Detroit’s newest attraction without a doubt is the newly-refurbished Michigan Central Station. However, this 18-story-high building has never been out of the public’s sight.
Many Polish Americans have their own memories of the station, either as a place of employment or a place where journeys began or ended.
Since its inception at the beginning of the last century, the scale of the project, the cathedral-like design of the station, and the hopes for what it would do for the city, were nothing but grand.
When the train station was closed in 1988, the building, which also housed offices, restaurants and shops, gradually fell into disrepair. Soon it became a fitting symbol of the wide-spread devastation and neglect of the city, a city that struggled with depopulation and urban blight, and got attention as a perfect example of “ruin porn”, which Detroit became known for. Many amateur photographers as well as professional filming crews used Michigan Central as a backdrop, graffiti were painted on the walls, while people helped themselves to the station’s décor, and vandals had a go at it.
Thirty years later, Ford Motor Company which once, by providing affordable automobiles and good wages, contributed to the station’s decline, bought the building and decided to renovate it and turn it, together with the surrounding area, into a technological and cultural hub. It remains to be seen if it will also serve as a train station once again.
The magnificent building officially reopened to the public on June 6 of this year, and once again, the grandeur and the hopes are there, as they were over 110 years ago.
The beautifully restored interiors on the first floor of the building (which is really three stories high), present the history of the building and the history of its restoration, as well as a succinct history of the city itself. Not many people might know, for instance, that before Detroit became the automotive capital of the world, it was known for stove manufacturing and then for cigar production.
The stories are told with the help of photographs, while a separate room is filled with larger-than-life-size portraits of people connected in some way with the building, accompanied by a short description of the connection. Among them is a photo of Bill Ford Jr., executive chairman of the Ford Motor Company, which reportedly spent $90 million on the purchase and a few times that amount on the renovations.
The history timeline that constitutes the main part of the exhibition, and runs the length of the main hall, mentions immigrants, among them Poles and Germans, and their essential contributions which made Detroit grow and prosper.
Michigan Central Station is located in the Irish-founded Corktown, on Detroit’s West Side, very close to old Polish neighborhoods.
As Laurie Gomulka, vice president and executive director of the West Side Detroit Polish American Historical Society (WSDPAHS) tells us, many Polish Americans who lived on the west side worked in the building.
One of them was Frances Walczak, who worked there for 37 years. According to the 2014 recollections of her son, Richard Walczak, who wrote them for the WSDPAHS newsletter, his mother started working there as a cleaning lady in 1947, then worked as an elevator operator and later performed a variety of jobs. This last period of her employment Richard describes as follows: “Later, when the railroad started hitting hard times and losing money, the company tried to downsize by letting people go. My mom by that time had enough seniority that she could ‘bump’ someone with less seniority and take their position in the company. This led to some jobs that were not common for women at that time. She worked as a baggage handler; counted and inventoried freight cars in the rail yards at various points around Michigan; drove engineers to various locations to pick up a train or bring them back to the depot; and whatever else they could throw at her. As she got closer to retirement, she was given odd jobs to try and force her to retire early, but she held out until 1985.”
Laurie Gomulka also worked in the building. In the late ’70s and early ’80s, she was a court reporter at Conrail, taking minutes for railroad hearings, whenever there was a railroad accident or injury.
Although at the time of Laurie’s employment there, the building had mostly lost its previous glory, and there were no windows left above the fourth or fifth floors, every Christmas there was a 30-40 foot tall Christmas tree erected on the main floor. Here is another “magical” moment which Laurie recalls: “The highlight was when the circus train arrived each summer and all the animals disembarked from the train cars out in the train yard. All of us employees lined up in the windows of the depot and watched the animals as they got off the train and paraded toward downtown Detroit for their performance in Cobo Hall. There were lions, tigers, elephants, horses, zebras, and monkeys. They walked past the bars, restaurants, and storefronts. It was wonderful!”
If you have a personal story about the Michigan Central Station, please share it with us. Let’s create our own virtual room, filled with stories (and pictures) of Polish Americans who are or were a part of the history and legacy of the Michigan Central Station.
I want to thank Laurie Gomulka for her contribution to this text.
The information below comes from: https://eu.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/detroit-city/2024/05/31/michigan-central-station-guide-reopening-faqs/73910394007/
This summer you can see the building during the “Summer at the Station” public access every Friday and Saturday from June 21 to Aug. 31.
During that time period, construction will pause so that people can tour the space and even use a free app to follow a narrated tour.
On Fridays, the space will be open from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m.; on Saturdays, you can visit from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Text and photos by Alina Klin
