Christmas in DETROIT
 

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Well done.

That is a sexy Midwestern city. Nice work.

nice work!

a haunting tour of Downtown Detroit's beautiful silent buildings

http://segaert.zenfolio.com/img/s1/v21/p328328342-5.jpg

God, I always lust over those pre-war highrises. nice job.

oh man, i have been waiting for a solid detroit thread...thank you...despite the condition it is in, the city is among my top 3 favorites. also, nice shots of the guarding building, prbly the most stunning work of art deco in the country (IMO). great song too

They certainly are sweet! Probably could use a good power washing to really make them shine, but I definitely agree about the pre-war highrises.

stunning. simply stunning.

and as others have mentioned, detroit's prewar sksyscraper stock really is amazing. in fact, after the the two biggies (NYC & chicago), i'm guesing that detroit might be no. 3 globally in terms of prewar highrises, both quantity & quality.

Great stuff. A Detroit thread that doesn't set out to be a grit/ruins fest but it shows it for what it is. Downtown Detroit is an amazing display of architecture. It looks in a lot of ways like a semi-deserted Manhattan, which for photo purposes, the lack of crowds is a good thing.

People think I'm crazy if I say I want to visit Detroit, but I do, and this displays why. I want to see this great city that America forgot.

Any thread that starts with Gil Scott Heron is going to be good - this one lived up to it.

As real and as hard as they come. No pics of Corktown, though?

Beautiful Photos! Detroit's a poor city but it has an incredibly rich architectural heritage.

Great photos. You captured the skyscrapers nicely. Especially love the angles caught of Book Tower:
http://segaert.zenfolio.com/img/s3/v26/p535969426-5.jpg

It's a shame though that even in the 6 years I lived close to Detroit, the city lost 3 very significant and large downtown buildings which are just windswept empty lots in the foreground in a few of your photos. At least 10 notable midrise structures were demoed, and two of those pre-war skyscrapers have closed down and become abandoned recently. It may not seem like a lot to someone from NYC, Chicago, Philly, SF, LA, but downtown Detroit is very compact, and the number of buildings can easily be counted. Detroit is at a critical moment where any further loses of vintage building stock may endanger the core's architectural value and aesthetics.

There were a few minor gains in the past couple of years, and one major being the Book-Cadillac renovation, but it seems like it has always been one step forward, two steps back for downtown. Hopefully more renovations will gain momentum such as the Broderick renovation. Downtown Detroit still has a lot of valuable building stock as you can see and can become well positioned to having a once-again vibrant downtown.

Epic.
...............

The Book Tower excites me in funny ways.

Great Pictures. thanks¡¡¡¡¡

the pope likes this.

the pope also misses the arcade bar.

I definitely have to agree with you here. I really wish and hope detroit sees much, much better days...

Great pictures! If I remember correctly, this is your first Detroit thread. Detroit has a ton of great older highrises; it's not a place that I'd like to live, but I'd like to walk around and see it some time.

Sometimes I have this urge to move to Detroit. It would probably be a terrible decision in most respects but it is a fantastic muse. It reminds me of home.

Little know fact, the building in the foreground is home to one of the last (and ever much active) existing Jewish congregations in the city proper: The Isaac Agree Downtown Synagogue. I think they are a Conservative congregation, but I'm not 100% sure.

Here's a recent article on the place, in fact.

Excellent work! This might be the best downtown Detroit series I've ever seen on this forum.

Awesome set flar! Made my morning :cheers:

Detroit is a beautiful city, much more so than it gets credit for. Great work.

As long as the buildings continue to stand, I have hope!

What an urban treasure chest!

Thanks for the informative comments Hayward and LMich.

I kept thinking that while I was walking around.


That's what I was trying for, to show the great architectural heritage of Downtown Detroit.


The song's about the Fermi nuclear accident, but the chorus applies and it was running through my head as I took the photos.


I can't bear to go over there since Tiger Stadium is gone...No, I stayed within the downtown area, which is boxed in by freeways. I didn't get a good shot from the Ren Cen either.


