Picture the tallest department store in the world, rising here in stages. The J. L. Hudson Company built its flagship here on Woodward Avenue in stages between 1911 and 1946, until it climbed twenty-five stories, a retail cathedral with thousands of employees, where generations of Detroiters bought their first suits, met under the clock, and watched the giant flag unfurl down its side on holidays. Hudson's also launched what became the nation's largest Thanksgiving parade.
As shoppers fled to suburban malls, the great store closed in 1983, and in October 1998 the empty building was imploded before a crowd of twenty thousand, then the tallest building ever demolished by explosion. The cleared block sat as a hole in the heart of downtown for years. Now a soaring new mixed-use tower, Hudson's Detroit, rises on the same ground, one of the tallest buildings in the state.
Picture the new tower rising where the old store once stood, a whole city coming here to shop.