The Roosevelt Warehouse, more commonly known as the Detroit Public Schools Book Depository, is a building on 14th & Marantette Street in

Detroit Detroit ( , ) is the List of municipalities in Michigan, most populous city in the U.S. state of Michigan. It is situated on the bank of the Detroit River across from Windsor, Ontario. It had a population of 639,111 at the 2020 United State ...

Michigan Michigan ( ) is a peninsular U.S. state, state in the Great Lakes region, Great Lakes region of the Upper Midwest, Upper Midwestern United States. It shares water and land boundaries with Minnesota to the northwest, Wisconsin to the west, ...

. It is understood to have been designed by Albert Kahn and that it was originally a

Post Office A post office is a public facility and a retailer that provides mail services, such as accepting letter (message), letters and parcel (package), parcels, providing post office boxes, and selling postage stamps, packaging, and stationery. Post o ...

before being used as the Public Schools' surplus equipment depository. It is currently owned by

Ford Motor Company Ford Motor Company (commonly known as Ford) is an American multinational corporation, multinational automobile manufacturer headquartered in Dearborn, Michigan, United States. It was founded by Henry Ford and incorporated on June 16, 1903. T ...

, who renovated it as part of its new Michigan Central Mobility Innovation District, transforming it into an innovation center. The building is home to the Detroit headquarters of New Lab, a multi-disciplinary technology company.

History

The building caught fire in 1987. The fire and efforts to extinguish it heavily damaged much of the supplies inside, which included science and sports equipment, scissors, crayons, and books, many still unused and in their original wrapping. After the fire the building was abandoned, along with all of its contents. The reason why the building's contents were not salvaged by Detroit Public Schools is unknown. Over the years of abandonment, the building and its contents were heavily vandalized and further damaged by scrappers. In 2009 a frozen human corpse was found in the basement in a lift-shaft. It took 24 hours before the authorities attended to the scene. Previously easy to enter, the building was then boarded up. The contents of the warehouse were removed over the summer of 2012 in preparation for possible conversion into a parking garage. In 2018, both the warehouse and the Michigan Central Station were purchased by the Ford Motor Company. In 2021, it was announced that New Lab would be the first major tenant in the building. On April 25, 2023, the building officially reopened as the Detroit headquarters for New Lab.

References

External links

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The book depository at Detroiturbex.com

A video tour of the warehouse soon after the body was found in the elevator shaft
{{Ford Motor Company Corktown, Detroit Ford Motor Company facilities Mill architecture