The Hazards Of A Post-Ruin Detroit

  

    For several years now it has been the custom to hang black and white photographs of Detroit in its heyday on the walls of many new, and even established, restaurants and bars in the city.   The photos are so prevalent you'd think there was a factory churning them out somewhere.   Despite the unoriginality of this decor decision, the reasons for doing so are obvious: a nostalgic journey to the Utopian past,  a hopeful reminder of what was and, in extreme cases of optimism, what could be again.  The pictures represent Detroit's most relevant period on the world stage.  This period is unfortunately over but, as history dictates, one period simply leads to another. 

    Kindly referred to as the "post-industrial" era, Detroit has actually been in the Ruin Era for awhile now.  Fifteen years ago, in an issue of Metropolis magazine, the Chilean-born photographer Camilo Jose Vergara  made a proposal for downtown that "a dozen city blocks of pre-Depression skyscrapers be stabilized and left standing as ruins: an American Acropolis.  We could transform the nearly 100 troubled buildings into a grand national historic park of play and wonder."  Understandably this didn't go over well with Detroiters; it was indeed a stupid and insulting idea, but it was not entirely without substance.  To limit the ruin park to just downtown, in buildings which have since proven they could be restored, was to not embrace the appeal and potential of other, more spectacular ruins which exist throughout the city.  Most of which have no chance of ever being reused. 

    Vergara published his photographs of Detroit in his book "American Ruins" around the same time he wrote the Metropolis piece.  Since then the ruins of the city have been consistently documented on websites, in magazines and again in coffee table books; most recently by photographer Andrew Moore in his "Detroit Disassembled."   Moore is coming late to the party but still his photographs will add to the legend of the Ruin Era.  Because the ruins are constantly evolving, Moore's  Detroit is different than Vergara's.  And whether the city would like to admit it or not, and they most definitely do not, the ruins are also endlessly fascinating to the rest of the world. 

        The above photo was taken in Detroit's largest metaphor, the Packard Plant, a couple of weeks ago.  I submit it at the risk of engaging in the exploitation of Detroit's ruins.  I also submit it as an example of why Detroit should exploit its ruins.  To see this firsthand, to walk around a corner and be confronted by it, to walk up next to it and stand in awe of its majesty, and yes, to know that at any moment the rest of the ceiling could come down on your head, is an experience like no other.  It is as powerful as walking up to a Van Gogh painting in the Detroit Institute of Arts.  This is why, when visitors come to town, the first thing they want to see are ruins.  Like it or not, our ruins are the biggest tourist attraction we have.

    Detroit, because of its ruins, is often compared to Rome and Athens. And a safe bet has it that no one was ever elected to the city council of either of these cities under the platform of tearing down the Colosseum or Acropolis respectively.  So it often comes as a shock when you tell people that Detroit's city council voted to demolish the city's most popular ruin, Michigan Central Station.  Luckily this was last year and many of these council members have been voted out of office or, in one case sentenced to prison, although not for her train station vote.  That's right, they voted to tear down the first place every visitor asks to see and the next day  asks to see again.

    At the same time of the council vote, in April of last year, the Detroit Free Press wrote an amazingly naïve editorial which called for the razing of the depot; after all options had been exhausted of course.  All options, that is, except preserving it as a ruin.  The Free Press said: "For merchants and residents in Southwest Detroit, it's imperative that something be done.  Leaving the depot in ruin any longer hurts the neighborhood and the city." What's amazing is that the Free Press apparently doesn't know that the city's most undeniably successful restaurant, the one with the line out the door every day, is right across the street.  The empty station provides Slows Barbecue with one of the most unique backdrops of any restaurant in the world.  Yes, the world.

    It can only be assumed that the motive for the newspaper's stance was to pare down the competition in the ranking of the city's most popular ruins; thereby catapulting its former headquarters, the abandoned "Free Press Building" downtown, up the list in an unprecedented attempt to use a ruin as an advertisement.  Why else would they think that something which brings hundreds of people to a neighborhood every month is harmful? 

    Charge admission if you must, open up a gift shop if you must, but don't legislate and editorialize that something so unique should be destroyed like you're the Taliban confronting the Buddhas of Bamiyan.

    The Ruin Era seems to be waning a bit; already photos of ruins are showing up on the walls of some of the newer bars, and one day they may also depict a bygone time.  So as the city gets to work at diligently tearing down houses, schools, skyscrapers, factories, ballparks, and former homes of losing presidential hopefuls, it should be careful about what era comes next.  If plan B is farms and fallow fields it should be remembered that no one ever went out of their way to see the middle of Iowa, they only drove through it and said it was boring.