Depot Town: Underground Railroad to Comeback Story
Near Ann Arbor, Michigan
When Ypsilanti's train depot opened in eighteen thirty-eight and connected this town directly to Detroit, a commercial district grew up in its shadow within a decade. Most of the brick storefronts you can see today went up between eighteen fifty and eighteen eighty, housing saloons, a flour mill, an iron foundry, and the Western Hotel.
Beneath the streets, tunnels served a quieter purpose: historians believe passages under Cross Street were used as part of the Underground Railroad. By eighteen sixty-two the neighborhood's buildings had been pressed into service as barracks for Union soldiers training for the Civil War. A century later the railroads faded, and Depot Town declined into neglect. In the nineteen seventies, artists and small-business owners moved in for cheap rents, and the district was recognized as Ypsilanti's historic core, the third largest historic district in Michigan. The renovation that followed over the following decades turned the old freight buildings into restaurants, breweries, and shops.
