Rail Depot in Detroit to Shut After 75 Years

The stately Michigan Central Depot will close next week with the departure of its last passenger train after 75 years of serving thousands of people traveling to and from Detroit.

The train station’s enormous waiting room, with 68-foot-tall pillars, will fall silent after Amtrak train No. 353 leaves for Chicago at 11:40 a.m. Tuesday.

W. Hawkins Ferry, Detroit architectural historian, said that in its heyday, the Central Depot “symbolized the gateway to the city of Detroit and reminded people of the Roman Baths of Caracalla.”

Building Deteriorating

However, the 17-story building two miles from downtown has been deteriorating, and tenants have moved out. Conrail moved its 400 remaining employees to suburban Dearborn in October.

Amtrak passenger operations have been moved from unheated first-floor offices to a new, temporary facility next door.

The building was sold in December, 1985, to Great Lakes World Trade Center, a subsidiary of Kay Bee Corp. of New York.

Developers planned to turn the building and some adjacent real estate into a multimillion-dollar complex of offices, shopping plazas and parks that would attract development to the area.

Federal Grant Withdrawn

Early last year, the federal government withdrew a $3.25-million grant because insufficient progress was being made toward renovation of the building.

Detroit has two daily round-trip trains to Chicago--three on Friday through Sunday--and a daily round trip to Toledo.

Amtrak built a new station in Dearborn, six miles west of downtown Detroit, and served 90,907 passengers there in 1986, compared with 78,092 in 1985. The Central Depot handled 64,097 passengers in 1986, a drop from 82,408 the year before.

Brian Rosenwald, Amtrak’s Detroit regional supervisor, said before the agency could expect an increase in ridership at the station, the area between the Central Depot and downtown must be developed.