Glorious Detroit
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Robert Sharoff. American City: Detroit Architecture, 1845-2005. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2005. xxi + 121 pp. $60.00, cloth, ISBN 978-0-8143-3270-2. Reviewed by Kathryn Eckert Published on H-Urban (March, 2006) Surrounding and sheltering me as I grew up the many titles in the art and architecture section in Detroit were the city's glorious buildings. I visit‐ of its splendid Great Lakes Book series. Author ed my grandfather's law office in the Penobscot Robert Sharoff and photographer William Zbaren Building, ice-skated at Palmer Park, enjoyed holi‐ have created a frst-ever large-format book that day dinners at the Detroit Golf Club, rode the bus celebrates ffty of Detroit's functioning commer‐ up and down Woodward Avenue past landmark cial and civic buildings and monuments spanning neighborhoods and churches, shopped for shoes the period 1845 to 2005. The book presents both and visited my doctor in the Fisher Building, at‐ the glory of Detroit and its decline, in a format tended civic light opera at the Masonic Temple, that will appeal to a broad audience. The book and swam in the Pewabic pool at the Women's will inspire in everyone who picks it up an appre‐ City Club. Later, working in the State Historic ciation of Detroit's architecture and a call to ac‐ Preservation Office in Lansing for nearly twenty- tion to save it. five years, I helped identify, assess, designate and Sharoff, who spent his youth in the Detroit protect these beloved buildings and neighbor‐ area, claims he was unaware of the city's second- hoods as the economy of Detroit declined, and I to-none architectural resources until a recent visit supported Preservation Wayne and others in pre‐ to the city afforded him, together with Zbaren, the serving and promoting them. time to walk around downtown. Sharoff is an ar‐ We were not alone in observing the endan‐ chitecture and real estate writer for the New York gered or marginally used buildings in Detroit. Re‐ Times and Chicago Magazine. Zbaren is a photog‐ cently the National Trust for Historic Preservation rapher whose images have appeared in the New put the historic buildings of downtown Detroit on York Times and other national publications, and its 2005 list of the eleven most endangered places. hung in gallery exhibitions. Wayne State University Press now has added Sharoff and Zbaren established criteria for se‐ American City: Detroit Architecture, 1845-2005 to lecting buildings worthy of inclusion and identi‐ H-Net Reviews fied ninety buildings. That list was then reduced Guardian skyscrapers in the fnancial district to ffty. American City: Detroit Architecture, along Griswold Street. Nineteenth-century archi‐ 1845-2005 owes a debt to previous scholars and tecture designed by Gordon W. Lloyd, Sheldon recorders of Detroit and Michigan architecture Smith, and others followed national stylistic and is also informed by new research on Wirt C. trends; early-twentieth-century Beaux-Arts Classi‐ Rowland, architect of Detroit skyscrapers.[1] A cal buildings were designed by Cass Gilbert, War‐ short but highly readable introductory essay is ren and Wetmore; and McKim, Mead and White followed by brief entries, sometimes merely cap‐ of New York as well as by Albert Kahn and other tions, for the buildings. The entries are arranged local frms working in this and other traditional chronologically and are profusely illustrated with styles. appealing full-size color photographs. The works Sharoff regards Rowland's Art Deco Penob‐ of international architects, East Coast and Chicago scot and Guardian buildings, the former stream‐ architects, and local practitioners are represented lined, the latter mixed with Arts and Crafts, in the book. among the city's outstanding examples. He recog‐ The introductory essay discusses the econom‐ nizes ceramist Mary Chase Perry Stratton and her ic and social forces that shaped the buildings of husband, the architect William B. Stratton, as key Detroit. Sharoff sets the stage for great industrial figures in the Arts and Crafts in Detroit. Steeped in development by highlighting the location of De‐ industrialization and interested in design, Detroi‐ troit on the river that connects the city with the ters readily accepted the handmade qualities of natural resources of the Upper and Lower Great the Arts and Crafts. Between the Great Depression lakes. As investors in the state's extractive indus‐ and the conclusion of World War II, building ac‐ tries (copper, iron ore, and lumber) poured their tivity shut down, but city inhabitants took keen profits into making stoves, railroad cars, ships interest in Diego Rivera's famous "Detroit Indus‐ and pharmaceuticals, and, later, automobiles, De‐ try" fresco murals in the Garden Court of the De‐ troit became a manufacturing center. The econo‐ troit Institute of Arts. my of Detroit, as a regional trading post before Modernism and the International Style four‐ 1900, grew to a world-class industrial center