Detroit is one of our Best Places to Go in the North America for 2024, part of our global guide to the Best Places to Go in 2024—find more travel inspiration here.
The story of Detroit‘s comeback after decades of disinvestment began another chapter this summer with the opening of Michigan Central, a new cultural district and tech hub on a site near the Detroit River that had been one of the city’s most notorious symbols of urban decay. At its heart stands the Michigan Central Station, a Beaux Arts masterpiece constructed by the architects of Grand Central Station that served as Motown’s gateway during the city’s boom years.
After its closure in 1988, Michigan Central Station became a deteriorating shell, choked with trash and swathed with graffiti. In 2018 the Ford Motor Company purchased the train depot and began a six-year restoration, turning it and the nearby Book Depository into a public gathering space and an incubator for transportation and tech start-ups, most founded in Michigan.
“We want Detroit to once again be a destination where the future is invented,” says Bill Ford, the company’s executive chairman.
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In June the station welcomed visitors for the first time in more than 30 years with guided tours and exhibitions featuring archival photographs and artifacts found on-site, charting its rise and renovation. To honor the building’s more recent history, graffiti has been preserved and presented alongside a new iteration of artist-architect (and University of Detroit Mercy alumnus) Suchi Reddy’s me + you, an interactive AI and light sculpture first created for the Smithsonian.
Locally owned businesses will move into the station in the coming years, and there are plans for a hotel. The Michigan Central area, along with the Joe Louis Greenway, a project to link parks and neighborhoods across the city through nearly 30 miles of pedestrian and bike paths, offers the most tangible evidence yet that the Detroit of tomorrow has arrived.
This article appeared in the July/August 2024 issue of Condé Nast Traveler. Subscribe to the magazine here
