This story was originally published by Outlier Media, a nonprofit newsroom designed to center and respond to Detroiters’ needs.
By Aaron Mondry, Outlier Media
Dan Austin (Facebook photo)
Dan Austin has spent the past six months doing what he does best — reflecting on the past.
For nearly two decades, the Detroiter has lived and breathed the city’s history, steadily documenting its historic buildings, landmarks and famous figures.
But lately, he’s also been thinking about his own history, making sure his work is preserved for the future.
Last year, at 43, Austin was diagnosed with Stage 4 colon cancer. But he’s not slowing down. If anything, he’s picked up the pace, writing and publishing more than ever before.
“It’s not lost on me that even if cancer doesn’t take me out, time is finite,” Austin said. “And I’ve a lot more work I want to do before I shuffle off this mortal coil and make my way over to Elmwood Cemetery.”
A passion for history
Austin’s journey into Detroit’s history — and his advocacy for preservation — began with journalism. He dreamed about working at the Detroit Free Press ever since he was 8 years old, devouring every story about his favorite team, the Detroit Tigers.
Fresh out of college as an intern at the paper, he became fascinated with an abandoned, red-brick building overlooking Grand Circus Park: the Statler Hotel. Combing through the Free Press archives, he learned that it was the city’s most luxurious hotel when it opened in 1915 and hosted famous guests like Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry Houdini (who spent the last day of his life there).
“That was when I first got the taste for digging up the dusty, forgotten pasts of all of these landmarks around the city,” Austin said.
In 2006, he landed a full-time job at the Free Press, working as a copy editor for nearly a decade.
Former Free Press journalist Bill McGraw vividly recalls an eager Austin peppering him with questions about the city’s old buildings and rifling through the library of newspaper clippings.
“He was really eager to learn and interested in things that almost no other young person at the Free Press cared about,” McGraw said. “I’d help him where I could in his research. I sometimes knew a bit about the buildings he was interested in. But he was interested in almost every building.”
McGraw also praised him as a copy editor, where Austin’s research skills and commitment to accuracy served him well.
“I refuse to give up. And I’m certainly not about to go against my instincts as a Detroiter.”
The Statler was also responsible for awakening Austin’s activist spirit. He was “absolutely horrified” when the skyscraper was demolished in 2005 and vowed to document as many historic structures as he could. Austin also swore to fight for their preservation. He was a board member of advocacy nonprofit Preservation Detroit from 2019-22.
“I set out to tell everybody who would listen about the history of these places. That our collective history as a people were in these buildings, that they were made up of more than just brick and mortar,” he said. “It became an obsession … every waking moment that I wasn’t at the Free Press writing — and even then some — I was devoted to chronicling these places as fast as I could, as in depth as I could, as accurately as I could.”
Making history accessible
Austin launched Historic Detroi in 2011, an online catalog of the city’s prominent buildings, homes and landmarks. He said the site, which has 959 entries and counting, received 1.5 million pageviews last year.
The website is a labor of love.
“It’s not just a nonprofit. It costs me money to do it,” he said. “I consider it a way that I can give back to the city I love.”
The entries on the site, almost all written by Austin, don’t just relay facts: They tell a story. Take his entry on the Hollywood Theatre, a former movie theater demolished in 1963:
“Where weeds now rise through the pavement of an old parking lot on the city’s southwest side, a velvet curtain once rose to reveal a silver screen. This was where Detroiters once flocked to a grand movie palace with a name that just screamed entertainment: the Hollywood Theatre.”
Fellow historian and former journalist Amy Elliott Bragg says Historic Detroit is almost always her first stop when she has a question about a building. She considers it an invaluable resource for anyone curious about the city — not just historians.
“It’s not only the volume and authority of Austin’s work, but also the approachability of it,” she said. “When I’m doing research and going to Dan’s website over and over, I just find myself feeling so grateful that this resource exists. And it exists because Dan created it out of his own passion for the subject.
“I don’t know how many cities have something like that.”
Austin’s work extends beyond the website. He’s written three books on abandoned buildings, demolished buildings and old postcards. He also wrote several pieces for the Free Press, including a series on Detroit’s best and worst mayors. The latter contributed to a reevaluation Mayor Albert Cobo and the eventual renaming of the civic center he helped build.
Austin left the Free Press — and journalism — in 2015 as the paper’s staff shrank to a third of the size of when he started, by his estimate. With multiple sclerosis, he couldn’t afford to get laid off and lose his medical insurance. So he pivoted to communications, working for the City of Detroit (twice) and two high-profile companies.
Not give up
Austin said he had been feeling fatigued for a long time but chalked it up to work stress and MS. A colonoscopy this past August revealed tumors. Further tests detected more in his lungs: The cancer had metastasized.
Doctors told Austin that colon cancer is slow to metastasize and that he might have had it for six to eight years.
Stage 4 cancer is sometimes considered a terminal illness, but Austin said neither he nor his doctors are treating it that way. He’s had nine rounds of chemotherapy and vows to fight it as long as he can.
Austin is nonetheless making sure Historic Detroit outlasts him. He brought on photographer Helmut Ziewers two years ago to step up the site’s visuals, and Austin has a plan to ensure someone will run it after him.
In the meantime, he has more stories to tell. He continues to update Historic Detroit and even started a newsletter in November for pieces that don’t quite fit the site — like an unsolved 1930s mob hit of a radio host and a deep dive into the life of Major Gen. Alpheus Starkey Williams, who’s memorialized in a prominent statue on Belle Isle.
“This city does not quit, and I refuse to give up,” Austin said. “And I’m certainly not about to go against my instincts as a Detroiter.”
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