It ’s almost too perfect a picture of urban decay : an luxurious film palace turn hollow and empty into a parking wad . In recent decades , Detroit ’s Michigan Theater has become iconic for all the wrong grounds , but it ’s just been bought by a developer with programme to revitalize the building and , with it , a modest lump of Detroit .
The 4,000 - seat Michigan Theater opened in 1926 , when automobile money was pouring into Detroit and Hollywood had just entered its Golden Age . The four - story hall was appropriately lavish , with marble newspaper column and red velvet and crystal chandeliers . Decades passed . While the car industry in Detroit quit uprise , car culture did not . Lack of parking doomed the business at the massive theater . For a while , it was a club , the city ’s largest in fact . But in 1977 , the edifice ’s proprietor had gutted the construction andturned it into a parking spate .
paradigm citation : Ronnie Yip / Flickr
Image credit : Bill Pugliano / Getty Images
Our friend at Jalopnik have written a elaborate history of the Michigan Theater , the most dry detail of which is that the theater was built on top of Henry Ford ’s first workshop . You should read all about it over atJalopnik .
https://jalopnik.com/the-secret-of-the-classiest-parking-lot-of-all-time-5715589
But here , we ’re also concerned in the future of the Michigan Theater , which is see just a petty bright now . For years , what saved the theater ’s skeleton from complete demolition was simply that shoot it down would havedamaged an adjoining building . But in July , developers at the Boydell Groupbought it for an unrevealed amount .
According to the Huffington Post , Boydell hop to attract startup and entrepreneur to office space in the adjoining Michigan Building . Much of the place of the former theater will in reality remain a parking lot , but it will be renovated and used for events . They ’ll have some material to work with : although the grand old staircase is survive , parts of the upper balcony , the slate booth , proscenium archway , and even the curtain arestill around , albeit faded and cracked .
One potential use , which would have been unthinkable in 1926 , ishosting skateboard competitions . Just this weekend , the Michigan Theater parking lot wasturned into a temporary skate parkfor a national skateboarding competitions . It ’s a repurposing that nod to the infinite ’s history as both a theater of spectacle and a base parking lot .
The Michigan Theater has long been a symbolization of Detroit ’s faded glory . In the right script , it could perhaps become a symbol of its revitalization . [ Archdaily ]
All simulacrum courtesy ofPaul Hitz picture taking , unless otherwise credited .
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