CF Smith Warehouse
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Date Recorded: 6/20/24
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History of CF Smith Warehouse
CF Smith was a grocery store in the Detroit area that operated up to the 1950s. It was a neighborhood market with over 600 locations that refused to adapt to the supermarket standard, which ultimately killed the chain in the 1950s. The main warehouse for the company was located in Southwest Detroit and featured many different buildings and storage spaces. Since 2008, due to demolition efforts from the city of Detroit, three of the original six buildings have been demolished and are still on the list of commercial demolitions planned to be conducted in Detroit. At least three of the original six buildings were designed by the world-renowned architect Albert Kahn from 1917-1922 and served as the warehouse for the company until the 1950s when the chain went out of business. The building remained abandoned until the late 2000s, when workers began working on the remaining warehouses in an attempt to convert the building into lofts/apartments. This ultimately fell through, and by 2010, the idea was left behind and the warehouse was again abandoned. Since then, not much has changed about the remaining warehouses.
Recollection from the author
CF Smith Warehouse was a unique building due to it’s failed renovation to become a loft in the early 2000s, by chance we would always find ourselves in this building after a rainstorm for whatever reason, and the pipes in the building would leak of water from all angles, the water dripped so fast that the water would sound like footsteps of another person inside the building with us, the floor soaked with water would be interesting to traverse, most notably was the metal beams that lined the floorplan of the loft, some of which had rooms numbers above the entrance, along with the beams that followed the floor plans of the individual rooms, the most beautiful part of the building was the basement of the Main Warehouse which screamed Albert Khan which made 3 of the 6 buildings of the CF Smith Warehouse building, the buildings showed signs of old and new the pipes shined a bright orange but the floors and brick were old as dirt, all in all it came together as a building with a skewed story hard to put together because of the loft put in its place
