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    Art Deco in Detroit
    Art Deco in Detroit
    Art Deco in Detroit
    Ebook202 pages30 minutes

    Art Deco in Detroit

    By Rebecca Binno Savage and Greg Kowalski

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    About this ebook

    Take a fascinating tour of the influential art deco movement and its manifestations in and around Detroit.


    Since the 1920s, Art Deco, or "The Modern Style," has delighted people with its innovative use of materials and designs that capture the spirit of optimism to create the style of the future. Although the Detroit metro area is primarily known as an industrial region, it boasts some of the finest examples of Art Deco in the country.

    Through a panorama of photographs,Art Deco in Detroit explores the wide-ranging variety of these architectural marvels, from world-famous structures like the Fisher and Penobscot Buildings, to commercial buildings, theaters, homes, and churches. The grandeur evident in some of the major buildings reflects a time when artisans and architects collaborated to craft structures that transcend functionality - they endure as standing works of art.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArcadia Publishing
    Release dateJan 20, 2004
    ISBN9781439614853
    Art Deco in Detroit
    Author

    Rebecca Binno Savage

    Rebecca Binno Savage is a writer and preservationist, as well as a board member of the Detroit Area Art Deco Society. Greg Kowalski is a journalist and local historian, and is the editor of the Birmingham Eccentric newspaper. He is the author of Hamtramck: The Driven City and Hamtramck: Soul of a City, both published by Arcadia.

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      Book preview

      Art Deco in Detroit - Rebecca Binno Savage

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      INTRODUCTION

      Detroit may have a reputation as a rust belt city, but it is also home to some of the most elegant and exotic Art Deco structures in the United States. Detroiters take it for granted, and don’t always think of their city as being on the cutting edge of design . . . but in the late 1920s it was. Detroit’s downtown skyscrapers stand up as some of the most significant Art Deco buildings in the United States. But that’s not all, because Art Deco designs were applied to factories of the automotive suppliers, and to the new construction that was creating neighborhoods out of the green fields surrounding Detroit. The Art Deco style and Detroit grew at the same time.

      Defining Art Deco has always been a little tricky, and some architectural scholars still debate the category and subsets. We use the term Art Deco in a very broad sense and include Streamline, Art Moderne, and ZigZag Moderne in our classification. Art Deco is a style stimulated by the 1925 Exposition Internationale des Arts Decoratifs et Industriels Modernes held in Paris. Sometimes referred to as French Art Deco, it was characterized by sharp angular forms combined with floral motifs. Later designs in the 1930s evolved into the sleek streamline curving lines which gave a sense of motion to a static building. By the early 1940s, the Art Deco style looked toward geometric cubism. At the time, it was known as variously as the Modern Style, Jazz Moderne, or Industrial Modern. It wasn’t until the mid-1960s that it was tagged Art Deco.

      In 1993 the Board of Directors of the Detroit Area Art Deco Society decided that they needed to assemble a comprehensive survey of the Detroit area’s Art Deco architecture. Former president Ann Duke organized a meeting of Deco Society members who were interested in helping document and photograph buildings for the survey. They took a map of the metropolitan area and carved it up into different sections and assigned Deco Society members to shoot slides of various areas of metro Detroit. It was decided to organize the slide presentation into topics determined by building type—not by geographic location. After many hours of review, re-shooting, and prioritizing, the slide presentation was finally presentable.

      This book was created from the slides assembled for the survey and organized into a presentation. The slide presentation was titled Detroit’s Art Deco Architecture and had two goals: to explain what Art Deco architecture looks like and encompasses, and to prove that Detroit’s collection of Art Deco architecture is nationally significant and worthy of recognition. We begin with Detroit’s most significant buildings that immediately come to mind: the Fisher Building, the Guardian Building, and the Penobscot Building. Next, the materials used in Art Deco architecture are presented: Vitrolite and Carrara glass, terra cotta, brick, and porcelain enameled steel. Then we highlight the many types of buildings that utilized Art Deco architecture: industrial, communications (including the WJR Transmitter, the WWJ Broadcast Station, and Michigan Bell Building), roadside architecture (gas stations and diners), religious buildings, post offices, apartments, clinics, homes, schools, and theaters. Finally, some beautiful Art Deco buildings that have recently been demolished are given as lessons: the Sears Building in Highland Park, as well as the Mercury Theater. By the end of this book the point is proven—there is a significant collection of Art Deco architecture in our metropolitan area that is worthy of preservation and recognition.

      Over the years, the slide presentation has been given to many different groups and university classes. The most memorable presentation was for the Art Deco Society of New York in the Cloud Club on the top floor of the Chrysler Building. The Detroit Area Art Deco Society continues to update the slide presentation and shoot new slides of the buildings—as well as discover a few new ones now and then. Unfortunately, its task is also to document structures lost

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