Rebecca Cook / Reuters

The Michigan Central Train depot sits vacant just west of downtown Detroit, Mich., Nov. 1, 2011. For years, Michigan Central Station, the towering train depot on the outskirts of downtown Detroit. The last train pulled out of the station in 1988, shortly before the Honda Accord became the best-selling car in America, a humbling milestone for the city and its top industry.

Reuters reports:

DETROIT — The last train pulled out of the station in 1988, shortly before the Honda Accord became the best-selling car in America, a humbling milestone for the city and its top industry.

In the intervening years, as the Big Three struggled to pick themselves up, vandals and the elements ravaged the depot. Architect Lis Knibbe says walking into the main waiting room, with its 60-foot vaulted ceilings and its graffiti-covered, water-damaged walls, was like "entering a Roman ruin."

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