Still in Detroit

People have been calling Detroit "the motor city" or "Motown" for years, as along with Henry Ford most car companies were based there - Ford, Studebaker Packard Motors, Fisher Body Plant, Uniroyal Tire Plant, Chrysler's Dodge Main complex, & General Motors Cadillac Plant. Now after its heyday these buildings are abandoned, taken-over or demolished.

The remains of Henry Ford's Model T Automobile Plant. Built in 1909, it once produced 1000 "Tin Lizzies" a day. In its last days of vehicle manufacturing, it produced Ford tractors. It ceased production in the 1970's, and is now a shopping mall.

The immensity of the Packard Motors ruin site defies photography. This panoramic image shows only about twenty per cent of the site, from across one of the huge parking lots that was once filled by cars of its employees. Partially torn down in 2000, a law suit has held up its full demolition.

It wasn't just the manufacturing industry that suffered in Detroit.

The lavish Michigan Theater, capable of seating 4050 people. The demise of this once mighty movie theater arose, in large part, from its inability to compete with the newly emerging suburban movie theaters and their acres of free parking. So now its auditorium is itself a carpark.

Even the humble library building succumb...

The Magnus Butzel Branch Library (demolished May 1998) serviced a bygone neighbourhood in an area of Detroit known as Poletown after the Polish immigrants who populated it and supplied the labour for the Dodge company.

The collapsing six story section of the J. L. Hudson Department store during its 1998 implosion.

These photos and more at http://www.detroityes.com/news/071014/601pics/101.htm