It's over there, it's over there

Forgotten Detroit is a site dedicated to documenting Detroit's degraded collection of pre-depression architecture. It's really quite something.

I came across it because I was looking for a picture of the building above, the abandoned Detroit Central Station. I first saw the building yesterday morning while on my way to this. Pictures really don't do justice to the scale of the building or the way its hulking ruin dominates the surrounding area. On seeing it, my first thought was that it was past time that somebody knocked the thing down.

But of course I was wrong.

One of the striking things about Detroit architecture -- and I've noticed this before mostly in residential areas -- is that beneath the decrepit surface, a lot of the buildings are really quite impressive. Detroit's buildings were built to last and, even without the most basic maintainance, many of them have. Another of the striking things, of course, is how much of the architecture is gone. There are blocks where vacant lots are the most common feature. I'm not sure which is more depressing, but one things for sure. Detroit already has enough vacant lots.