The Michigan Central Depot

The Michigan Central Railroad reached Ann Arbor in eighteen thirty-nine. Before that, a trip to Detroit was a full day of hard riding on bad roads. On the train, you could make it in two and a half hours and arrive without mud on your boots.

That one change transformed the town. Markets opened. Students could travel. The Huron River mills could ship their flour east. Ann Arbor stopped being a frontier village and became something more connected to the larger economy of the region.

The depot building that stands near the river today is not the first one. The current structure was built in eighteen eighty-six, designed by architect Frederick Spier in granite stone block. The Ann Arbor Register called it the finest station on the line between Buffalo and Chicago. The interior had a ceiling and trim of red oak, French tile floors, stained glass windows, and a large terra cotta fireplace. The elaborate ticket booth was the first thing travelers saw when they stepped inside.

The line eventually reached Chicago by eighteen fifty-two, making Ann Arbor a stop on one of the critical rail corridors of the nineteenth century. The New York Central had gained control of the Michigan Central by the eighteen sixties and formalized it with a ninety-nine-year lease in nineteen thirty. Penn Central came in nineteen sixty-eight. Amtrak inherited it in nineteen seventy, and Amtrak still calls here today.

The records for what became of the depot's original furnishings are incomplete. The records here go quiet after several ownership changes. What is clear is that the building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in nineteen seventy-five and is now home to a restaurant. The handsome bones of that eighteen eighty-six station are still standing, still carrying the load of its own century.