Brush St. Grand Trunk Station Detroit

[wanswheel]

[Deggesty]

Mike, thanks for these pictures. I made use of the Brush Street Station once, coming in from Chicago on the evening train in September of 1969. The next morning, I walked over to get a good look at the station before leaving for Washington on the George Washington (I had to change in Huntington).

[wanswheel]

Johnny, thanks for commenting on this and the Union Depot thread. I'm glad somebody remembers these stations. Probably helps to be over 40, although not necessarily. I think I passed through Detroit on Penn Central from South Bend to New York in 1968. I can't remember anything except learning that the club car would be dry in Ontario.

Here's some history.

Contracts were let for the building of the line of the Detroit and Pontiac Railroad in the spring of 1836. The original company formed to build this line had been incorporated as early as 1830 and again incorporated under the terms of a reorganization in 1834. A year later this last corporation was given authority to establish what was known as the Bank of Pontiac, which it was thought would facilitate the financing of the enterprise. Only after the state had loaned the company one hundred thousand dollars in 1838, however, was any part of the line in operation. During this year the track-the timber and strap-iron affair characteristic of all the early roads- reached Royal Oak. A year later Birmingham was reached, but not until four years later were trains run into Pontiac....

As the people of Detroit and of Michigan generally were anxious to promote in every way the interests of the new railroads, the companies entering Detroit were granted every privilege. The Pontiac line was allowed to run its cars down Dequindre street and the Gratiot road to a station situated near the present site of the Detroit Opera House, while the Michigan Central Company was granted the use of the Chicago road, Michigan Avenue, and a station site on the southeast corner of Michigan Avenue and Griswold Street, on the present city hall site. The Pontiac company, however, made itself objectionable to Gratiot Avenue property owners by neglecting to make passable that part of Gratiot not occupied by its tracks. After several orders of the council directing the company to remedy the evil had been ignored, the citizens took the matter into their own hands and initiated a series of night attacks in which the company's track was torn up. Guards and the arrest of the belligerent citizens brought the company no relief. Finally ground on the river front was purchased and the line was extended across Jefferson avenue to the Brush street station, which was first used in 1852.

(Brush street, after Col. Elijah Brush, an officer in Hull's army at the time of the surrender, and owner of the farm through which it runs.)

Prior to 1855 a company had been incorporated for the purpose of building a railroad from Pontiac to a point on Lake Michigan. This was called the Oakland and Ottawa line. Early in the above year the legislature granted authority for the combination of the Detroit and Pontiac line with the Oakland and Ottawa road, the two properties to be known as the Detroit & Milwaukee Railroad. Grand Haven was selected as the objective point on Lake Michigan and in 1858 the line was completed to that place, passing Owosso and Ionia. In the following year two transports were put into operation between Grand Haven and Milwaukee, thus opening through transportation between Detroit and the latter city. Both parties to the consolidation were heavily involved financially at the time the combination was effected and as a result of the non-payment of mortgages given for construction the entire property was later sold to the Great Western Railroad Company which was in turn subsequently absorbed by the Grand Trunk.

The Great Western Railroad, originally chartered in 1834, was the first line to complete an all-rail connection with the east. This line was projected to run between Hamilton, Ontario, and Niagara, but found an active rival in the Detroit & Niagara, which was chartered two years later. The Michigan Central, seeking an eastern feeder, interested itself in the Great Western, however, and soon after the expiration of the charter of the Detroit & Niagara, invested between one hundred and fifty and two hundred thousand dollars in the completion of the Great Western. Nearly four thousand five hundred dollars were spent by the city of Detroit in celebrating the arrival at Windsor of the first train from the east, January 17, 1854. A public dinner was given, whistles were blown, guns were fired and the citizens paraded, the whole community taking part in the general jubilee. Until 1867 passengers and freight were transferred from the Canadian side, and vice versa, by ferry, but in that year through trains began running between Chicago and the east, via the New York Central, the Canadian line and the Michigan Central.

At this link to a book page is a picture of the first Brush Street station, destroyed by fire in 1866.

http://books.google.com/books?id=hoYBkSWca3cC&pg=PA15#v=onepage&q=&f=true

[Dan M]

You may like to see some of these too from our family collection.

1962 Brush Street Depot.

Dan

[Anonymous]

Nice photos, Mike; wish I could figure out which building is the station in the first aerial photo.  In 1960, I came into Dearborn Station on the Santa Fe and used the Grand Trunk to get to Detroit to pick up a new Dodge station wagon. 

First and only time I used either station. 

[wanswheel]

Dan, that's a great picture, thanks for posting.

Art, the station is in the lower left corner of the aerial photo.

Mike