20 Beautiful Photographs Of Urban Decay In Detroit’s Crumbling Ghost Neighbourhoods

During the Gilded Age of the late 19th century Detroit, Michigan was known to some as the Paris of the West, on account of its opulent architecture, grand boulevards and burgeoning cityscape.

h/t: urbanghostsmedia. All images © by Bob Jagendorf.

As Detroit grew into a major Great Lakes transportation hub, tens of thousands of European immigrants came in search of work in the shipbuilding and automotive industries that gave rise to the ‘Motor City’, while the successes of Ford, Chrysler and Dodge helped fuel a construction boom that saw numerous Art Deco and neogothic skyscrapers developed throughout the 1920s. It wasn’t long before Detroit was the United States’ fourth largest city, and boasted much of the country’s finest architecture.

But the gasoline crises of 1973 and 1979 hit the car industry hard. Coupled with racial tensions and an increase in drug-fuelled crime during the same period, Detroit was plunged into a period of unemployment as its industrial supremacy effectively collapsed. Ironically, many of the city’s grandest building survive today, abandoned skeletons of their former selves, for many no economic incentive to either restoration or demolition.

Detroit’s Michigan Theater, its gutted shell repurposed as a parking garage

Detroit’s abandoned Bible Community

Creepy doll at the Heidelberg Project

Abandoned cinema

(No More) Cash for Gold

Abandoned O’Dell’s Lounge & Grill

The Temple bar

Abandoned Detroit street

Detroit’s decaying industrial skyline

Auto parts – echoes of old Detroit

Abandoned boat house

Abandoned car factory

Art house

Abandoned factory & ‘The Crow’

USA Food Center

Abandoned Detroit market

Derelict Northwest Deli

Abandoned car turned art – Heidelberg Project

Michigan Central Terminal – an abandoned Detroit icon