Miles Of Tunnels Run Beneath Abandoned Detroit Mall

Countless shoppers visited metro Detroit’s Northland Center mall during its 61 years of business. Yet only a few ever saw the elaborate system of service tunnels that still exists beneath the nation’s first regional shopping mall, which closed last April and could face demolition as early as this summer. The underground tunnels opened with the mall in 1954 and were primarily used for making truck deliveries to Northland’s stores, but also for storage, workshop space and even nuclear bomb shelters. The tunnel network begins with a winding roadway that branches off into passageways connecting subterranean rooms, decrepit stairwells and non-working elevator shafts. Narrow, barely walkable tunnels extend to the mall’s old central power plant as well as a now-closed police substation and a nearby Firestone garage. Read more at USA Today.