Well, another year is gone, and so is more of our history.
Here is a look back at what we lost in 2005…
The Hotel Madison-Lenox fell for a nice parking lot.
Here it is absorbing water. Nice abatement.
A painful reminder of the preservation battle in Harmonie Park.
Over in Windsor the former Police Headquarters fell to make way for a parking lot.
As demolition progressed, the original 1921 bulding made an appearance.
We were also forced to spend the summer watching the hulking former Hotel Statler get hacked out of the Grand Circus Park Skyline, peice by peice.
Ever so slowly….
Down she came…
Until nothing remained, and the United Artists building became visible from Woodward.
It wasn’t all demolition, long time icons vanished as precursors to rehabilition. Farewell House of Nine!
After 101 years of service, Kwame closed the Belle Isle Aquarium.
Sometimes, clean-up efforts can make things look worse. For example the clean-up of the United Artists Building for the Superbowl.
Before
After
Before
After
Rivertown started to get scraped clean. Goodbye Soup Kitchen.
Goodbye Franklin Street.
A spectacular, suspicious fire during the summer months erased some Automotive history along Piquette Ave. as the former Studebaker Factory burned to the ground.
Fire aftermath.
The fire destroyed the entire block long former factory.
Hopefully 2006 will be a little less destructive.
that is the most depressing thing i’ve ever seen. i just don’t understand why the city of detroit just doesn’t hand over these buildings for cheap (or even free) to developers willing to preserve them! i love those buildings in detroit and it’s disheartening to see them fall apart like that. detroit would be a much more beautiful place if they were restored.
Well it’s a little more complicated than it looks. Just becasue a building is run down, doesn’t mean it has no owner. Take the Madison-Lenox Hotel and the United Artists Building as examples. These are both owned by Ilitch Holdings, a division of Olympia Entertainment, who own the Fox, Red Wings and Tigers. Both buildings tunred to shit under Ilitch’s ownership. The Madison Lenox is now extra parking for his Comerica Park, and the United Artists contains a theater that he has allowed to deteriorate as not to compete with the Fox. The Statler has been vacant since 1974 and was too weirdly shaped to make reuse viable.
Heck. In the midst of all this clearance I hadn’t even noticed that we lost the soup kitchen. In my own back yard as well! Geez!!
Thanks for the heads up.