and is placed strategically close to the border with the suburbs. It is huge, and boasts over one hundred mausolea, which in…
Mount Elliott Cemetery, Detroit
For some reason, Mount Elliott Cemetery, part of a constellation of other cemeteries, no longer promotes itself as a Catholic burial ground, though it opened as one in 1841, making it the oldest in Detroit. It’s a beautiful cemetery, and I only discovered its existence when I noticed a barbed wire-topped fence on the eastern…
Elmwood Cemetery, Detroit
Created in 1849 in the same period as many other rural cemetery movement burial grounds were founded throughout America, Elmwood Cemetery was inspired by Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris, which we looked at back in October of 2022. It’s the oldest still existing non-denominational cemetery in Detroit, and it lies to the northeast of downtown…
Michigan Central Train Station, Detroit
The Michigan Central Station, after sitting vacant for decades and held hostage by a billionaire’s greed, has almost reached its opening day. Towering over the northwest end of Corktown and overlooking an expansive park planted with beautiful flowers that links it to Michigan Avenue and downtown, the station replaced a smaller depot deeper in the…
Corktown and Environs, Detroit
I was driving around in the Hubbard Farms and Mexicantown neighborhoods, and I snapped these photos. I also spotted the Michigan Central Terminal off in the distance; we’ll come back to it in a bit. But then I finally found what I was looking for, which is the Corktown neighborhood, which claims to be the…
North Brush Park and Eastern Market, Detroit
We head back south on Woodward Avenue to the 1888 Frank J. Hecker House, which sits on the northeast corner of East Ferry Street. Hecker was a partner of Charles Lang Freer, and together they made a fortune in their Peninsular Railroad Car Company. The house is based off Chenonceaux, which I visited last year….
Roman Catholic Cathedral of the Most Blessed Sacrament, Interior, Detroit
The staff graciously turned on the lights for me so I could photograph the interior of the cathedral, which was completed in 1930, several years after the church was consecrated. There were some renovations in the early millennium that are apparent as they look different than in a typical Gothic Revival cathedral. The stained glass…