Category: Architecture

Cool new Detroit transit center

ArchBlogger's distinguished colleage in the biz department, Nathan Hurst, took the following great image of the soon-to-open Rosa Parks Transit Center, an image taken from Trolley Plaza on Washington Boulevard.

The new Rosa Parks Transit Center in downtown Detroit. [Photo: Nathan Hurst]

The "sails," by the way -- which resemble the roof system at the overhyped Denver International Airport -- are said to be teflon-coated panels.

But A.B. just loves how they catch the light. The architects, by the way, were from the New York-based Parsons Brinckerhoff, which specializes in transporation-related buildings.

The new transit center, on Cass Avenue at Bagley, does two marvelous things at once. First, it's given a scruffy stretch of Cass Avenue an intriguing new building.

But even more important, perhaps, once the new station opens for business -- perhaps late this summer -- nearby Capitol Park will be able to free itself of dozens of buses a day and the echt-looking bus shelters that had been crowded onto the potentially handsome little park after the bus station was chased out of Campus Martius on Woodward Avenue.

This is important because, as A.B. has railed before, Capitol Park is one of the few spots in the city -- Harmonie Park is another -- where an irregularly shaped "square" is completely surrounded by buildings, creating a surprisingly intimate atmosphere that feels, in each case, like you've stumbled on some unknown corner of New York's far downtown or the west side of Greenwich Village. It's got the same visual compression, the same odd geometry one finds more often in Eastern cities (the buildings surrounding Capitol Park form a rough triangle), and the sheltering sense of being completely enclosed by walls.

Capitol Park has heroically withstood the bus-station assault, performing a useful service for the city despite the stress on this little square. In a fair-minded world, someobody would now throw money at Capitol Park to start fixing things up. It could be one of the coolest places to live in downtown Detroit.

Capitol Park in downtown Detroit, with the orange-brick David Stott Building holding down the right corner. Note the plenitude of buses and the cruddy little bus shelters. [Photo:ArchBlogger]

• Enlarge

Category: Architecture

A Chelsea morning -- and sunset

The urge to quote from Joni Mitchell is, of course, almost overpowering. ArchBlogger will refrain.

A.B. wrote recently about Ypsilanti -- one of several towns on the far west side of Detroit that are handsomer that you might guess, strung out along the old wealth-producing Detroit-Chicago railroad line (which we now call I-94).

Chelsea, about 15 miles west of Ann Arbor, is yet another such burg -- and indeed, one of lower Michigan's real lookers.

It's a relatively small place, with a Main Street commercial district that stretches for about five or so blocks.

As a glimpse of pre-WWI America, Chelsea's urban fabric -- and it's not an overstatement to call it that -- is remarkably intact. Perhaps because the counties west of Detroit didn't undergo the explosive growth that slammed Oakland and Macomb in the downtown-damaging 1950s-70s, they were spared much brutality -- venerable buildings torn down for parking or, worse, fast food dumps; old-fashioned street walls punctured, poked and ripped asunder until there's no sense of "place" left.

Chelsea is unusually lucky in the quality of its old building stock, the excellence of its late 19th-century homes off Main Street, and in the twin constants that loom over everything -- the Jiffy Mix silos and the Victorian Clock Tower that faces them from across Main Street.

Dawn last Sunday arrived chilly and fogbound. The Clock Tower building -- originally a 20,000 gallon water tower disguised beneath brick and wrapped in office space -- stands partly shrouded at right.

The Jiffy Mix silos -- nine of them, all lined up in a row -- are more sculptural than architectural, perhaps, but their role in the streetscape is huge. No matter where you stand on Main Street, there they are, poking up above 19th century cornice lines.

The Jiffy Mix silos are right on Main Street at the railroad tracks, here caught in sunset light.

The silos and adjacent buildings are an iconic presence.

First sunlight at 7 a.m., once the Sunday fog began to lift.

Back to sunset light.

The Clock Tower acts as an exclamation point at the north end of Main Street, just beyond the old train station.

Dawn light hits Main Street, illuminating a surprisingly intact turn-of-the-century cityscape.