I've posted Detroit skyline photos before, but no tours. I used to go to Detroit quite a bit as a kid, but I've only been there a couple times since I moved away from the area in 1994.

Detroit is an extremely fascinating city and I'd love to explore more of it. It's really hard to believe how far Detroit has fallen, but it is (was) such a big city it still has a lot left. It's so sad to see the abandonment and empty lots, particularly in the residential neighbourhoods, to think of all the people whose old neighbourhoods are gone. I'd give almost anything to see Detroit in the 50's before the freeways were built. The number of homes and buildings demolished is simply staggering, and not confined to a few streets. It's literally hundreds and hundreds of blocks. Yet, there is still a city struggling to better itself despite the myriad problems that have intersected to put it in the situation it's in.

Damn fine thread! What's happening with the Book Tower? Anything? What a beautiful city.

What an incredible environment, full of such solid structures and elegance.

Conversion to apartment rentals

Photo of the original plans for Book Tower...the great depression only gave us the short tower instead of the 100 story one

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Source: Allposters.com

Fascinating. They used to say "What is good for GM is good for America". It makes me think of how great it would be for our entire nation to see this great city brought back to prominence. The decline is such a visible wound & the rebirth would an example to all of our struggling cities. "What is good for Detroit would be good for America".

In its day it must have been one hell of a city. I've only been once - to see a Tigers game - and I was both unnerved and impressed with what I saw.

Fantastic and depressing at the same time. :tup:

That made me dizzy. Hope you took a car.

oh hell yeah. makes me want to seriously go visit.

the observation deck shots especially give me a boner.

http://segaert.zenfolio.com/img/s3/v24/p297881634-5.jpg

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Amazing. Detroit is incredible.

Holy crap, amazing set!

Look at all those abandoned swimming pools!

Seriously...great stuff.

wow, i never knew downtown detroit was so beautiful! even in it's currently poor condition, i'm totally impressed. it would be amazing if this city could turn around.

Thanks for the comments!

Such an amazing history, I'm still thinking about Detroit over a week after my visit. Really anxious to make another trip to Detroit and explore some more areas, but I probably won't be down that way for quite a while.

Amazing photos. Did you turn off the lights when you left?

I like downtown so much I want to move it all down here to Philly.:D
No, Detroit has a great collection of Pre-War bldgs. My relatives there say that they hate Detroit. I say, "Why?"

I love this city, and I love these photos.

Detroit is like St. Louis's big brother.

Now that I think of it, you don't live in that region anymore, so Detroit is now a more exotic place to see from you. It's hard to believe that you didn't do any Detroit threads back when you were in the area, or closer than Ottawa. I'm assuming that you were in Wallaceburg for Christmas? Any other places that you stopped in while back home?

Magnificent flar.....empty streets and all!:tup:

Great pics! I enjoy seeing Detroit from a visitor's perspective. Sometimes they catch something residents miss.

I've wanted to photograph downtown Detroit for a long time, but usually when I go "back home" I have social and family obligations, so no time for photos. Downtown Detroit is only an hour from my parents' house if the ferry isn't too busy, so I was able to make a quick trip. Unfortunately I didn't get to visit anywhere else on this trip. Even when I lived in Hamilton, Detroit was a 3+ hour drive plus border crossing, a bit far for a daytrip.

Wow! Great photo tour. Detroit is my favourite American City. The architecture is amazing and the people are fantastic. Brush Park and Lafayette Park are my two of the areas I find most interesting.

Thanks for posting these! :)

Masterful. Having never been there myself, I really get a sense of the richness of that city's architecture and what it says about its former standing in the world of powerful cities. In a way, maybe its economic fortunes delayed what would otherwise have been ongoing redevelopment, with the loss of many more of those gems. It is eerie, though, to see such a big city so empty. In all your pictures I counted two pedestrians (both in Greektown!), did you do that on purpose?

The Fox Theatre - now that's a real sign.

Great work my friend. Always a pleasure to see what you shoot.