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Report - - Woodward Avenue Presbyterian Church, Detroit USA March 2022 | European and International Sites | 28DaysLater.co.uk

Report - Woodward Avenue Presbyterian Church, Detroit USA March 2022

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mookster

grumpy sod
Regular User
Yes I'm back. Jetlagged and emotionally and financially ruined but I'm back. Many tales to tell and reports to post from my first States trip since 2019, yadda yadda.

Of course one of the major places I wanted to go back to this time around was Detroit. The city needs no introduction and I had such a crazy successful weekend there in 2019, it was going to be difficult to top it with the long-overdue sequel. In ways I'd say it definitely topped 2019 - the overall quality of the sites we did was better with far less duds, plus there were eight of us this time which in some way is a bad thing logistically but in a city as dangerous and unpredictable as Detroit the numbers game sometimes works in your favour - we did end up splitting up a lot though. However compared to last time where myself and my three friends were bouncing from place to place knocking sites out one after another, this trip didn't quite work out that way. It seems in the last few years, maybe due to the pandemic and other factors, Detroit has changed. There seemed to be far more people ready and waiting to spoil our fun, more people willing to call the police (we had one woman threaten to call the police simply for us parking outside an abandoned church!) and the atmosphere was much more, I don't want to say hostile, but unwelcoming than it had been in 2019. After we had a small snafu with a large number of police arriving to turf all eight of us out an abandoned school - officers who were in actual fact some of the nicest and most understanding I've ever dealt with - we decided to pretty much avoid all the schools and instead ended up doing a large number of churches and other things instead.

Woodward Avenue Presbyterian Church (often affectionately known as St. Curvy's) is the most iconic abandoned church in the city by some considerable margin. The church is a masterpiece of English Gothic revival church design, constructed at vast expense ($2.5million in todays money) in 1911 along one of the main thoroughfares into the city. Inside the church specially designed curved wooden pews swept in a fan shape around the altar, with a matching setup on the curved balcony level. A beautiful lantern shaped cupola helped add a great deal more natural light to the centre of the church. When constructed it featured a banquet hall, basketball court, bowling alley and Sunday school rooms. By the 1950s, with 'white flight' in full swing, the congregation had been reduced by half what it was at it's peak. With more black families moving to the neighbourhood, the 'old fashioned' style of worship on offer didn't particularly appeal to them and by 1971 congregation numbers had fallen to just 404, less than a quarter of it's peak number. In 1981 in an effort to save the church it merged with another struggling nearby church with that congregation moving to Woodward and the pastor from there taking over, however this did little to help and numbers continued to dwindle. In 1993 Woodward Avenue Presbyterian closed it's doors, with the pastor from the merged church taking ownership of the building and reopening it as Abyssinia Interdenominational Church. The pastor passed away in 2005 and with it the church closed it's doors for the final time, and ever since has been stuck in limbo. In 2009 it was sold to another church, and in 2011 the church was used in the film 'Alex Cross', with all the debris cleared and pews moved to enable a boxing ring to be constructed in the centre. In 2014 work began at the church with parts of the roof being repaired and the Sunday school and basement areas totally stripped back, however this stopped and hasn't progressed any further. After work ceased, a comprehensive alarm system was installed in the church which served to keep people out, however recently the system was disabled which meant it was good to go once more.

I've wanted to see this place for years, but knowing it was heavily alarmed was never a place I thought I'd see, so the news that the power was cut and it was doable again came as a great shock to me. I'd seen so many photos of it in years past but nothing at all prepared me for how utterly breathtaking it was in person and how much bigger it was too, despite large parts being an empty shell the main body of the church is absolutely stunning. Other explorers had obviously heard the news about it being a free-for-all again too and we met another group inside who were very nice, I guess nobody knew how long it'd be doable for again so they were all coming out to see it.

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Getting to the narrow balcony surrounding the lantern was an experience, at some point maybe for filming the movie a couple of new narrow staircases had been installed but the last catwalk to the small opening that led to the balcony was worryingly dark and unstable.

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A final phone shot looking upwards towards the lantern, an angle I would have really struggled to get with my proper camera.

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Plenty more stuff to come from my trip when I've had a chance to sleep....​
 

Mikeymutt

28DL Regular User
Regular User
Always look forward to your American reports. Seems so long since I have seen some. That is one beauty of a church.
 

HughieD

28DL Regular User
Regular User
That's proper good that mate. Detroit is US urbex mecca. Buying a copy of "The Ruins of Detroit" was what first started me off on my urbex journey....
 

KPUrban_

Surprisingly Unsurprising
Regular User
That church is certainly a bit special, at least in a photogenic aspect. Really looking forward to whatever else you come up with from this trip.
 

mookster

grumpy sod
Regular User
That's proper good that mate. Detroit is US urbex mecca. Buying a copy of "The Ruins of Detroit" was what first started me off on my urbex journey....

It really is - for now. Things are changing now though, there's a huge amount of redevelopment work going on both to revitalise buildings and in city infrastructure. Whole swathes of the city are being cleared and worked on at the moment which is good for the city but bad for exploring! Granted there won't be a shortage of abandoned stuff any time soon but times are changing in Detroit at long last.
 

Camera Shy

Old enough to know better
Regular User
Oh you've been to the States? you should have said
It's a beauty that, good that things sound like they finally getting redeveloped
 

Calamity Jane

i see beauty in the unloved, places & things
Regular User
This is stunning on every level. First thing that came to mind was it would be perfect for a horror movies ie vampires etc. So Alex Cross was a surprise. So much to love here. Not surprised to read urbexers were flocking here.

Cracking! :<3
 

HughieD

28DL Regular User
Regular User
It really is - for now. Things are changing now though, there's a huge amount of redevelopment work going on both to revitalise buildings and in city infrastructure. Whole swathes of the city are being cleared and worked on at the moment which is good for the city but bad for exploring! Granted there won't be a shortage of abandoned stuff any time soon but times are changing in Detroit at long last.
Ha ha, ain't that the truth. Does that include the main railway station?
 

Bikin Glynn

28DL Regular User
Regular User
Nice bit of churchage that.
Do u find lot of homeless in them in detroit? I'm just curious for some reason I always assumed there would b
 

mookster

grumpy sod
Regular User
Ha ha, ain't that the truth. Does that include the main railway station?

Yep, the railway terminal was bought by Ford a few years ago and is well on it's way to being renovated into a brand new conference/office/events centre type deal - that project alone has kickstarted a lot of rejuvenation work in the surrounding area as it's the sort of deal which has given investors confidence that things are changing.

Nice bit of churchage that.
Do u find lot of homeless in them in detroit? I'm just curious for some reason I always assumed there would b

Detroit is a weird place with a homelessness problem but it's not as bad as you might think, owing to the fact that in vast tracts of the city there really isn't any population at all. They are around, mainly in the areas closer to downtown, and do take shelter in some buildings but for the most part you don't see anybody at all inside these places - whats even weirder is the general lack of explorers, you'd think in a city overrun with derelict buildings there would be loads but there really aren't that many people who actually set out to explore in Detroit. On the lovely warm weekend we were here we ran into the one group in this Church and then one other small group at another church later that day, but that was it. I honestly don't know why it is that way, maybe it's the perception of Detroit being so dangerous nobody wants to make the trip, maybe there's some other factors.
 

host

28DL Full Member
28DL Full Member
Stunning report, look forward to seeing what else you got up to.
 
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