Windows at Michigan Central: Curbed's Exclusive Pix (original) (raw)
As window installation continues at a rapid pace at Michigan Central Station, and as Matthew Moroun announced plans for a new facility that will employ 150 people in Detroit, Curbed's photography team has been busy cataloguing the changes at the historic Detroit rail terminal. In looking at the project to install 1000 new windows in the blighted train station, an icon of Detroit ruin pornography that many in the city feel a special connection to, we also asked local restoration glazier Andrea Sevonty for her take on the new additions.
Sevonty, who operates her own restoration glaziery firm whose projects include steel window and clock restoration on the La Sed building in Detroit, calls the plain, white-trim-embellished windows "very ugly," adding that she would have gone with "a match to the original windows which were steel double hungs." One building she says is of similar construction, at least in terms of needing so many replacement windows, is the AT&T building ("Yellow Pages" building) in Highland Park. When it comes to Michigan Central, she says she'd do "something similar to the Yellow Pages building…I did a walk through there, and they replaced with a nice style of window."
No word yet on any possible redevelopment of the station. Detroiters are pushing hard for it, though, and the idea is starting to attain critical mass. A local development banker who spoke to Curbed on background tells us that whoever takes on the project will need to do it out of love, because restoration will cost at least $80 million, and won't bring good—if any—return on investment.
·Sevonty Restoration LLC [Facebook]
·New logistics center to bring 150 jobs to Detroit [Detroit Free Press]
·Windows coming back, but what to do with train station? [Detroit Free Press]
Michigan Central Station
2198 Michigan Ave, Detroit, MI 48216