Ann Arbor Bus Depot

I was a surprised when I spotted an entry the other day in the "Did you know..." section of Wikipedia's main page reporting that the Art Deco Greyhound bus depot in Ann Arbor, Michigan was in the process of being demolished to make way for a hotel.  

I visited Ann Arbor in 2011 to see a friend (at the University of Michigan - the town's major draw), and the bus depot was pretty much the only memorable structure in the downtown area. Here is a snap I took at the time:

It is not a huge building: not a depot in the sense of housing a fleet of buses, just a waiting area and a ticket office (albeit at one time apparently the building housed a cafe and a baggage room as well).  

My friend and I actually used the depot to catch a bus to Detroit.  From memory, the waiting room interior was quite run down.  The other passengers and the counter staff looked pretty miserable, as you would be if you lived in Michigan and had to rely on public transport to get around.  In other words, catching a bus there was not a particularly edifying experience.

But the exterior is a flash of stylistic panache in an otherwise dull downtown area. With its smoothed corners, go-faster stripes and Deco-lettering, it's a classic example of that techno-futurist idiom that emerged in 1930's America before quickly being swamped by the purer (and more boring) modernism of the International Style (although the idiom later influenced, through Norman Foster's affection for an office block in Manchester, England, late 20th century Hi-Tech, my favourite amongst the modern styles).

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ann_Arbor_Bus_Depot#/
media/File:Ann_Arbor_MI_city_bus_depot.jpg)

Initially, I was, as I say, shocked that such a vital piece of architecture was being torn down. 

However, on further investigation, it seems that, in fact, the developer intends to preserve the entire facade and incorporate it into the hotel. To this end, they have actually spent money on restoring the blue steel and neon sign that is the centrepiece of that facade (see right) before construction of the hotel starts.

Whilst the overall design for the hotel is a bit disappointing, and one will lose the contributory effect, which can be appreciated from the photos here, of the open sky above the flat roof of the building, at least the important part of the exterior is being preserved and will remain part of the town's visible urban fabric.  

And it's relevant to note that this fabric is definitely fraying around the edges.  Ann Arbor, with its massive university, is not quite Detroit (which really is a frighteningly desolate place, complete with buildings in the process of being reclaimed by nature, post-apocalypse style). But like all of Michigan the town has definitely been hit hard by the recent recession and by long-term industrial decline. 

Hence when I visited I saw plenty of places like this around the edge of town:

The place badly needs regeneration, in other words.  An absolutist approach to preservation would say that historic buildings need to be preserved intact.  One can, as, for instance, the Venice Charter for the Conservation and Restoration of Monuments and Sites recognises, add to them, sure, but subtraction - knocking bits down - is, apparently, completely taboo. Sure enough, it seems that local groups sought to oppose the demolition of the rest of the depot apart from its facade.  But in the desire to preserve a great building, one cannot ignore the need to preserve the economic life of the city that houses it, particularly when that life is looking rather fragile.

I wonder if this plan actually represents a fairly good compromise between these goals.