Ypsilanti has two downtowns, and Depot Town is the old one

Stand at the corner of East Cross and River streets in Ypsilanti and you are in the older of the city’s two downtowns. Locals call it Depot Town, and the name is literal: it grew up around the railroad station. When the line from Detroit reached Ypsilanti and a wooden depot went up in 1838, a tight little commercial district sprang up right next to it, east of the Huron River. Most of the brick storefronts you see there now date from the 1850s through the 1880s — close-packed, two and three stories, built when the trains were the reason a town like this had money.

The second downtown came along on the other side of the river. That one runs along Michigan Avenue, which was once the Chicago Road, the main wagon route between Detroit and Chicago. For a stretch of history it was called Congress Street. So the city ended up with two business districts a few blocks apart, each built for a different kind of traffic — one for the railroad, one for the road — and both survive.

What makes Depot Town unusual is how little it changed. The railroad business eventually moved on, and instead of being torn down and modernized, the old district mostly just sat there, which is the best thing that can happen to a place like it. By the 1970s people had figured out what they had: the area was designated a state historic site and listed on the National Register of Historic Places, hundreds of contributing buildings between the two cores.

These days Depot Town is the part of Ypsilanti people drive in for — a couple blocks of restaurants, antique shops, and a freight house turned event space, with the tracks still running right behind it. The trains don’t stop anymore, but the town they built is still standing there, waiting on a platform.