Some skyscrapers around town are neither occupied nor abandoned, but fall into a vague state somewhere between the two. One good example is a 10-story building near the intersection of Grand River and Woodward that currently stands without signs or identifying markers, resting quiet and lusterless, as if waiting to see what happens.

Reportedly built in 1922 by Sebastian Kresge when he was throwing up buildings all over the immediate area around Woodward, it was one of many office buildings appearing downtown in the 1920s, during Detroit’s glory days. But unlike most of the structures that went up in Detroit during those years, it exhibits relatively little decorative ornamentation apart from small effects on its windowsills and cornice, relying instead on crisp lines to define its image. In that sense it stands out in an area filled with terra cotta enthusiams run wild.

It was built next to a number of small businesses that were on the corner of Grand River and Woodward in the early part of the 20th century, including the linguistically confused “De French Shoppe,” a women’s clothing store; and Xenos Brothers Confectioners, run by Anthony and Dionisious Xenos, who headed to work each day from their home just up the street at Grand River and Plum, now a series of empty parking lots and the future site of De MGM Grand’s new casino.

The building’s original name was the Detroit Union League Club Building. Its first tenants were primarily involved in the clothing business – Empire Silk and Woolen Co. on the second floor; Michigan Millinery Co. on the Third Floor; Leeth and Young, tailors, on the fourth floor; with the Union League Club occupying the sixth through 10th floors.

The Detroit Union League Club gave up the building not too long after it opened, and it was renamed the West Grand River Building. Floors changed hands between businesses over the years, with jewelers and watch repair shops replacing tailors. Durng the 1930s a music school and an instrument repair shop occupied adjacent floors, and a home furnishing store operated out of the building’s seventh floor, with a dentist’s office on the second floor and a beauty parlor on the third. The small stores that had occupied the remaining space on the corner of Woodward moved elsewhere or went out of business. Xenos Brothers Confectionary, for example, moved across town to a new place on Forest near Russell.

By the 1950s the building again changed its name, this time to the unimaginative but haughty-sounding “35 West Grand River. By then it housed the longstanding Quikee Donut and Coffee Shop, which occupied most of the ground floor, and which took the place of the Sanders Ice Cream Shop. Above it was The Style Center, offering “high fashion” and “matching handbags.”

By 1973 it housed only Imperial Fabrics and C.R. Hill Co. Jewelers, with a series of vacant floors between them, joined by a dance studio on the top floor. From then through the 1980s it remained semi-occupied by residences and a sports bar that occupied the donut shop’s first-floor space. In 1986 it was purchased by Mike Clark, who decided the building would suddenly, humbly, be renamed the Clark Building. A few lower floors were rehabbed and marketed as lofts, though so far most of the building remains empty, much of it unfinished.

The Clark Building is home to the Diamonds and Pearls Social Club on the second floor, featured darkened windows that permit dim glimses of Christmas lights strung inside. In fact, its presence would remain undetected apart from a stenciled white logo on the windows facing Grand River and increased traffic on the small street on the weekends. The building also hosts poetry readings on the third floor once a month and is home to a couple of loft dwellers who don’t mind living in a semi-abandoned building with loud poetry and music blaring at all hours of the night.

The most noteworthy thing about the building right now is its unusual mix of co-existing styles. It’s like a tree cut in half, revealing rings that chronicle its growth. The lower floors are the most modern, featuring lofts with modern contemporary decor and conveniences, while the upper floors are still frozen in the 1930s. Other parts of the building reflect the years between, with decor from its last major update three decades ago.

The lobby was remodeled in the 1970s in a sort of Stanley Kubrick futurism decor, with sleek, blank spaces painted bold, bright colors, though still retaining a 1950s-era directory and mail boxes, as well as the building’s original iron staircase. Glass doors framed by metal grace the entranceway, and elevators from the 1970s, painted bright orange, sit uselessly, their motors having burned out long ago.

The upper floors, still stuck mid-renovation, retain a handful of 1930s features, including elevators with old-fashioned glass and wood doors, and circular, clock-like floor-level indicators. A few strips of very old wallpaper remain on some surfaces, sharing space with desks from the 1980s that contained remnants from Holy Cross Hospital, including curious little round decals with the hospital’s logo on them.

The connecting thread between a number of buildings in the city is the 1970s decor. Even if you knew nothing about Detroit, once you explore a number of these buildings it becomes evident that something happened to Detroit in the 1970s. It’s as if a neutron bomb was dropped and almost all the people vanished, leaving the environment almost exactly as it was when they disappeared.

Though the decline of Detroit can be plotted out on a scale of continuing abandonment, it seems the final straw occurred for a number of businesses in the gaudy, thoroughly tacky 1970s, when the ratio of occupied floors to empty ones in some buildings reached the tipping point, when more customers lived in the suburbs than in the city and it began making sense to close up shop downtown and move north. Rising crime and population loss signaled which way the wind was blowing, adding to the snowballing effect of depopulation in Detroit. When the business owners left, the last renovations at their stores remained in place, aging slowly.

Much of the evidence of that turn of events is being wiped away, and though it’s not aesthetically sad to see the garish splendor of bad taste vanish during the current remodeling of long-forgotten buildings, it still hastens the disappearance of a remnant of the city’s history, even if it’s a period most people would probably prefer to forget.