Harry Houdini’s Last Performance (Garrick Theatre Site)

Of all the fame-tinged places in Detroit, this might be the eeriest: it’s where Harry Houdini gave his very last performance. On October 24, 1926 — already running a 104-degree fever with a ruptured appendix — the world’s most famous magician refused to cancel and took the stage of the Garrick Theatre on Griswold Street downtown. He reportedly passed out during the show, was revived, and finished anyway, then collapsed for good.

He was rushed to Detroit’s Grace Hospital, where he died on Halloween night, October 31, 1926, at 52, of peritonitis. (The lingering myth that a student’s punch to the gut killed him has never been settled.) Both buildings are gone now — the Garrick was demolished around 1928, and old Grace Hospital came down in 1979 (the Harper Professional Building at 4160 John R sits near where it stood). So you can’t step inside either, but you can stand in the heart of downtown where the greatest escape artist who ever lived made the one exit he couldn’t escape. For the full story of the lost theater, Historic Detroit is worth a read.