Warren & Wetmore and Reed and Stem designed Michigan Central Station at the same time they were designing Grand Central Terminal in Manhattan. The two buildings share the same Beaux-Arts Classical detailing, the same ambition, the same Vanderbilt railroad money. Both were conceived with office towers, though Grand Central's tower was never built. Michigan Central's was: an 18-story, 230-foot structure that made it the tallest rail station on earth when it opened. The main waiting room echoed ancient Roman bathhouses with its marble walls and soaring vaulted ceilings. Roosevelt Park spread before the entrance like a formal garden, creating a grand approach that was fully realized by 1920. The building cost $15 million, a staggering sum for 1913. It was built to be permanent, to anchor a neighborhood called Corktown, and to announce that Detroit was a city that built things to last.

At the peak of American rail travel during World War I, more than 200 trains departed Michigan Central Station every day. Lines of passengers stretched from the boarding gates clear to the main entrance. By the 1940s, over 4,000 passengers passed through daily and 3,000 people worked in the office tower. Presidents Herbert Hoover, Harry Truman, and Franklin Roosevelt arrived here. So did Charlie Chaplin, Thomas Edison, Frida Kahlo, and Diego Rivera. The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad ran the Ambassador to New York via Pittsburgh. The New York Central ran the Detroiter and the Empire State Express to Manhattan. The station connected Detroit to the continent. But the architects had not anticipated the automobile. When interurban streetcar service ended, the station sat too far from downtown, with inadequate parking, in a city that was rapidly learning to drive.

The decline was slow, then sudden. By 1956, the New York Central tried to sell the building for one-third of its original cost and found no buyers. In 1967, the restaurant and arcade shops closed. Two ticket windows served a trickle of passengers who entered through the parking lot. Amtrak's departure in 1988 left the building completely empty. What followed became the defining image of a city's collapse. Copper thieves stripped the wiring. Vandals smashed the marble. Water flooded the basement. The vaulted ceilings crumbled. Photographers from around the world came to document the decay, creating a genre that critics called 'ruin porn.' The Detroit City Council voted to demolish it in 2009, but a citizen named Stanley Christmas sued to stop the wrecking ball, citing the National Historic Preservation Act. The building survived.

Ford Motor Company purchased Michigan Central Station in 2018 for $90 million, making it the cornerstone of a new Corktown campus. The restoration that followed was one of the most ambitious in American history. Phase I involved simply drying the building out and reinforcing structural columns. Phase II tackled masonry restoration, ceiling retiling, and structural steel repair. Workers used 3-D scanning to recreate architectural details that had been lost to decades of exposure and vandalism. After the building's closure, people had stolen fixtures and ornamental features; when Ford's purchase was announced, several individuals came forward to return items they had taken, including the main station clock. The renovation exceeded $740 million. The station reopened to the public on June 6, 2024, and a rail industry publication called it 'a stunning example of what can be accomplished with historical vision, ample financing, and advanced construction and restoration technology.'

The restored Michigan Central Station is no longer a train station in the traditional sense, though that may change. In October 2025, an agreement was reached between the Michigan Central corporation, the state Department of Transportation, and the city of Detroit to develop a multimodal transportation facility just west of the station building, with a projected opening by the end of 2028. Amtrak and VIA Rail Canada have been studying the feasibility of connecting Chicago-Detroit service to Windsor-Toronto routes through the station. Meanwhile, Ford has announced that NoMad, a luxury hotel brand within the Hilton chain, will build 180 rooms on the upper floors, with an anticipated opening in 2027. The ground floor features restaurants and retail open to the public. The building that once symbolized everything Detroit had lost now represents what the city believes it can become.