October 25, 1998
JENNIFER DIXON
Free Press Staff Writer
Explosives roared like giant
thunderclaps through the J.L.
Hudson building in rapid succession Saturday, leveling in seconds the
legendary store that has been part of the city's skyline for nearly a
century and raining debris on the nearby Detroit People Mover track.
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Glass windows in the building's southwest corner quivered as the first of 2,728 pounds of plastic explosives began to rumble through the store and then, the building began to crumble.
Within seconds, the store's 25-story tower twisted and careened onto the pile of shattered brick and concrete, and twisted steel.
Cheers went up from the crowd of about 50,000 and dust roiled skyward. A brown-gray cloud reaching an estimated 300 feet washed south and eastward. Some of the nearest demolition watchers, observing from about a block away, ran for cover down side streets as the area was enveloped in a silty darkness.
"I'm scared half to death," 7-year-old Krystina Harp told her parents, Doug and Julie, as the Sterling Heights family huddled in a doorway moments after the blast, trying to escape the billowing dust. "I don't like it."
In the stillness of the aftermath, as the dust slowly dissipated and blue police lights flashed around the perimeter of the rubble, the scene reminded some of a war zone.
"It looks like a bomb has hit. It's just unbelievable that that big building is down. It was awesome, awesome," said Paul Johnson of Detroit, who as a member of the demolition crew walked around the building's remains shortly after the blast.
In the aftermath, a handful of shattered windows could be seen in the buildings facing Hudson's along Woodward. Debris and several steel beams rested across the People Mover concrete track.
The track curved within 10 to 12 feet of the store's block-long facade. City officials and Jim Santoro, senior project manager for Controlled Demolition Inc., a part of the demolition team, said the damage was cosmetic.
Santoro said CDI was "very happy" with the results of the demolition and that the damage to the People Mover was "primarily cosmetic.... That's excellent, if that's all we have."
"There's a little debris on it," said Michelle Zdrodowski, spokeswoman for Mayor Dennis Archer. "It's very structurally sound. They mayor was very relieved to hear that the structural integrity of the People Mover was intact."
Before the blast, People Mover officials had said the system would be closed through Nov. 9.
Albert Martin, director of the Detroit Department of Transportation, said the system would not reopen then. A decision on when to reopen the system will be made once damage to the track is assessed, he said.
"We feel quite relieved that the guideway remained intact," Martin said. But he said it was difficult to say whether the damage was strictly cosmetic. "We're going to wait and do a thorough review of the data,' Martin said.
The People Mover installed seismic monitoring equipment before the blast, and it is that data that Martin will analyze.
Zdrodowski said Archer, who watched the blast from a nearby parking garage, was buoyed by the blast.
"He's excited. It's not the end of something, it's the beginning of something new," she said.
Once the rubble is trucked away in five to six months, work is expected to begin on an underground parking garage in Hudson's basements. The garage will be part of a development known as Campus Martius. Blueprints call for mid-rise office buildings, a hotel, restaurants and shops rising from the Hudson's site and four other city blocks, all vacant except for a parking garage.
An estimated 50,000 people came downtown to say good-bye to the store, according to Police Chief Benny Napoleon, who watched the demolition from a block away and described it as "awesome. The way it came down in stages was very meticulous, very precise."
Many gathered at the foot of Woodward, others on the steps of the Wayne County building. Others peered out of office buildings ringing the once-mighty store.
The plumes of dust and the way the store crumpled left some of them stunned.
"It was just absolutely unbelievable," said Wayne Pittman of Detroit, manager of the nearby City Slicker Shoes. "It was a little scary, for a while. And now it's gone. I'm feeling kind of melancholy."
For many people, the building's demise marks the end of an era, when going shopping meant dressing up in their very best: white gloves, Mary Janes and hats.
"Hudson's was the heart of downtown," said Safiya A. Khalid, an Ann Arbor paralegal who came downtown to see it fall. "The closing of Hudson's and the demolition is the end of an era that can never be replaced. This is a sad, historic moment."
In its heyday, the store had 12,000 employees and 100,000 shoppers a day. It had its own "hospital," lending library, fleet of 350 delivery trucks, 705 fitting rooms, and floor after floor of good shopping. It was also known for its elevator operators -- poised, polished women -- and its Maurice salad, chicken-pot pies, and Canadian cheese soup.
But as downtown declined around it, the store lost its luster and finally closed its doors in 1983, nearly a century after Hudson's opened its downtown store. Those who pushed to tear it down argued that the sun-blotting hulk was strangling downtown's resurgence.
Surveying the wreckage in the dusty, surreal twilight, Annie Kleene of Pleasant Ridge saw "a hole in the skyline. It's really odd. It's funny how one building really makes a difference."