The jewel that was Detroit’s Michigan Central Station is now represented in jewelry that highlights the splendor of the original building and commemorates some of its spectacular features, such as the chandeliers.

The historic train station, abandoned since the late 1980s, reopened this spring as the centerpiece of a technology, cultural, and retail complex. During the six-year renovation, Ford Motor Co., which bought the Beaux Arts building in 2018, reused every original stone, tile, and light it could in creating the new Michigan Central.

As Ford prepared for the grand opening, there were a few materials its conservators could not find homes for. That salvaged iron, marble, and granite got turned into jewelry now for sale at the Michigan Central souvenir shop, so people can take home a literal piece of the rail station after visiting it.

The jewelry will also be sold online, in the current pop-up shop, and in a Michigan Central retail store, says Roslyn Karamoko, the creator of fashion brand and platform Détroit Is the New Black, who serves as head of retail strategy for Michigan Central.

“I love a good souvenir, but we wanted to think about sustainability, too,” Karamoko says. “We want people to have something special to take away from the experience and commemorate the activities we’re doing. Michigan Central has such an emotional connection for people that it goes beyond wearable. They want a piece of the station—an artifact of the experience on their person and in their homes.”

Karamoko worked with a variety of local creatives to come up with the jewelry that celebrates the beautiful station, including the Smith Shop, a metalwork specialist in Highland Park, which created an iron bangle stamped with an image of Michigan Central. Detroit-based jewelry and accessories brand Rebel Nell is making items using some of the salvaged graffiti (the train station was covered with street art when Ford purchased it), and Elaine Jaeger, owner of Elaine B Jewelry in Ferndale, designed granite pendant necklaces.

As she wasn’t used to working with granite from a century-old train, Jaeger reached out to DanDee Rocks, a lapidary in Fort Wayne, Ind., for help finding a cut appropriate for the granite that would also be distinctive in shape. The stones were then set at Elaine B.

“They gave us a lot of creative freedom and really trusted us,” Jaeger says of Michigan Central and Karamoko. “It was a challenging project because at first, we weren’t sure what we could do with the material. People aren’t typically making jewelry out of granite. The first stones they gave us chipped so easily that it took a while to figure out the material.”

For the new Michigan Central, three massive chandeliers that hung in the old station’s waiting room and Grand Hall were re-created. Lisa Ford, wife of Ford Motor chairman Bill Ford, wanted to wear something inspired by those chandeliers to the opening events, so Karamoko sourced symbolic 14k gold earrings for her—and versions of them will also be sold to the public.

“We were able to get the line drawing of the chandeliers from our architects internally, and we did the replica in rose gold for Lisa. The ones available in our gift shop will be 14k gold and sterling silver,” Karamoko says.

Originally designed by architects Warren & Wetmore and Reed & Stem, the same team behind New York’s famed Grand Central, Michigan Central Station opened its doors in 1913 as one of the country’s most spectacular transportation terminals. It saw 4,000 daily passengers at its peak, but following decades of declining rail travel, it was shuttered in 1988 and then sat vacant for three decades, experiencing severe neglect, decay, and vandalism.

The restoration involved an estimated 3,000 skilled workers and more than 1.7 million hours. The Indiana quarry that had provided limestone for the original station’s exterior reopened three decades after closing to produce more than 600 tons of limestone for the new project. One Michigan tradesman spent 428 hours hand-carving a replica of a single column capital for the building’s north entrance.

(Photos courtesy of Michigan Central)

 

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