Sunday, exploration day, started out weird enough. As we were about to leave the house in Woodbridge, a car pulled up next door and an apparently intoxicated woman got out of a car and urinated on the sidewalk in front of the neighbor’s house in broad daylight.

The neighbor came storming out, screaming at her. “Goddammit you animal!” he yelled. She slurred back and wouldn’t leave, he then ran back into his house and grabbed a rifle, came back outside and started waving it around as he marched up and down in a frenzy, screaming threats at her.The neighbors who had come out to see what the commotion was all ducked for cover. So we couldn’t leave until he decided whether to shoot her or go back in the house. Luckily, he opted for the latter, she took off, and I ran to the car slouched over like I was in Fallujah. We headed downtown.

The David Broderick Tower is by far the coolest abandoned skyscraper in Detroit, for so many reasons. It’s in the best shape of any of the large abandoned buildings, with damage confined to peeling paint, fallen ceiling tiles and broken windows, all easily fixable. It would take minimal effort to rehab it.

It features an amazing variety of rooms and offices, with all sorts of random artifacts inside. It also sets the record for most colors in a single building. There are whole rooms painted in shocking pink, sky blue, fire engine red, lemon yellow, day-glo orange and all sorts of combinations thereof.

And it has the best skyline view in the city, at least from an abandoned building vantage point. Almost the entirety of downtown stretches to the south, with the river visible for miles as it stretches east. Down below, the geometry of Grand Circus Park becomes apparent, not only in the layout of the concrete and bricks but the arrangement of the trees and shrubs, which you can only faintly discern when you’re on the ground.


The Broderick is so massive, so varied, that it’s impossible to thoroughly describe it. On our first trip there last year it took six hours of exploring just to reach the top. All anyone can do is provide quick summaries and snapshots. It’s one of those places that has to be seen to be understood.


We had been there before, in the fall, but we felt like having a repeat visit. The Broderick, designed by Louis Kamper and built in 1927, is a neo-classical monolith that stands at the gateway to downtown at the edge of Grand Circus Park. It’s been empty since the mid-80s. Most people recognize it as the building with the thoroughly annoying Wyland painting of whales on one side.

The lobby is absolutely gorgeous. It’s very narrow, and pretty much inaccessible now that the former Flame Grill has reopened as the Peacock North, or whatever it is they’re trying to do besides selling 11-ounce bottles of Guinness for $4.50.

The Broderick is a time capsule. Some rooms are perfectly preserved examples of late 70s and early- to mid-80s décor. A lot of offices still have calendars and schedules tacked to the walls, usually of an early-80s year on them. A whole room midway up is devoted to Mayor Coleman Young’s 1981 reelection campaign, full of leftover Carter/Mondale political pamphlets and stickers.

There are endless surprises in the Broderick. One of the dozens of dentist’s office has hundreds of plaster impressions of patients’ teeth in little boxes, complete with small photos of each patient with their mouth open. There’s also assorted pulled teeth in boxes, complete with visible cavities. Since the room’s been ransacked, there are teeth sticking out all over the place at all angles.

On the 34th floor is a very small bar, painted in black and white, with a photo of the city’s skyline plastered on an entire wall, and a photo of the Broderick on another, and enough room for no more than five people to stand.

Right next to it is a small balcony from which to take in a spectacular view of the city with your cocktail. There’s an attached kitchen done in bright yellow ceramic tile with soft ceiling tiles in the exact same shade of yellow. In the room next door is a pink marble fireplace. Pink.

Above that is a penthouse that, despite thorough tagging, still retains a sense of its former grace. Arched windows frame a distant view of the river and the Ren Cen, and 30-foot high ceilings create a slight echo.

It was clear that many urban explorers had been in there, and some of them had decided to help themselves to things. On one floor had been dozens of abstract, sort of impressionist paintings by some artist; on this visit all of them were gone. A wall photo of the city had been torn off in several places since we visited a mere eight months ago. A full-size wall mirror that was there in September was smashed a mere two months later. The same graffiti you see all over town is all over this building as well.

We got to the roof and watched the last two innings of the Tigers/Rangers game while taking in the sunlight, then headed back for the long, long climb downward.