Dan Austin

Dan Austin has spent two decades working in Detroit media and telling the stories of his beloved Motor City.

In May 2023, he became the director of editorial and communications for Michigan Central, helping to lead the media strategy around Ford's restoration and reopening of the historic Michigan Central Station. Previously, he served as director of communications for the City of Detroit's Planning, Housing & Development departments. He also had a 13-year career in journalism at papers across the country.

He is perhaps best known for his work in uncovering the forgotten stories behind Detroit's buildings and monuments and for running HistoricDetroit.org as a free, not-for-profit community service that has chronicled our city's past and captured its present. The site received 1.5 million page views from 504,000 unique visitors in 2024, and has some 18,000 images of the city's historic architecture available free of charge to the public. It chronicles the history of everything from Detroit's first skyscraper to long-gone passenger steamers that ferried Detroiters around the Great Lakes to key Detroit sites in the civil rights movement.

In March 2026, in the wake of a stage 4 cancer diagnosis, he and his wife, Elle Tivine, established the Austin Past & Future Fund. The nonprofit raises funds with two expressgoals: First, keeping HistoricDetroit.org up and running in perpetuity so that the stories that have been painstakingly researched over two decades don't become lost again, and second, to offer educational scholarships for Detroit youth who are committed togiving back to the city of Detroit in some way, whether as teachers, urban planners, social workers or any other number of careers. This way, Dan hopes to help those who want to help the city that he loves and to which he has dedicated his life. Currently still in the initial fund-raising stage, the fund plans to start offering scholarships in early 2027to Detroit youth. Details about the fund are available at www.austinfund.org.