With new buildings, downtown Detroit finally gets modern look

I still recall the doubt a real estate man expressed over my enthusiasm for downtown Detroit’s classic Art Deco skyscrapers. 

“It looks old,” he said of the city’s skyline. “Old.” 

That conversation was 30 years ago. The real estate man was complaining about the lack of modern architecture downtown. Modernism was his proxy for new and exciting, in terms of amenities his clients might like. 

Downtown Detroit mostly missed America’s great wave of modernist downtown skyscrapers in the post-World War II era because of the city’s long economic and cultural decline. While cities like Chicago and Houston sprouted new glass-and-steel towers year after year, those were a rare event in Detroit. 

Now, though, Detroit is going modern in a rush. The glass-and-steel Hudson’s Tower has risen to its full height. Henry Ford Health System’s planned expansion will feature a striking glass tower rising higher than the Fisher Building. 

The new Water Square residential tower on the old Joe Louis Arena site is thoroughly glass-and-steel modern; so will be a hotel planned to rise next door. The Music Hall’s seven story expansion show a dazzling frosted glass structure designed by the noted team Tod Williams and Billie Tsien. And there’s more.  

Detroit’s Golden Age towers — think the Fisher, Penobscot, Buhl, Guardian, Book Tower — are beautiful examples of their art. But the real estate market prefers the up-to-date, which partly explains why General Motors left its classic Albert Kahn-designed 1920s headquarters in New Center in the 1990s to move into the much younger Renaissance Center, and then announced a new plan, just weeks ago, to leave the RenCen for Dan Gilbert’s new Hudson’s Detroit tower.  

The most distinctive difference between the two eras is that the classic Art Deco towers of the 1920s are clad in stone and brick, often brilliantly decorated as at the Guardian. But modernism in the post-war era was defined by glass and steel facades, and that’s mostly what Detroit missed. 

Not entirely, of course. Minoru Yamasaki designed Detroit’s first modernist building in the late 1940s — the Federal Reserve Annex at 160 W. Fort St., now home to the Detroit Free Press. The Qube, previously known as the Chase Tower and the National Bank of Detroit headquarters, followed in 1959, and the dark glass cylindrical towers of the RenCen in the 1970s. But those plus a few others never quite overcame downtown’s older look, a look of a city that wasn’t growing. 

The general lack of new construction in a distressed city explains most of it. But even when Detroit did build new, architects seemed reluctant to venture too far into the future when designing for the city. 

They called it designing in context, fitting in with what was already there. So two Post Modern towers of the late 1980s and early ’90s — 150 W. Jefferson and One Detroit Center — went with historical imagery and the more traditional stone exteriors. One Campus Martius, originally the Compuware headquarters, was a compromise with a glass front but stone flanks. 

Why the changing styles now? Perhaps because Detroit with its newfound confidence, its population growing and the city seemingly going from win to win, is no longer looking over its shoulder, afraid to make a mistake. Boldness is back. 

There is, of course, both good modernism and bad modernism, just as there’s good Art Deco and bad. But there’s a benefit to seeing a range of styles on our skyline, just as there’s a benefit to diversity and inclusion in every walk of life. The traditional may be solid and reassuring, and the new can be challenging, but we can learn from both. 

Architecture, as the saying goes, is a conversation across the centuries. For a long time, Detroit was largely silent when it came to new architectural styles. Now, belatedly, it’s catching up. 

John Gallagher covered Detroit’s redevelopment efforts as a Free Press reporter and columnist from 1987 through 2019. He continues to write on a freelance basis and work on book projects. His latest book is “The Englishman and Detroit: A British Entrepreneur Helps Restore a City’s Confidence,” available on Amazon or through local bookstores. He was a 2017 inductee into the Michigan Journalism Hall of Fame. Submit a letter to the editor at freep.com/letters.