This block terminates in a classical-revival fieldstone bank building, constructed (or financed) in 1901 by George Glazier. Another Glazier built the Clock Tower. They're everywhere in Chelsea. If anyone's got the complete social history, A.B. asks that they email him with the dirt.

The Glazier building, next-door to Chelsea's great restaurant, the Common Grill. Note the red-tile roofing. Unusual for an American bank, and very Roman -- appropriately so, given its stylistic references.

Category: Architecture

Through a windshield, darkly

The restored Book-Cadillac Hotel, now a Westin, rises up through a heavy Detroit rain.

Category: Architecture

A few detail shots

If the devil's in the details, so, oftentimes, is the design dazzle. ArchBlogger presents herewith a totally random assortment -- opening with gingerbread, of a sort, at the top of an Ann Arbor gable.

On Ann Arbor's Ingalls Street, unless ArchBlogger's mistaken, right off Huron -- more or less across from Rackham Hall, for all you U-Mich graduates. An inspired touch on an older brick home.

A handsome and effective ad in Ypsilanti's Depot Town.

Part of the old Ypsilanti Farm Bureau Grain & Feed elevator.

An old grape arbor, fallen on hard times, behind an abandoned mansion in Detroit's Boston-Edison neighborhood.

"And then there were two." A.B.'s put this Packard Plant image up before, but reprises it here because he's so darned fond of it.

• Enlarge

Category: Architecture

Homage to Ypsilanti

ArchBlogger's father once pointed out -- and A.B. thinks this is largely true -- that some of the handsomest towns in Michigan are the wealthy-farmer towns along the Detroit-Chicago rail line. Why wealthy? Because they had easy, cheap access to transport for their goods.

These were the towns, or so the story went, where farmers whose land might be way out in the boonies built impressive, freestanding "town houses" near the city center.

Whether this social history is entirely accurate, there's no doubt that the towns strung along that east-west railroad line tend to be handsome: think Manchester, Chelsea, Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti, to name just a few close-in examples.

Of these, Ypsilanti has the grandest houses and churches, a reflection of that city's heightened stature in the late 1800s compared to today, when it sits in the shadow of that snooty university town just to the west.

Grand and graceful, and this 19th century Ypsi mansion is built of the same handsome orange bricks one sees in most of the buildings on Ann Arbor's Main Street. [All photos by ArchBlogger.]

On Oak Street, a home that's just about as pretty as it could be. Most of these photos, by the way, were taken in Ypsi's north end.

Yet, to return to the comparison at hand, for all Ann Arbor's historic charms, there's really no contest between the grand old houses in parts of Ypsi to the fewer, smaller old examples in Ann Arbor.

A.B.'s not sure when A2 ("a-squared," as some locals style it) passed Ypsi in the wealth and status department, but it doesn't appear to have happened until the 20th century.

This handsome Ypsilanti neighborhood reminded ArchBlogger a bit of the old nickname for Brooklyn, NY -- "the borough of homes and churches."

First Presbyterian Church on the north side, a twin-towered, handsome pile.

A remnant from a more genteel age.

Admirable rustication on an old home.

A 19th-century commercial row in Depot Town, amusingly painted.

Marvelous sign on a small commercial street. Note nice brickwork around the windows.

A bit of "Addams Family" Victorian architecture rises above the trees.

Back to Depot Town -- the scene one evening outside Sidetrack's bar & restaurant. That's the old-car museum in the background, by the way, with the "Hudson" signs.

• Enlarge

Category: Architecture

Miscellania: "America's Best Rest Rooms" and ArchNewsNow newsletter

We'll take the latter first.

Have you subscribed to the daily email service, ArchNewsNow? Because if you haven't, you're missing a great daily list of links to the most-interesting architectural stories culled from publications around the English-speaking world.

It's an invaluable resource, and even better in these straitened times, it's free.

Click here to pull up the subscription form.

And courtesy of ArchNewsNow's splendid and capable editor, Kristen Richards, ArchBlogger has just learned of the America's Best Public Restrooms contest, courtesy of the Cintas Corporation.

A.B.'s first reaction was a giggle, but on sober reflection, he realized he's always interested to check out the bathrooms in great buildings or restaurants, to see if they measure up to their frames. (Generally they don't.)

