№ 1913
Entry
The grand hall and lobby
Freedaily 8 a.m.–5 p.m.
No ticket needed, just walk in. Hours sometimes change for events.
06 / Story
How did a ruin become Detroit’s pride?
A fire opened it early, Houdini’s last journey started here, then it spent thirty years as the symbol of decline and Hollywood’s favorite ruin. Ford bought it in 2018 and gave it back to the city six years later. Ride the rails!
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A tunnel under the river
The Michigan Central Railway Tunnel opens under the Detroit River to Windsor, three years before the new station.
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A fire opens it early
On December 26 the old downtown depot burns, so at 5:20 p.m. that day the first train leaves the unfinished new station for Saginaw.
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Houdini’s last journey
Harry Houdini dies in Detroit on Halloween 1926; his casket leaves from here by train for New York.
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The peak years
More than 4,000 passengers a day, more than 3,000 people working in the tower, and troops shipping out for World War II.
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For sale, no takers
The New York Central offers it for $5 million, a third of what it cost. Nobody buys it.
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A national landmark
It joins the National Register of Historic Places, and Amtrak reopens the grand waiting room.
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The last train
In January Amtrak train No. 353 leaves for Chicago, and the station closes. It won’t reopen for thirty years.
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Scrappers and graffiti
The Moroun family’s company takes over the empty building as scrappers strip out the brass, marble and railings.
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Hollywood’s favorite ruin
Transformers shoots here, later Batman v Superman too; the ruin becomes the symbol of Detroit’s decline.
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Nearly demolished
City Council votes for emergency demolition, but a lawsuit stops it. The building survives.
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Ford buys it
Ford announces it has bought the station (for $90 million, it later emerges) and asks Detroiters to return stolen pieces, no questions asked.
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A message in a bottle
Plasterers find their 1913 predecessors’ note in a beer bottle near the ceiling.
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Newlab opens
The restored Book Depository next door opens as Newlab, the first big piece of the 30-acre campus.
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Open again!
On June 6 it reopens with a sold-out concert starring Diana Ross, Jack White and Big Sean, with Eminem as the surprise closer. Guided tours start in September.
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A hotel, and trains?
Hilton announces the NoMad Detroit hotel for floors 14–18, and the city starts a $40 million study of a new rail and bus hub beside the station.
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NoMad arrives
The roughly 180-room hotel is planned to open in the first half of the year, on tower floors that have never been used before.
Did you know?
The very first ticket sold here was paid for with a $20 gold piece.
The first “lost article” was a poodle named Tessie, found playing with the cab drivers on December 27, 1913.
In 2021 plasterers found a 1913 Stroh’s beer bottle near the ceiling, holding a note from the original plasterers, Dan Hogan and Geo Smith.
After Ford announced the purchase in 2018, someone anonymously returned a station clock stolen more than twenty years earlier, wrapped in moving blankets.
At the reopening concert Eminem performed “Houdini” live for the first time, at the very station Harry Houdini’s casket left from in 1926.
Restorers deliberately kept some graffiti from the abandoned years as part of the building’s story; the Graffiti Foyer, where tours start, is named for it.
The lost ticket-lobby clock was re-created from a blurry archival photo and one surviving dial fragment: about 6 feet tall and roughly 1,000 pounds.
During the work, crews found a sub-basement nobody knew existed, and filled it in to stabilize the building.
