August 22th - Day 6

Detroit.

           It was a very good thing that I visited Gary before coming to Detroit, for if I had not I would have surely been paralyzed with awe. Never in my life have I ever seen a large city in such a state of decay. Nearly every building shows some sort of neglect and nearly every street is missing people. The downtown is somewhat lively during working hours but after 5:30, you could shoot a bullet down the sidewalk and hit no-one. Detroit is victim of de-industrialization, deep racism and poor planning which makes for good exploring.

            Finding abandoned buildings is not the hard part, its determining which one has interesting features without a guide that becomes the hard part. It took about an hour of driving & knit picking to find a suitable target that would warm me up to exploring in Motown. There were two buildings “left” with the boiler house and factory space on the north side while a warehouse sat on the south side of the property. There was not much left of anything in any of the buildings and the sole highlight was the burnt out Grand Am in the factory space.

              I was not too sure where to drive and find locations so I randomly picked a direction and choose to follow it. It turns out that I picked correctly for as I passed by Ambassador Bridge there stood my true love, Michigan Central Terminal. At 18 stories, its breath taking architecture and absence of windows or any up-keep makes it stick out like an elephant in a wheat field. Although there was a large population of homeless people in the park adjacent to the Terminal I was more worried about Detroit Police seeing me sneak into the building (the homeless don’t phone the police anyways). Nonetheless [insert action for entry] and made it in without being seen by anyone who actually cared enough to phone the police.

            Once inside I went completely numb with awe and amazement. The architectural treasure that is held inside the granite walls is rich in detail and size. If its architect’s wanted to give people a sense of the power the mighty railroad and city of Detroit had they had certainly accomplished it. Beneath the large and sprawling arches I felt belittled and only as a small cog in the wheel.

There were two massive rooms on the main floor that were divided by a long hallway running in an east-west direction. The north room was the entrance way and as a result, was designed to impress. This is where one can find large arches and huge open space. The south room is similar in length to its northern counterpart but is much narrower and has a ceiling composed of backward V and parallel skylights.

After taking an abundant amount of pictures I decided to head up the stairs and explore the upper floors. On the second floor was a vast ruin; shattered marble was strewn about the floor leaving only a small portion of the floor visible. I zigzagged my way up the floors traveling from the east stairwell to the west stairwell in order to see the entirety of each floor. Aside from some minor structural differences the next 16 floors were essentially the same. The eighteenth floor however was completely different for time had completely ripped it to shreds. All that remained on the floor were odd pieces of debris and concrete support columns that holds what remains of this building up.

            Entry to the roof was obtained by going up the stairwell located on the 18^th floor and it offered an amazing view of downtown Detroit and the surrounding city. Unfortunately the piece of Chicago Deep Dish pizza I ate (which was from the same deep dish I had bought previously in Chicago) wanted out and was starting to crown. There was no paper so I could not take a dump off the roof as I wanted to do.  With my butt checks forcibly closed I ran down the 18 flights of stairs to my car and drove to the nearest service station in the nick of time.

            With my bowels cleaned out I decided to head out to Highland Park. However before I stumbled upon the Sex Education High School (the name will make sense if you continue to read on). The final tardy bell rang sometime in 2004 although the building’s condition made it appear that the school had closed more than a decade ago. Much of the school’s contents remained including all of the machinery in the industrial arts rooms which occupied two floors. Many of the classrooms were empty as their contents were strewn about into the adjacent hallways. To my surprise four vending machines and a piano were still intact in the lunch room on the third floor (though I suspect that they will not last there for much longer).

My exploration was going relatively well until I was on the first floor and following the signs to the fallout shelter. On the second floor I could hear intermittent footsteps accompanied by a regular thumping sound. This however did not stop my exploration and I went to check out the fallout shelter. Several minutes passed by and after being disappointed by the fallout shelter I began to snoop through documents when I heard the loudest scream I have ever heard. Not wanting to see what was going on I decided it was time to leave and find Fisher.

It was not hard to find the white six story hulk of a building known as Fisher Body Plant 21 and surprisingly, entry was absurdly easy. The first floor was rather dull save for the amazing calcium stalactites that hung from the ceiling in a graceful manner. Fortunately the second floor brought more interesting machinery, particularly the long orange hood that stretched for 400 feet. But to be honest, I was quite disappointed by the building until I reached the fifth floor painting and drying area. Amazingly the rails that led pieces to be dried were still intact along with the accompanying drying lights. The roof did not interest me much so I decided to head back to the car.

I was getting hungry and my daily cheese needs had not been met so I ventured in the city of Highland Park to find some grub. As I drove around to find my daily dairy requirement the blighted scenery reminded me a lot of the Dominican Republic, particularly by the freeway. One image that continues to stick in my mind was seeing a group of children walking down a dusty road, a large empty lot on one side and a jungle of decay on the other. If I didn’t know that I was in Michigan, I could have sworn that I was in Santiago.

After getting my daily dose of dairy products I set off in search of abandonment’s which seemed to be everywhere. There was one however that stuck out, a storefront church that I called the Highland Sanctuary. From its exterior the church appeared to have been built in the late eighties and the brickwork in the front entrance showed it. The sanctuary showed evidence of having at one time a tin ceiling, an ornament that would not have surely been used in the eighties. However there was not much else to go on as the roof had long ago collapsed and any sign of civility had long passed. I was not in any particular mood to be falling through floors so I did not attempt to try and climb up to the balcony and decided instead to head to the warehouse beside Michigan Central Station.

Like many of the buildings here in Detroit entry was boringly easy and I made it into the building without having to climb. The first floor of the warehouse was quite clean and void of any sort of debris so after taking a picture of the kickass circular chute leading into the basement I headed up to the second floor. The only plausible words that can be used to describe the second floor is a craptacular spectacle. It literally looked like a tornado had come through the building. Everywhere as far as the building reached papers and other various items covered the floor. The highlight of the floor however was the gigantic seven foot mountain of paper that greeted me right out of the stairwell hallway.

While taking pictures of the war zone I was approached by a man who said his name was Steve. Apparently Steve was homeless by choice and said that he had been living in this building for more than a year. He did such a good job concealing it though that I could not tell anyone squatted in the building. As we continued to talk he showed me up to the third floor treating me like some suburban punk as opposed to an explorer. (As if I did not know that the stairwell continued up).

It did not matter how I was being treated because when I saw the garden growing before me I became completely enamored. Where the skylight had once been trees and plants now flourished as if the building was not here to hinder its progress. To see nature reclaiming a building in the middle of a “bustling” metropolis was truly humbling. By the time I finished sifting through the old world maps and books it was getting dark so I said goodbye to Steve and headed back to the motel to get some rest for the next day.

Back at the motel the phone was not working so I had to once again search for a payphone. The only problem was that the one I used previously was gone and the one across the street was missing its receiver. Fifteen minutes later I finally found a payphone and got a hold of EatsTooMuchJam. It turns out he had arrived in Detroit that same day so we decided on a meet up the next day at around noonish.