A Look Inside an Abandoned Interurban Terminal: Detroit, Michigan

Before plane travel, during the automobile’s infancy, and along with train commutes, there were the interurban cars. Trolleys, streetcars...whatever you wanna call ‘em.

Beginning in the late 1800s, the southern part of Michigan had extensive interurban systems, which connected to major cities and plenty of our small towns. With Michigan, the states of Ohio and Indiana helped combine a total of 5,604 miles of interurban travel – Michigan alone having 981 miles.

The majority of Michigan’s ‘trolley travel’ connected Bay City, Detroit, Grand Rapids, and Muskegon. In many of our cities and towns you can still see remains of former interurban tracks down the middle of the streets.

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Michigan became known for having some of the best equipped and maintained streetcar systems in the entire nation...then, a giant shadow fell on the whole thing.

In the 1920s, the state began allowing buses to compete with trolleys. By 1930, just about all interurban travel in Michigan had disappeared....except for the line that went to St. Joseph which ended in 1934 and marked the end of Michigan’s 'interurbanism'.

The old building you are about to see was the Gary Interurban Terminal in Detroit. It began operating in 1925 and only lasted a few years until sometime between 1927-1929 when it was permanently closed. It wound up being a storage facility for buses for a few years, later abandoned, and demolished in 2019.

Thanks to the Modern Frontiersmen, the gallery below takes you inside this structure (obviously before its destruction) where you can see the crumbling, deterioration, foliage, graffiti, and trees growing out of the foundations. If you didn’t know it used to be an interurban terminal, you’d never have guessed. Have a look...