The Packard Motor Company was a luxury automobile company founded in 1899. It was the first large automobile plant in Detroit consisting of 74 buildings, and 3.5 million square feet. Stretching over half a mile this mammoth factory produced luxury cars that carried Presidents, and engines that carried American aircraft in WWI and WWII. They produced every engine used in American PT boats
Sadly, like so many structures in Metro Detroit the building has outlived the company.The last car rolled off the assembly line in 1958. For over 50 years this magnificent structure designed by famed architect, Albert Kahn has been standing alone, slowly succumbing to the scrappers, graffiti artists, vandals, and mother nature.
All around there is this vast.....nothingness. Boarded up and bombed out houses as far as the eye can see. People occasionally walking by with shopping carts or on bicycles. Or standing like zombies. Homeless men standing near barrels with stuff burning to keep them warm. Guys standing on street corners always watchful. Watching us as we drive by. Looking out for who knows what.
There is a strange odd quietness to the area, right in the center of a large ( formerly ) vibrant urban space. It's as if you came after some nuclear war or terrible disease. All that remains are the buildings and the stragglers of humanity.....and the explorers
We encircled the perimeter once ( the whole complex is about 1 mile all the way around ) looking for any open business where we could park the car. We found none. Eventually we just decided to park next to part of the building with an obvious gaping hole. I kissed the Jeep goodbye as I got out. Checked my pack : Flashlight, pepper spray, camera, battery, sim card. Check.
In we went
As we parked and were heading in, the first person we'd seen in the last 20 minutes drove by in an old white truck. The loud muffler was clear as he slowed by a crawl and watched us. I wondered if I'd ever see my car again. I don't know what he was looking for, but his prolonged interest in us it gave me an uneasy feeling. Entering through a monster hole in the wall I was overcome with excitement and fear. What I found over the next 4 hours was shocking. Beauty, ugliness, danger, comedy, waste, decay, art, life and death.
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My first thoughts as I saw this complex:
This is America? What the Hell happened ????
Most photos were shot with a Canon Eos Rebel, and a Canon f2.8 15 mm Fisheye lens or a f2.8 24-70 mm Macro lens. Minimal processing with abobe lightroom. Click on each photo for a high resolution large image!
Detroit : Sportsman's paradise !!!. A yacht sitting outside this abandoned factory. This odd site was a glimpse of what was going to be a very strange exploration. How the Hell did it get here? And Why?
BOATS!!
How did they get here? And more importantly, WTF??
The smell of the factory is very strange. A combination of sawdust, mold, dust, and old metallic paint. I asked my traveling partners what asbestos smelled like. They laughed, then had this look of concern on their faces.
The footing is really treacherous in this area. Since lots of it was under water, you never knew what you were stepping on, Lots of broken glass and rusty nails. Anticipating that we wore boots
Good light is essential because of things like this hanging down everywhere
Looked for a working light switch. They haven't had any juice for several decades
I headed down a hallway which seemed fairly well lit . It was quite distressing to look up and see how unstable this structure is. I wanted a hard hat at this point !
We wandered down this and that corridor for about an hour, with the crunching of broken glass, wood, tile, and God knows what under our feet. around every corner was a surprise
The excitement was so incredible! The place is vast. Absolutely silent. The crunching of your footsteps echos off the walls. The splatting sound of leaking water gave a really nice background noise. And of course, the big variable : Who would we encounter, and when?
What the Barbarians left, the Barberini finish! ( at least that was my translation to their statement)
Sometimes I forgot I wasn't in the woods. The lead paint sort of reminded me of lichen
Followed a completely dark corridor. Took a 30 second exposure and saw this
I Noticed a staircase to the basement. I didn't even know there was a basement! My fellow explorer found a dead dog in the stairwell and decided to photograph it. I happened to shoot another long exposure of the whole macabre scene and what I saw when the photo was uploaded was pretty disturbing!. It appears to have a dog head shadow on that wall. Something like the soul of that animal staring at us! Was this one of the Hounds of Hell? We had no desire to go into the basement because it was absolutely dark and absolutely creepy
Did you ever feel like you were being watched?
I rounded a corner in a dimly lit area and ran into this fellow
These next two photos sum up a lot of what I think has ruined this city over the last 40 years. Detroit is an amazing city with so much history. So many of the inhabitants who cared about the place and made it great have since moved on. Moved on to the suburbs or moved out of state. Many people who remained have dumped garbage, set fires, and through corruption in government, funneled taxpayer funds to their own pockets. The city has crumbled
Here we see a room completely filled with undelivered phone books. So if you work for the telephone company in Detroit and somebody has paid you to deliver telephone books but you'd rather drink beer and play keno, then why not dump them in an abandoned building?
