Exploring the Michigan Central Station

For nearly the past 20 years, the Michigan Central Station located in downtown Detroit has not been used. It originally opened in 1913 and the last train pulled away from the station on January 6th, 1988. After this time the building has fallen apart, been fenced off, and used in such movies as The Island, Four Brothers, and the recently released Transformers.


Very recently, myself and two other individuals who had an urge to go exploring found ourselves scouting for a way in with the ultimate goal of making it to the roof. Through a small hole near the loading docks we were able to enter underneath the platform with flashlights in hand and make our way to the main building. After bypassing a cesspool, we made it into the main building and the true exploring started.



Once inside, it was obvious we weren't the first to walk through these halls. signs of graffiti, vandalism and humor in the form of a Mickey Mouse doll hanging from a noose in the main hall some 70 feet in the air. There were even signs of current inhabitants as we stumbled across jars of mayonnaise, containers of mustard and a bag of fairly new tortilla chips.


Floor by floor we slowly made or way to the roof. As the floors got higher, so did the decay of the building. There was not one fully intact window in the place and the wind passing through the building increased as the floor numbers increased. The higher floors showed more water damage than the lower ones and with each step we took we had to make sure we didn't fall through.


We were finally able to safely make it to the top floor, which was never used during the years the Michigan Central Station was operational and then eventually made it to the roof. Standing on the edge of the roof, I was able to overlook the skyline of Detroit with a sense of accomplishment.