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Michigan Central Station PART I of IV


wolverine

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I was daydreaming yesterday and had a fun thought. This building would be a perfect location for a "scary" movie? I mean really Hollywood spends more money than I can even write in here per year for great locations...could you get anymore picturesque for a thriller? Just stipulate that the building is theirs for as long as they want/need it as long as when their done proceeds go to the refurbishment of the building??? Just thought I would share :blush:

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Yeah but it was for a movie.  So its exceptable, right?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

It would be if they filled them back in, with them being open it creates more deterioration.

Not to mention the crew burned up city streets, caused traffic problems, opened up an abandoned building, and left weird fruitty graffiti on MCS, United Artists, and the Statler.

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Yes, but the movie production company paid to use the building, and it wasn't cheap. So what was damaged will be paid for plus more. The money is supposed to go toward the renovation, although with the city's spending habits, I doubt MCS will even see a dime.

I'm not really concerned about the windows, other than they were really cool to photograph. Most of what we care about in MCS can withstand 10 more years of neglect and weathering.

There's a few things I was actually kind of happy with though. The movie crew really cleaned up the floors of the building making some of the shots even more interesting. You'll notice this when the future pictures come.

If you want SNWEB, the windows removed are still stacked in a room somewhere in the tower, I forgot where. Perhaps you can put them back in for us when you go back :P

The next installment is coming. Don't worry, I haven't forgotten, I've just been busy with work and all.

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  • 1 month later...

Just thought I'd let you guys know I haven't forgotten about the future parts of this tour. There was some issues with U of M's servers and being able to get my stuff uploaded. I haven't cleaned my server space in 2 years and there was over 7 GB of "junk" piled up on the /~ifmuth main directory and was staring to bog eveyrthing down. I've done some house cleaning, so I should be able to update this thread as well as my Ann Arbor Photo of the Day thread as soon as I get my images resized.

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Just thought I'd let you guys know I haven't forgotten about the future parts of this tour.  There was some issues with U of M's servers and being able to get my stuff uploaded.  I haven't cleaned my server space in 2 years and there was over 7 GB of "junk" piled up on the /~ifmuth main directory and was staring to bog eveyrthing down.  I've done some house cleaning, so I should be able to update this thread as well as my Ann Arbor Photo of the Day thread as soon as I get my images resized.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Glad to hear that...I have anxiously been awaiting more photos of this station. :)

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I don't mind if you post yours. Although I am currently resizing mine. I would expect part 2 tonight or tomorrow morning. I'm kind of cringing looking at these photos I took with my 3 year old digital camera when I just got a new one. Don't be suprised if this thread gets augmented by parts 5-8 someday. ^_^

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Wow, these are great shots Wolverine! I especially liked these two:

mcs014.jpg

mcs011.jpg

Does that staircase curve all the way down, and is that gold or copper plating under that grime, I wonder? I can definitely see some of the influences of all of the "Grand Central Stations" or Union Stations around the country. Keep em coming!

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LOL, it's funny you picked the bluriest two as your favorite. Anyway, I'm not really sure what the stairway is made of. It actually doesn't curve all the way down, just to the landing only. It then is a straight shot down to the basement. It was kind of strange that this stairway was very open to the basement below. It's a different case at GCS in Manhattan, but with MCS, the basement was primarily used for utility purposes. Although my photos really don't show it, the basement of MCS was very nice at one time .

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LOL, it's funny you picked the bluriest two as your favorite.  Anyway, I'm not really sure what the stairway is made of.  It actually doesn't curve all the way down, just to the landing only.  It then is a straight shot down to the basement.  It was kind of strange that this stairway was very open to the basement below.  It's a different case at GCS in Manhattan, but with MCS, the basement was primarily used for utility purposes.  Although my photos really don't show it, the basement of MCS was very nice at one time .

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I didn't notice that they were that blurry. It's probably more the subject matter and the angles. Just think, after it is returned to its glory someday, they might use your photos when they show before and after shots :P

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The Island turned out to be a pretty sweet movie. Pure eye candy throughout. It was pretty cool seeing MCS in the flick as well as other parts of Detroit. I was going to share what exactly I saw but I thought it would be more enjoyable to see for yourself.

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Yeah we were just minding our own business on the roof. Just chilling. And we hear the helicopter but don't think anything of it, probably just a traffic copter. And then it is suddenly over our heads. It was scary as hell. We ran down the stairwell in the dark and got to the bottom floor, and as you know it is basically transparent, so we can see the cop cars circleing. So we are running, the four of us, around the first floor trying to avoid being seen. We get to our entrance and my friend sticks his head out... he pulls it back just as fast, a cop car drove by. After that we each left and walked calmly to our car without being seen. Such an adreneline rush.

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Haha, luckily you got out without being caught.

I guess this all could be a good and a bad thing. It's fortunate you didn't get caught, but the level of security on MCS has plummeted so that many people are visiting the station without a care. The workers and people nearby see people go in and out all the time, but don't care since people are only going in too take photos. From what I've studied in older photos of the station, much of the damage and vandalism was done prior to the building being closed off. You used to be able to legally walk inside right from the park. There were no signs, no barricades, nothing saying you couldn't be in there. That was when marble started getting removed from the walls, and eventually smashed. Some of the grafitti shows dates of earlier than 2000 on the brick walls where marble paneling once was which is an obvious sign. It's evident that the station is not being vandalized anymore which is great. Most of the grafitti is washing away off the walls, and for scavengers, there isn't anything left to take. The only problem the station has facing it is weather damage which is the worst of all. That's my guess why there isn't so much concern from the authorities about people going in anymore. It's evident the only people going in are taking photos, which is fine as long as no one gets hurt. When I visited the station a few days ago to take some of the more recent photos in the second portion, there were a ton of people inside all taking photos. Everyone was very respectful and responsible and left everything where it was.

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The Island turned out to be a pretty sweet movie.  Pure eye candy throughout.  It was pretty cool seeing MCS in the flick as well as other parts of Detroit.  I was going to share what exactly I saw but I thought it would be more enjoyable to see for yourself.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Ya, it was a good movie, but they could've tried to erase the steve yzerman mural on the computer :)

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  • 2 weeks later...

So there I was last Sunday sitting in traffic at the end of the Ambassador and staring right at MCS when I noticed something I have never noticed before. The building isn't symetrical! When looking at the front / rear of the building, one side of the building has 4 columns of windows, while the other has 3 columns. See.

mcs024.jpg

I've seen the building so many times, but never noticed this probably because you just expect something like that to be symetrical. Maybe because of the realatively large distance between them, you're not drawn to view both of them together. Imagine the Dime or Penobscot with a side having an extra row of windows, it just wouldn't look right.

It looks like there is a smoke stack or something coming out of the larger, but would have thought they would have made the other side to match. I don't know much about archtitecture, but that would make sense to me.

Does any one have any idea to why they did this?

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You know, I never noticed that either, even after visiting this building several times! But your guesses about the smokestack are likely correct. There are also an extra set of elevators on that side of the building that I actually didn't notice until my last visit. That part of the building is more the "utility side" despite the other side having most of the elevators. The floorplan of the whole building is also very assymetrical as well. As beautiful as it is, there some really messed up spacial and design qualities of it.

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