ok, maybe these pic work for some, but it's just creepy for me.. like alien-meet-monsters kinda creepy.. makes me feel very trapped. guess thats what the photographers want maybe.

I just watched the latest episode of Detroit 1-8-7 and it was about the urban explorers that photograph the city's decay. Unique perspective from local characters.

Seriously? Why are we still talking about the decline of Detroit? Lots of amazing things have happened with a TON of these buildings, but people still love focusing on the "dilapidated shells". Go visit my hometown and you'll see these buildings don't signify anything for the people of the city, because more people have worked hard and turned so many of these buildings into amazing things.

This is a great documentary...they visit this building, too.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=joMysMDHdb4

There is a group from the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor is close to Detroit) has been doing photos like this, calling it urban archaeology. Darn if I can find that web page right now, though.

My sister and her family moved to the Detroit area about ten year back. The metro area is actually rather different than I thought it would be. One of the major problems Dave Bing, the relatively new mayor of the city, faces is that a massive percentage of the population has left the area. There are whole neighborhoods that are largely vacant and wide sections of former business or industrial areas that are lifeless. Driving through these areas, you get glimpses of what the city must have been like at its peak when it was the auto capital of the world. Amazing bits of architecture and artistic details. Grand scale things like you see in the photos above and little gems that you just happen to notice.

I'm glad the city now has a mayor who is honest (Bing is a huge improvement over Kwame Kilpatrick). They need to find a new economic base. The auto industry is still there in reduced form. The port is still active. They need something new, something to bring life back.

I couldn't agree more, radioriot!

In some ways painful to look at, but still, beautiful photographs of magnificent places.

That is so sad!

Agree with radioriot.

While it is legitimate to show the status of these buildings, it still perpetuates the myth that Detroit is one big, deserted city in ruins.

If anything, these photos should showcase what opportunities there are to reclaim and revive some of the nation's most beautiful architecture.

Well said, radioriot! Being from Detroit, I could not agree more.

my god those buildings are beautiful! i cant even imagine what they looked like in their hay day.

Although I find myself seduced, aesthetically speaking, by images of architectural ruins, I have to resist this continuing fetishization of Detroit. Here is a well-written counterpoint to the myth:

http://coilhouse.net/2011/01/detroit-thrives/

Yes, Detroit does live. There are GREAT restaurants there, from down home to fine dining. Wonderful cultural options, such as the Detroit Zoo and the Detroit Institute of the Arts. Astoria Pastry Shop is enough to elevate the city into the catagory of amazing.

The place is just in the middle of a rebirth or redefinition.

Yes! And I could eat at Slows BBQ every day of my life if there weren't horrible repercussions!

For me, it's not about the city the building is located in. I could care less about these being in Detroit or anywhere else. I love Urban Decay photos. UD always lends an air of mystery to places. It's like those scary movies when you get to a house and the food is on the dining table and nothing is in disarray, but everyone has disappeared. It fascinates us to think that something so ornate and seemingly infallible failed.

While these photos are beautiful in their own way, there are plenty of photographers IN the city who document the same thing. They just don't get big book deals.

Jim Griffioen, a resident of Detroit, did a terrific guide on the city for Design Sponge: http://www.designspongeonline.com/2010/11/detroit-design-guide.html

I find it much more pleasant to focus on those aspects of the city.

So hopefully one day we can all look back on this as the ultimate "before and after!"

These shots remind me of post-revolution photographs of St. Petersburg and Moscow. All that czarly excellence rotting.

I love to hear how real people -- not giant corporations -- are revitalizing at least parts of Detroit. Thanks for sharing, radioriot.

I don't care where a building is, it still makes me incredibly sad to see something so glorious fall into ruin. That's my amateur architect and historical building fetishist side shining through, though.

Some of those photos particuarly disappoint me because they are places I have ties to. My dad used to be in the trainstation every day when I was a little girl in the 80's. My grandma went to East Methodist Church for a while.

Gorwing up a bit outside of Detroit (though my dad worked downtown for a quite a while, and we have family on the east side), it was always been sad to see things going down and down. It's great to see the links radioriot gave us, I really want to see people caring about the city and bringing it back to what it used to be. I ended up fleeing the state after college since I couldn't find work, but I have great respect for people who stayed and are working on improvements. I hope someday I can go back and see the hope that was missing when I last lived in the area.

Some of those photos particuarly disappoint me because they are places I have ties to. My dad used to be in the trainstation every day when I was a little girl in the 80's. My grandma went to East Methodist Church for a while.