What the toilet is there I have no idea. I suppose it represents that this city has gone down the Crapper. I joked at the time " Does anybody have the number for a plumber"?
And here we have the money shot. If you want it but don't want to work for it, then steal it!! Unfortunately, lots of people are stealing copper wires that are connected to electricity and getting electrocuted. My friend is legal council for the electric company. He spends lots of time making sure these idiot's families don't sue, or defending junk lawsuits
This place is so large. It really is quite a maze. We entered this courtyard which almost looked like it contained a swimming pool. More strange objects! A toddler bed and kids big wheel toys, along with several mattresses.
We decided to move out of the building complex we'd been exploring and head outside. I think in the original structure, there wasn't this wide open space. Just two or more parallel building complexes. So it appears that this huge wide open space is the result of collapsed buildings
Thousands and thousands of pounds of rubble, sitting silently. This must be what Dresden looked like after the engines manufactured at this very plant, carried bombers to destroy the Nazi war machine. We walked over, and around this field of debris. It was here that we all became separated for a good 30 minutes. I didn't like this period of solitude, but at least I had the car keys
This structure to me looks like it's on it's last leg. I didn't spend too much time in here
I really liked the appearance of the windows in this section
We were angling towards the red building. I knew from reviewing google earth that this section of the factory has undergone major structural collapse on the roof and I wanted to try and make our way to the top.
A nondescript entrance to the big red building with a few exceptions : First it appears to have been cleaned up a bit compared to the other buildings. Second, the ceiling looked really really cool. Finally, the beautiful columns, courtesy of Albert Kahn reminded me of the Bernini columns in the Piazza San Pietro
We really struggled to find a staircase, in this and every building we'd visited. I suspected they have been destroyed or sealed off.
But as we had a habit of sticking our heads into every hole in a wall, we got lucky and found a staircase through a wall hole ( and another boat! )
The staircase was a bit on the shaky side. There were no side rails and to me it looked like the concrete was really crumbling. I doubted the safety of the entire building, especially since I knew the top floor(s) had already collapsed. But there was no way I wasn't climbing those stairs!
This was the entry to the 3rd or 4th floor level
Prior to Opening the door you could hear lots of dripping water.
Opening the door gave a pretty incredible view
Amazing reflections!!!!
Turning the corner to the left, we found some toilets
back to climbing
Don't look down!
The lat few stairs to the top. The higher we got the more crumbly the concrete looked. I guess that makes sense after 50 years of rain, ice, snow, wind and neglect.
I had The Doors going through my head as I emerged from the staircase at the top floor "Break on through to the other side"
The view was surreal! Like another planet
Somebody has placed old televisions all over the tops of the remaining columns. Words cannot express this scene from another planet.
Mother nature always wins. I was struck by something I've seen in a number of abandoned Detroit buildings : Trees growing out of the building. It's as if Mother Nature is just reminding us that we're not all that important in the grand sceme of things. Life goes on!
I noticed a tower, looming over the "top leve;" we were on. I think it's all that remained of the top floor. So of course I climbed the staircase to the top and looked out. Changed the fisheye lens I'd been shooting with all day to the 24-70 mm Zoom lens. This was a view I wanted to see without the distortion
No explanation is necessary. Make sure to click on this photo and view it large!
It was about at this point when I decided to look down. There were a few holes in the floor. Not the first holes in the floor I'd seen in this building. I wasn't happy about the thought of falling through a hole but at least it would only be one floor down, right? WRONG. I looked down from this tower and found that I was looking down all the way to the first floor. HOLY SHIT.
There is no photo of that view because I got the Hell out of there.
Finally, it was time to call it a day. We headed back down.
I noticed this guy as I made my way down the stairs. I liked this image so I captured it.
Now that I was less focused on heading up, I took some time to look out the windows at the City of Detroit.
I wondered, will this city ever come back? The plans are to downsize the city, to demolish some of the over 30,000....yes that's right, 30,000 vacant homes, and turn it into farmland or wilderness.
I can't see that happening. It's sad to think of the future of this once and still beautiful city. These buildings tell a tale of days gone forever.
Thanks to this factory and the war machine it built, Americans defeated the Nazis and Japanese army. Thousands of people had jobs, purchased homes, raised families. This is America. I'm glad I was here to pay my respects to this beautiful structure. I took only photos and left only footprints
