Reports indicate that in March 2018, the Ford Motor Company initiated negotiations to acquire the long-abandoned Michigan Central Station from Morouns’ Crown Enterprises.
Category: Midwest
Amazon has been called the killer of the American indoor shopping mall in countless articles. But it’s been no secret that traditional shopping centers have been struggling long before the advent of online shopping, with the United States boasting more square feet of retail than any other developed nation by far. It is with some irony that Amazon is building new fulfillment centers on the grounds of two dead malls.
The Longaberger Company, a celebrated manufacturer of handcrafted maple wood baskets based near Newark, Ohio, has struggled in recent years with collapsing sales.
East Liverpool, Ohio, once lovingly referred to as the “Crockery City” and the “Pottery Capital of the World,” is the classic definition of the Rust Belt. Much like Pittsburgh’s reliance on steel mills and Cleveland’s manufacturing plants, East Liverpool depended on the pottery industry because of ample natural resources, access to newly laid railroads, the Ohio River, and an untapped market.
Once a bustling healthcare facility, the St. Joseph Riverside Hospital in Warren, Ohio, has been reduced to a desolate shell, ravaged by scrap metal scavengers, water damage, and fire.
When the Dennison Hotel on Main Street in downtown Cincinnati, Ohio closed in 2011, it marked the end of a hoteling era. The single room occupancy extended stay facility once competed with the Browne Hotel, Fort Washington Hotel, Fountain Square Hotel, and others — all of which are long closed and demolished.
Several years ago, I was able to visit the former printing operation for the Crowell-Collier Publishing Company, once the world’s largest magazine publishing house, in Springfield, Ohio.
Before the completion of the Detroit Harbor Terminals complex along the Detroit River in Detroit, Michigan, most of the commodities and raw materials used in Detroit were shipped first by water to Cleveland, Chicago, or Toledo and sent to Detroit via the railroad.
The Fisher Body Company Plant No. 21, located in Detroit, Michigan, produced automobile bodies for General Motors (GM). The Albert Kahn-designed facility was constructed in 1919 to provide wooden automobile bodies for a variety of companies, later manufacturing exclusively for GM. As early as 1930, GM downgraded the status of Fisher Body’s Plant 21 as being inefficient. GM began moving body manufacturing from Plant 21 to other, more efficient locations. However, the limousine body assembly was moved to Plant 21 from GM’s Fleetwood plant in 1955 because its output was only about 1,000 cars annually. On November 29, 1982, GM…
The Detroit House of Correction, also known as DeHoCo, is a former prison complex near Detroit, Michigan.