Central Office Coming Down

[juliosz]

Demolition of Chevrolet Central Office began last month. Looks like two more weeks and it should be leveled. There was some beautiful areas in this building and stunning 50's era woodwork in the executive offices and conference rooms.

[RLS_Jr]

Sad to see that

[Salvatore]

Great pictures. Thanks for taking them.

[Dicky]

Hey Paul, is that structure in the Detroit metro area?

It is a great looking building and it's to bad the economy will not

support it's being sold to another entity that could use it with a

little updating. [img]<<GRAEMLIN_URL>>/bs.gif[/img]

I just came back from a visit to Detroit and it is very sad to see some of the old Icons

left to rot, ie; the Packard plant and the old Henry Ford in Highland Park.

Sometimes it's better to dismantle I guess and let go of the past. Sad, Sad...

For some reason (economics) buildings seem to get razed and new structures put up in their

place as less expensive then retrofitting. [img]<<GRAEMLIN_URL>>/dunno.gif[/img]

Dicky [img]<<GRAEMLIN_URL>>/flag.gif[/img]

[juliosz]

Dicky,

The Chevy Central Office building in metro Detroit at the GM Tech Center in Warren. I believe it was one of the first buildings built on the Tech Center property (built between 1953 and 55). Central Office became under-utilized when most of the folks who worked there were transferred to the Ren Cen in downtown Detroit.

[bergy]

Sad to see - my office was in that building when I worked for Chevrolet R&amp;D.

[TimG]

I loved it when GM took photos of the cars in front of their offices.

[68l30]

We just had a similar demolition here in Cleveland. They completely leveled the old Ford Cleveland Casting Foundry. What was once state of the art is now long gone. The engine plant remains but..... WOW, what a lot of open space left over. Just sad to see huge a industrial area vanish. Our area also lost Steel mills.....and on the old sites sit stores (Steelyard Commons) and all the Chinese crap you can buy. Depressing ... [img]<<GRAEMLIN_URL>>/thumbsdown.gif[/img]


BIG

[TDW]

Reminds me of the Buick Engineering, AC Engineering, and Fisher Body buildings they tore down around here. The Buick building was stunning. The woodwork alone must have cost millions. Marble interior walls. It all went in the trash.

[Keith Seymore]

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: juliosz</div><div class="ubbcode-body">Demolition of Chevrolet Central Office began last month. Looks like two more weeks and it should be leveled. There was some beautiful areas in this building and stunning 50's era woodwork in the executive offices and conference rooms.

</div></div>

That is terrible news. I work about 500 yards from there and didn't realize this was going on. I agree about the beautiful paneling in the executive offices; We are building prototype bodies in the back of this building so it was funny (strange) to see the shop guys sitting with their greasy shoes up on Pete Etes' old desk.

I don't know what the deal is here in Southeast Michigan but GM is on a rampage to tear these buildings down. As we vacated Truck facilities on South Blvd in Pontiac they tore them down so fast that the city was not recognizable. I actually got lost going to Pontiac for a vehicle swap because the administration building was gone (GONE!) and I missed my turn (after having worked in Pontiac for ten years).

Buildings that have stood undisturbed at Montcalm and Joslyn (the old Pontiac/Fisher body complex) have started coming down within the last year at an alarming rate.

Well - in honor of today's thread here is a pic of Chevy Central Office that I took from the VEC tower, at the GM Employee car show a couple years back: