Halloween is fast approaching, and while Sarah Palin and The Joker costumes fly off the shelves, haunted houses are popping up in parking lots and fairgrounds across the nation.
There is no need, however, for such construction projects to take place within our fair city, for we have the world’s largest haunted house: The Abandoned Train Station.
Located on Michigan Avenue and at one time known as Michigan Central Station, The Abandoned Train Station (henceforth referred the ATS) is a fantastically grim looking building. So grim, it should be noted, that it was used as a backdrop for the equally grim Micheal Bay movie “Transformers.”
Dwarfing the other buildings in surrounding Corktown, the ATS sits on an empty and overgrown lot with a fence around a tight perimeter. The building is littered with trash and covered in graffiti. This, however, prevents thrill seekers from making their way inside. Its elegant façade and ghostliness make for an intriguing and, dare I say, inviting contrast.
As Old Tiger Stadium, a perfectly viable and functioning ballpark, is being shorn apart by a mechanized wrecking crew, the ATS, a shell of a building for which it seems Death himself has busted out every single window, continues to stand. After some careful reflection, the fuzzy logic behind Detroit’s uneven refurbishment becomes painfully clear: Detroit’s heritage is failure and neglect, and the ATS is its greatest symbol.
Until city leaders decide to take the wrecking ball to where it’s most needed, our city will remain congested with the architecture of the dead. There are a hundred buildings in the same sorry state as the ATS, but not all look so cartoonishly derelict that they demand to have giant CGI robots fight on top of them.
Happy Halloween.