Gorwing up a bit outside of Detroit (though my dad worked downtown for a quite a while, and we have family on the east side), it was always been sad to see things going down and down. It's great to see the links radioriot gave us, I really want to see people caring about the city and bringing it back to what it used to be. I ended up fleeing the state after college since I couldn't find work, but I have great respect for people who stayed and are working on improvements. I hope someday I can go back and see the hope that was missing when I last lived in the area.

This is just fascinating to me! What I wouldn't give to be one of the photographers exploring these buildings!!

LovieDovie, you took the words right out of my mouth- the photos of the crumbling ballroom and the one with the trashed piano made me want to cry! What a sad end for such lovely spaces...

(snickers and darts eyes back and forth)
If i had access, i would take my hacksaw, flashlight, and tool kit and rescue the iron railings, cool lighting fixures and any other 'abandoned' metal goods I could find.
-architectural buzzard

Having never been to Detroit, it is good to get the scoop from the locals who have shared here in the comments, looking forward to watching that doc on You Tube in a minute.

The decay is just so strange to me in these photos. They look like they have been abandonded more like 100 years than 50 or 40... Strange.

I moved away from the Detroit area, and my family still lives there. I guess I have a vastly different perspective than some of the folks from there. Since the riots in the '60s, Detroit has never really regained it's former luster. In fact, it deteriorated for many years. Though there are revitalization efforts, they are largely misguided and at the expense of the city's rich history. The once gorgeous Hudson building was torn down after questionable research had been done (vague statements of it being too expensive to rehab, then when they tried to demolish it things went less than smoothly), without plans for what would go there. Finally, something was built, but it could have easily taken up one of the many abandoned lots or burned out shells that linger. A theater district was being created, so that's where they decided to plop new sports stadia, one of which was not really necessary and left yet another abandoned building.
While Detroit has a lot of potential, and a few gems, it was left in the hands of the incompetent for so long that it is a long road back to greatness. To blame this on the collapse of the auto industry in the face of recession is really not a fair assessment.
I guess I find these photos to resonate with my feelings of the city and the places I remember being too far gone.

Radioriot, right on. As a former Detroit, I'm sick of people bashing a great city. Makes you wonder why?

It's really sad to see these buildings decay like this, but it is interesting. It just feels like we are letting the best architecture this country has fall apart so we can build more crap out of cinder blocks. We don't have craftsman and tradesman like we used to. We can't make architecture like this anymore. I wish I could have visited Penn Station before it was demolished. I wasn't even born when it was torn down.

It's really sad to see these buildings decay like this, but it is interesting. It just feels like we are letting the best architecture this country has fall apart so we can build more crap out of cinder blocks. We don't have craftsman and tradesman like we used to. We can't make architecture like this anymore. I wish I could have visited Penn Station before it was demolished. I wasn't even born when it was torn down.

I love and hate this kind of thing. The overturned piano just got to me, though. Why couldn't someone have rescued it?

living in a suburb of metro detroit/ann arbor, I can attest to this. It's downtrodden and horribly sad to see, however; there are complete gems that are making a comeback. Slow's BBQ in Detroit is amazing, the area of WSU and the community college downtown is a lot safer than one would believe it to be, and the coffee shops/art supply stores are amazing. Like ALL cities, there are good and bad parts. I find Los Angeles' barrio/East Side to be more dirty in some areas than Detroit! [Having lived in both areas.] Also--When I traveled from MI to MA for a funeral, the cleanest bus station I was in [out of 10 of them] was in fact, Detroit. Sure. it's jacked up and gritty and just...Beyond hope in some places, but show me a city that isn't. People are working to do great things to Detroit. I'm looking forward to seeing where it is in the next 15 years or so.

These pictures are amazing, no doubt about that!

Raven1025 - I completely agree with you! I don't think Detroit is nearly the gem that some people are giving it credit for. Certainly there are places that aren't that bad, but I definitely don't think it will ever be the same place it used to be.

Terry in Silver Spring - I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but the Detroit Zoo is in Royal Oak, not Detroit. It also isn't that great of a zoo anyway and it's very dirty.

Heartbreaking. Poor buildings.

My Dad grew up in Detroit. I went to visit my Grandmother and we drove through all their old neighborhoods. It was heart breaking to see the house my grandmother grew up in boarded.....and has been since torn down. Driving along the interstate there are miles of what looks like war torn areas. It was so sad. But then we went to the Detroit Institute of Arts and the Henry Ford Museum. I realized there is so much potential in Detroit.