The state-of-the-art Arnold Home helped ease generations of retired Detroiters off this mortal coil before changing demographics dulled its once-cutting edge.

Hasta la Vista, Granny

The Arnold Home on Detroit’s Seven Mile Road opened in 1931, and was the final iteration of a succession of “Arnold” elder care homes dating back to 1899. Reverend Charles Arnold conceived the idea of a live-in care home after noting that the soon-to-be-Motor-City’s industrial boom was a bust for the old, the ill, and others in need of a social safety net.

The Big House

The penultimate Arnold Home was designed and built by Weston and Ellington, a Detroit-based architectural firm whose portfolio included the Metropolitan Building, The Wardell hotel (now the Park Shelton condominiums), and the New Light Baptist Church. The two-story tall Arnold Home featured four wings housing up to 115 residents, a dining hall, and hospital facilities. 1938 saw the addition of two more stories, increasing patient capacity to 235 beds.

No Motown

Detroit’s demographics began to change in the late 1950s and early 1960s, however. Middle-class retirees were moving to the suburbs and new residents tended to rely more heavily on Medicare and other government assistance programs. As this trend progressed, the Arnold Home began experiencing funding and budgeting issues that resulted in a steadily declining standard of care.

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Tired Retired Detroits Abandoned Arnold Home

Driving into Motor City, the beautiful and towering 18-story Michigan Central Station is hard to miss — it is both a Beaux-Arts Classical landmark (standing out even in a city rich with historical architecture) but also a famous abandonment, which became emlematic of the city’s decline, at least until now.

This train station operated on and off from dedication in 1914 to its final closure in 1988, a literal and symbolic victim of Detroit’s own automobile boom and suburban flight. Purchased nearly 100 years ago by Henry Ford, the building passed through many hands in the subsequent decades, before being purchased again by the Ford Motor Company this year for redevelopment.

With designers from Snohetta, Ford is turning the structure into a hub for its autonomous vehicle development and deployment, making it an anchor for the company’s Corktown campus. Following restoration and renovation of the structure, originally designed by the same architects behind New York’s famous Grand Central Terminal, the mixed-use first floor concourse will be reopened to the public with restaurants and retail.

More on the restoration: “As Ford envisions the future of mobility, Ford and Snøhetta will rethink existing cities in addition to creating new urban spaces and mobility systems through responsible and sustainable urban planning, product design, and business practices. New and innovative roadways, parking facilities, and integrated pedestrian connections are just some of the design considerations that will highlight the positive impact of Ford’s future mobility technologies. Ford plans to implement the first City of Tomorrow study in Corktown, with other cities in mind for the future.”

For years, the building was a mecca for urban explorers who would enter illegally to explore and photograph the ruin, as well as a feature in numerous films and television shows. Going forward, it will once again become a kind of urban transportation hub, but one of a very different nature.

Michigan native and area resident George Gregory attended the public press conference outside the station announcing the plan, and noticed some changes on the site. “The fence is bigger and about 250 yards further back,” he observed, and the building looks better, presumably in part because the previous owner “put in new windows … and made other changes.” Leading up to the announcement, “rumors have abounded for weeks,” says Gregory. “Local real estate prices have skyrocketed. An abandoned hotel in the area has a For Sale sign on it.”

Architecture that was at its prime in the 1970s has slowly fallen into decline and often ruin thanks to decades of neglect, especially in America’s poorest and most racially segregated communities, including Gary, Detroit, Camden and Harlem. Many of these structures were historically significant, built between the late 1880s and the 1920s, but when no budget exists to care for them and entire cities are left behind by economic progress, the forces of nature and decay take over.

In a potent visual representation of poverty in America’s urban centers and the loss of historic architectural character via demolition, Chilean-born photographer Camilo José Vergara has spent the last 40+ years documenting the downfall of dozens of structures and city streets. The resulting series, ‘Tracking Time,’ is a time-lapse in slow motion, photographing the same buildings once every few years.

One old shop in Harlem gets painted several times over, has its stained glass windows knocked out, loses a facade to an ugly garage door and is split up into multiple smaller businesses before finally being boarded over and transformed into a mini-mall-style church in 2014.

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A massive brick building in South Bronx becomes modest row houses, while The Ransom Gillis House in Detroit (top) sinks into the ground, its bricks falling in clumps, the roof caving in, ivy and trees taking over. It’s almost completely obscured by greenery before a restoration brings it back to its former glory.

But other stories aren’t so positive, since people care more about mansions than they do about public housing projects, row houses, and modest residential neighborhoods. Occasionally, Vergara ventures inside to show us that even though the facades still look beautiful, like that of the former Camden Free Public Library, the interiors are utterly destroyed.

It can be a heartbreaking journey but also a fascinating one, watching some of these structures remain the same for many years while the world changes around them before transforming into something new. And some do manage to endure.

Culled from paint deposits in old car factories, these may look like exotic gemstones, but their colors reflect years of layering and hundreds to thousands of assembly-line stops. They are frequently referred to as Detroit Agate, or simply: Fordite.

Workers at the time, and urban explorers in later years, grew fascinated and started chipping off the results to save and ultimately shape into jewelry and other objects.

Historically, automotive bodies were painted by hand, and the spray-painted layer would drip onto surrounding surfaces and equipment (or simply be coated indirectly).

The pain would end up backed onto these surfaces, where it would solidify and grow thicker over time, up to inches over the years.

Like layers in a rock to a geologist, these faux-minerals tell stories of automotive history through their vibrant and varied colors, including changes in favorites over time. While you can still find this in raw form or polished pieces online, be warned: pre-1970s layers may contain lead.

Bought at auction by a florist last year, this dilapidated multifamily home was destined to be demolished but given a last chance to blossom thanks to a team of florists and array of volunteers packing the place inside and out with a flowers.

Deserted houses in Detroit are famously sold for as little as a dollar by the city, giving florist  Lisa Waud (photos by Heather Saunders) an idea.

She purchased this place for just $250 at auction, then turned a trash-filled abandonment into a work of art as well as a fundraiser for a flower farm and design center on the site.

The Flower House was given over to contributing florists, each encouraged to turn a space, wall or ceiling into a blank canvas for their creations. The results are remarkable.

Following the project, “the house that held the exhibition will be responsibly deconstructed and its materials repurposed. the land will be converted into a flower farm and design center on their formerly neglected properties.”