Detroit-ish.com is the most comprehensive site dedicated to exploring and documenting Detroit and its buildings. There is an emphasis on Detroit’s vacant structures as these are disappearing and changing at an accelerated rate. We are optimistic about Detroit’s future because things are on an upward turn for the first time in 20 years. The photos on this website represent a culmination of 16 years of entering and photographing these structures. Despite sometimes lamenting a lost building, a loss of history, we enjoy documenting this change. We hope that in the coming years as city planners, investors and speculators make way for ‘progress’ … Detroit can hold on to its history.

While the whole country is watching to see if a city, once the center of all that made America great, can come back from the brink of ruin these changes are necessary for laying the groundwork for a thriving city of the future. Much of the old is evaporating to make way for the new, years from now Detroit will be radically different. This is why much of our work is documenting this change. It gives us motivation for what we do on a daily basis.

Detroit is as iconic as America itself and its story is not just shining images of what is to come. With Detroit you take the good with the bad, recognize the good as it comes and preserve the good that has come before. Many that enter the city can sense the urgency of change and the spirit of reinvention and we certainly understand this and these are some the photos from along the way.

The Flag of Detroit contains the two latin slogans “Speramus Meliora” and “Resurget Cineribus” meaning “We hope for better things” and “It will rise from the ashes.” The prophetic phrases originally created in reference to the 1805 fire ring true more now than ever and we take these slogans to heart as we go out and explore our city.