Century Old Letter In A Bottle Found at MI Central Station

When excavating a really old building, you never know what you're going to find.

Over the last 2+ years, the Ford Motor Company has been working on renovating Michigan Central Station in Detroit. As crews work hard to fix up the building and turn it into an office workspace, they made a pretty cool discovery.

Where did the workers find that message in the bottle and what did it say?

The two workers responsible for finding the bottle were laborer Lukas Nielsen and foreman Leo Kimble. While working on a scissor lift to remove a plaster cornice from the wall, Nielsen notices the bottle and stopped Kimble from striking the wall.

The bottle itself was a Stroh's Bohemian Beer bottle and was stamped with the date of July 19th, 1913. According to the Detroit Free Press, the message inside the bottle read "Dan Hogan and Geo (George) Smith stuck this. (Indecipherable word) of Chicago 1913."

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What artifacts have the work crews found so far?

Crews have found over 200 artifacts at Michigan Central Station since beginning the renovation. Some of those items include a saucer from a china set, an adding machine, baby shoes, old tickets and payment ledgers, an old Shinola shoeshine bottle, a baseball, and more.

The items that have been found show the care that each of the individual construction workers are taking when they’re doing their work...They saw it and they knew it was important, so they brought it to us. My reaction was to wait to open it and make sure we do it right...said Rich Bardelli, Ford construction manager for the Michigan Central development project. 

It is awesome to see the great care these workers are taking to help preserve any history that they find along the way in this restoration project. The construction on Michigan Central Station is scheduled to be completed by the end of 2022.

Source: Ford Motor Company