I frequently check the websites of various Catholic publications, to keep up with what is happening in the Catholic world outside of Chicago. This week, to my surprise and delight, I discovered an article about trains and a railroad station. There it was on the homepage of The National Catholic Reporter. The headline read, “Finding God in Detroit’s Revitalized Michigan Central Station.” Well, if that is where God hangs out these days, I must complement God for showing good taste.
The city of Detroit, as you probably know, has had a rougher time than most northern industrial cities in recent decades. The city’s population peaked at almost 2 million in 1950 and has dwindled to 630,000. The economy of Detroit rode the coattails of the American auto industry, which dominated the world market until the 1970’s. The prosperous automakers and the good union wages made Detroit a magnet for people with limited opportunities looking to live a middle-class life. The Michigan Central station, which opened in 1914, was one of three railroad stations in Detroit and the most impressive. It had an eighteen-story office tower above the three story Beaux-Arts style depot. The decline in the population of Detroit was mirrored by a rapid decline in rail passenger service in the 1950’s. The station housed the trains of the New York Central (which absorbed the Michigan Central) and the Baltimore & Ohio until 1971, when Amtrak took over the nation’s remaining trains. Amtrak left the station in 1988 for something smaller and more practical, and the station stood abandoned and derelict until the Ford Motor Company bought it in 2018 and began to restore it.
Aside from it being a very beautiful building for people to enjoy, what does God have to do with it? Here is what Patty Breen has to say: “Michigan Central Station was the arrival point for thousands of immigrants who came to work in the automotive plants, searching for a new life and better opportunities. It was where Black people came fleeing the Jim Crow South. It was where immigrants came for jobs, filled with grit in their hearts . . . The hopes, dreams, prayers and stories of so many people passed through this station. . . . I had the opportunity to pay a few visits to the newly renovated building. It is breathtaking. In some ways it felt like walking into a beautiful old cathedral in Europe. You could almost feel the sacredness of the space, as if the energy of all the dreams and stories of those who passed through the station was somehow collected and still felt to this very day. It was a holy moment. Sometimes we can forget the spiritual realities swimming all around us. Buildings and spaces can be.