This is what remains of the luxurious Michigan Theatre. I thought the "re-use" of the theatre for parking might make for an interesting "Out Of Place" shot.
The theatre originally opened in downtown Detroit in 1926. It was seven stories tall and was the biggest movie theatre in the city with over 4,000 seats.
In 1967, the theatre closed due to dropping attendance and was slated for demolition. Various attempts were made at reviving it with brief reincarnations as a supper club, porn cinema, and concert hall, but none were successful. The theatre was abandoned for good in 1975.
In 1977, a proposal was made to demolish the theatre to provide parking. But architects soon discovered that the adjoining 13-story office tower was structually dependent on the theatre. So the engineers recommended that the shell of the building be retained and used as part of an indoor parking structure.
And so, here it is. The main entrance foyer (shown in the photograph) was wide enough for entry and exit of vehicles, and the grand staircase was adapted to fit in a parking ramp. A three-level steel-and-concrete parking structure was inserted into the main auditorium area (just visible to the left in the picture) to provide 160 parking spaces.
I climbed over some barricades and up a dark, dilapidated staircase to get to this vantage point -- what used to be a balcony on the second floor that overlooked the grand foyer. There was no railing left at all, so it was kind of freaky being so close to the edge. I set up my tripod, and used my new Canon 16-35/2.8L (at 16mm) and 550EX (to help illuminate the ceiling) to capture this shot.
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Too bad about the blown out edge on the right, but cool shot nonetheless. These types of shots are hard to pull off without having lots of distractions like the ones present here. Original idea.
Very good, creative shot! The overexposure on the right hand side of the image is a bit distracting, but this meets the challenge very well and is well composed. 7
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