Day 34: Detroit

On July 16, we got the Phil Baily tour of Detroit. Phil is a friend of ours who went to high school with Dave in Wilmington, NC and moved to Detroit about 10 years ago. We met up with Phil at a bbq place near downtown Detroit. On our way there, Dave and I passed this establishment.


We know as much about it as you do.

After our lunch, Phil took us to an old train station called the Michigan Central Depot, which is now abandoned. I read that it has had a very tumultuous life. The top floor was never even finished being built. It was built in the early part of the 20th century and was closed in 1988. Unfortunately, because it remained “open” into the 1990s, the entire building is vandalized and most of the windows are broken out. Phil says that the razor wire around the property was only installed in the last ten years. It was very sad to see this beautiful building standing vacant and battered. For more info about the building, check out this awesome website: http://www.forgottendetroit.com/mcs/index.html.






After the depot, Phil gave us a great tour of the area. We got to check out the famous sculpture of Joe Louis’s fist.


We took a brief ride to lovely Belle Isle, which is really just a tiny little island park in the Detroit River.


It's quite green and lush. I'm sure I must have spent some time there as a child. I was also informed that Bob-Lo Island amusement park had closed back in 1993. I remember visiting there when I went to see my friend Shana in Grosse Pointe in 1986.

This is the beautiful 19th century Wayne County Courthouse at the end of Michigan Avenue.


Henry Ford worked here. Clarence Darrow argued a case here. It’s a great old building. Beautiful.

This is Comerica Park, the new home of the Detroit Tigers now that Tiger Stadium is being demolished.



Phil showed us his charming neighborhood in Mexican Town, and we drove through Corktown, the oldest neighborhood in Detroit. It was a really great tour because he had learned a LOT about the city in the handful of years he’d lived here. It was a great tour.


And, yes, Detroit has its own entry into the Theater of Weird Signs.


This was in the window of some anonymous business.

After an hour or so, it was time for Dave and me to get on the road for Pittsburgh, so we bade Phil adieu and headed east.

After a couple of hours, we arrived in fair Pittsburgh to the wonderful home of our friends Kirsten and Will. We kept them up talking for a while before finally crashing in the awesome guest room they had set up on the second floor. We were in a huge room with windows that opened out over Main Street. It was nice to sleep with the windows open and just a ceiling fan. We slept well that night.