in ished in the 1950s as the city made big plans for the boom years from 1900 to 1929. Later, the exo‐ the Civic Center and Minoru Yamasaki created dus from the city to the suburbs left an empty city one of his fnest civic ornaments, the delicate awaiting rebirth. stone, steel and glass McGregor Memorial Confer‐ Judge Augustus B. Woodward's hexagonal ence Center. William Kessler's arrival in the 1960s plan for the city radiates out from the Detroit Riv‐ brought to the city both his innovative architec‐ er with broad avenues and open spaces. Emulat‐ tural forms and color, and his restoration and re‐ ing Pierre Charles L'Enfant's scheme for Washing‐ habilitation expertise. Sharoff notes that John ton, D.C., it provided the framework for siting the Portman's Renaissance Center marks the culmina‐ buildings of downtown Detroit. Sharoff observes tion of the postwar effort to jumpstart an econo‐ that the architecture evolved from small buildings my suffering from loss of population, jobs, and directly to tall buildings with no moderate-size property tax base. buildings in between. Thus, from the low-rise R. Sharoff weaves Cranbrook Academy of Art H. Traver and Schwankovsky commercial build‐ into the story by telling of Eliel Saarinen and the ings on Woodward Avenue and the R. Hirt Jr. European artisans that the Finnish architect Building in Eastern Market, the city blossomed brought to the institution. Many of these skilled fully with the Dime, Buhl, Penobscot and craftsmen embellished downtown buildings. For 2 H-Net Reviews example, painter and sculptor Geza Maroti, who names.Yamasaki's Michigan Gas Company Build‐ came to Cranbrook in 1927 from Budapest, Hun‐ ing says more than Yamasaki's One Woodward. gary, decorated the interior of the Fisher Building. The association with the gas company might even The frm of John Scott and Company is known trigger recollections of the blue fame that fick‐ across Michigan for its designs of government and ered at the top when the structure was frst put institutional buildings: the Michigan School of into service. Stanford White's State Savings Bank Mines Building (Hubbell Hall, demolished in explains the Beaux-Arts Classical design better 1968), the Gogebic and Chippewa county court‐ than White's Savoyard Centre. Here faintly visible houses, and the Marquette Prison, for example. window mannequins hint at the clothing store Some Michigan architectural historians would now within. Historic preservation successes are therefore take issue with Sharoff's statement that evident with the adaptive reuse of names such as John Scott's main claim to fame was hiring and the Light Supply Depot, L. B. King Building, Fyfe's then firing architect Albert Kahn. Shoe Store Building, and the Women's City Club. Regrettably, Detroit's Scott Fountain and the William Zbaren's clear and meticulously com‐ Belle Isle Conservatory are not discussed in the posed color photographs do a superior job of illus‐ context of Frederick Law Olmsted's Belle Isle, the trating the book, with a few exceptions. Pho‐ city's landscape jewel in the Detroit River. Also tographing architecture in Detroit where Balthaz‐ omitted is discussion of the relationship of Or‐ ar Korab has set the standard did not intimidate chestra Hall to the new Max Fisher Music Center this photographer. (Korab, of Troy, Michigan, is that supports it. Another opportunity that Sharoff the widely published architectural photographer missed was an adequate treatment of nineteenth- who studied architecture at the Parisian ?cole des century regional building materials. Materials tie Beaux-Arts and apprenticed with Le Corbusier buildings to place. Trenton limestone, perhaps and Eero Saarinen.) For the Guardian Building, quarried on Kelley's Island in Lake Erie, rises in detail trumps context. Showing the colorful ceil‐ the exterior walls of Fort Wayne and merits recog‐ ing tiles of the Guardian Building's banking room nition. The orange-red brick of the Lighthouse sacrifices a dramatic full view from the lobby of Supply Depot was probably manufactured from the staircase to the former banking room with the clay found near Detroit. The red sandstone on tiles and window beyond. Readers expecting mu‐ Lloyd's Traver Building was quarried on the ralist Diego Rivera's North Wall Automobile Panel shores of Lake Superior at Marquette and shipped are treated instead to a perfectly framed detail of down the Lakes. an infant. The image of the Isamu Noguchi foun‐ It is refreshing to see twenty of the ffty en‐ tain without its spray seems to suggest a view of tries, that is 40 percent of the book, devoted to Detroit as "out-of-order." buildings from the recent past. Sharoff and The authors make conscious exceptions to Zbaren recognize William Kessler's marvelous their entry selection criteria with the inclusion of contributions to Detroit architecture and happily the residential projects of two modern masters, conclude with TMP Associates' exciting new Cass Frank Lloyd Wright and Ludwig Mies van der Technological High School.