The Time Lords, an extraterrestrial civilization featured in the BBC television series Dr. Who, has inspired a Detroit resident to build a TARDIS in the neighborhood – a fanciful machine that could transport its occupants to any point in time and space.

With the help of family, friends and neighbors he installed it in front of a long-deserted row house La Ferte Terrace, which is under rehab.

Dan Zemke, creator of the 10-foot-tall, one-ton box painted bright blue with a solar light on top, hopes to set the time machine on forward drive, helping revive a neighborhood that had been disintegrating for decades. TARDIS stands for Time and Relative Dimension in Space, or in Zemke’s vision, Totally Awesome Reading Dispensary in Society.

A group of retired elementary school teachers from Novi collected 1,200 books for Detroit’s Little Libraries around town and brought 250 to help stock the TARDIS that stands on an empty lot at Vermont and Warren by the row house his brother Jon is rebuilding. Both Jon and Dan Zemke live in the neighborhood.

Books and fanciful urban thinking are important components to the family.

“My dad and I worked on the TARDIS in his barn in Pinckney pretty much every weekend since Labor Day. We wanted to build something that would be a resource for community,” Zemke says, noting a family around the block has a wood-carved statue of Dr. Seuss’s Lorax in their front yard.

By day, Zemke works as an outreach and communications coordinator at Advantage Health Centers in Detroit. One of his duties is helping manage a “Reach Out and Read” program. His team makes sure every kid visiting the clinic leaves with a book.

With the Frederick Douglass Academy across the street from TARDIS, he hopes to inspire reading among school children and adults. It will be cooler than any standard library, Zemke promises.

When the TARDIS doors open, it reveals a large mural of the time machine featured in the Dr. Who TV show resembling the inside of a space ship. Jennifer Maiseloff, a set designer and painter for Planet Ant Theatre in Hamtramck and other places, created the giant painting. Slide the mural panel and find a book.

What books might be inspired by a time-traveling police box?

Think The Time Machine by H.G. Wells; The Time Traveler’s Wife, by Audrey Niffen; Outlander by Diana Gabaldon; Kindred by Octavia Butler, and A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle.

Donations to fill the one ton TARDIS with books for all ages are most welcome. Visit the TARDIS facebook page or  Detroit’s Little Libraries website at www.detroitlittlelibraries.org.

  Dan Zemke, Jennifer Maiseloff, Planet Ant Theatre