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Adaptive reuse — Detroit style

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[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qSV9BPiwzlk[/youtube]

Detroit once had nearly a dozen magnificent 1920s theatres in and around Grand Circus Park. A few survive today, like the restored Fox Theatre where the big broadway shows and baby-boomer reunion tours would play, and the former State Theatre next door, where we would go and see shows like Public Image Ltd., Spiritulized and The Jesus and Mary Chain in just-slightly- decaying grandeur back in the 1990s. There were many others, but they closed long ago.

In this video, dETROITfUNK explores the Michigan Theatre, reborn as a Gilded Age parking garage. On tours of Detroit’s fabulous ruins, the Michigan is a required stop, as the irony and symbolism is so over the top it seems more like a movie set than something that could actually happen. When I first arrived in Toronto, the facade of the University Theatre on Bloor reminded me of the Michigan, as you could look through it into Yorkdale Park. Torontonians here longer will remember the parking lot that was there before the park, when that view was even more Detroitish. The facade is now part of the Pottery Barn store.

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3 comments

  1. Actually if I am not mistaken, they *tore down* the actual standing facade of the University Theatre (how I miss that strangely looming hull on Bloor Street!) and *recreated it* to form the Pottery Barn facade. A nice nod, but still totally bizarro!

  2. Would it have been a recreation or a dismantling/reassembly? There’s a difference, y’know. A purer version of demolition/recreation, though, is across the screet and down a bit: the Windsor Arms…

  3. shawn,

    great video.

    i’m listening to spz “live at royal albert hall” while i read this…hmmm.