Across major American cities, old unused rail depots and train stations are seeing second lives as hotels.

Along with preserving relics of America’s past, these structures are often made of stone or brick and were built with the intention of welcoming tens of thousands of people per day, making them strong and long-lasting as well as aesthetically lovely.

Most of these have been in disuse since the 1980s. In Detroit, the Michigan Central Station is one such case. Shuttered, unloved, and picked over by scavengers, Central has now been resuscitated thanks to a $1 billion investment by Ford, turning it into a multi-use facility that includes 13 acres of parks, office space for startups, along with some for Ford itself, and a hotel that will occupy four of the 16 floors in the main tower.

For those who are interested in historic renovation, the Bloomberg exclusive on Central Station’s revival is a must-read.

Denver’s Union Station used to welcome 50,000 passengers per day, but since the very early 2000s it’s enjoyed only a small fraction of that. Though never abandoned, it was very much out of touch, until $54 million in renovations changed it into a hive of activity centered around a luxury hotel.

Cafes, shops, and dining venues all enjoy the light from the massive arched windows in the central hall, all of which have contributed in no small part to the revival of Union Station as an actual train station, with rail traffic increasing back up to 10,000 per day by 2024.

In Salt Lake City, Union Pacific Depot saw a decline in rail traffic after Amtrak took over the lines from Rio Grande.

By 1986, even Amtrak departed: to a station three blocks south, leaving only small sections of long-distance trains to use Union Pacific. In 1997, both of these were discontinued, and the depot was made redundant.

In January 2006, three floors opened as a restaurant and music venue, known as The Depot, but in 2024 it became the walls and roof of the Asher Adams Hotel, named in homage to the two men who first depicted railroad routes.

Containing 225 rooms and 13 luxury suites, it is also the ‘gateway’ to The Gateway development, a large shopping and business space reached through the depot’s main hall.

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“The public had an emotional connection to it,” Emir Tursic, a partner with HKS Architects, which led the restoration, told the BBC, saying that demolishing it was simply out of the question. “It’s part of our cultural heritage.”

The BBC profiled all these stations and more, and spoke to one expert who believes that, far from being governed by decisions of the heart, these refurbishing projects actually make logical and financial sense as well.

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“Economically and environmentally, it makes a lot of sense to preserve what you have, instead of tearing something down and building up something new,” said Diana Melichar, president of Melichar Architects in Lake Forest, Illinois, and who has renovated several train stations in smaller communities.

“If they have good bones, these buildings built of stone or brick will last another century.”