And this year the bathrooms at Detroit's Fox Theatre are among the 10 finalists in the contest. And you get to vote on the winner. Click here to check out the contest, as well as to view photographs.

And got any opinions about the hippest bathrooms in the Detroit area, apart from the Fox? A.B.'s all ears. Drop him a line at mhodges@detnews.com.

Category: Architecture

Random Detroit images

ArchBlogger spent the color-saturated hours of the late afternoon a couple Sundays ago tooling around Detroit and Hamtramck, and generated a few images he likes. He throws them up here to see if his loyal readers feel the same, or no.

ArchBlogger likes this busy Detroit roofline. He wishes he could remember where it is, but he can't. [All pictures by ArchBlogger]

Taken from Lawton St. just north of W. Warren, near I-96. Who knew the Ambassador Bridge lined up perfectly with Lawton? And dig the non-functioning traffic signals. (Apologies for the shot's fuzzy telephoto-ness.)

Failed dreams on Oakland Ave., south of Holbrooke near Hamtramck -- all that remains of somebody's ice-cream parlour.

Pallister Street in New Center Commons, north of the Fisher Building. ArchBlogger usually loathes the Detroit habit of sealing off streets or closing access routes (see Virginia Park at Woodward, especially) as a way of enhancing security. But in this case, the bricked-in pedestrian block at Pallister between Third and Bethune Court is quite heavenly, and lined with stolid, four-square brick homes.

Are pictures of water towers a cliche? A.B. could give a rip. He's been in love with them ever since his first visit to New York City, and relishes their contribution to Detroit's industrial skyline every bit as much.

Category: Architecture

Incidental Fisher Building views

No matter where you go around Detroit, Albert Kahn's Fisher Building -- a 1929 art deco masterpiece -- always seems to be poking up somewhere on the horizon. The following random shots have no particular meaning. ArchBlogger just likes them.

From Pallister Street in New Center Commons, a much-overlooked, gorgeous residential neighborhood renovated by General Motors in the 1980s. [All photos by ArchBlogger]

From the southwest, perhaps 10 blocks away.

Looking south from the Boston-Edison Historic District. That's the old General Motors Building, across Grand Boulevard, to the left of the Fisher tower.

Again, from the west edge of New Center Commons. Delaware Street, unless A.B.'s mistaken.

Category: Architecture

Rochester's undeniable, low-key charms

ArchBlogger should be clear at the outset that he grew up in Rochester -- on a dairy farm some three miles out of town. That neck of the woods used to be called Avon Township, but has since been reinvented -- rather grandly -- as Rochester Hills. You know. Like that other "Hills".

A.B. happened to be in Rochester for a funeral in March, more's the pity. But in walking the two blocks from the funeral home to the restaurant where the reception was held, he was overwhelmed by the quality of the light. With a quick apology to the deceased, lest it appear disrespectful, A.B. sprinted back to the car and grabbed his camera.

By the way, a reader with the handle RHBookworm wrote in to say that info's available on Rochester's Main Street buildings at this link here.

A thoroughly dull Main Street "scene-setter", just so you get the broad picture.

A.B. apologizes for the lack of other streetscape shots, and the fact that the east side of Main Street (with the exception of the orange-brick gorgeous corner at Main Street and University Drive, a great turn-of-the-century building handsomely rebuilt after a catastrophic gas explosion in the early 1990s) is less attractive than the west side. The sun, natch, dictated the shot. Happily, better photos follow.

Rochester's several-block Main Street town center is partly comprised of late-19th, early-20th century brick rowbuildings. Since A.B.'s nearly that old, he remembers when Burr's Hardware was still behind its marvelous fieldstone facade, and when Sutton's General Store at the south end of Main Street was a cozy, crowded affair. He remembers getting dragged to Doris Hayes' dress shop on a regular basis. (Doris was actually very nice.)

Cornice-proud on Rochester's Main Street, east side.

A.B. has particularly strong memories of the Rochester Elevator, the farm-supply (more recently garden-supply) barn that sits on University Drive just east of Main Street, at the railroad tracks. That neighborhood has been swanked up by some landscaping and the construction of the Royal Park Hotel, a luxury joint that still feels, to somebody who was there in the Fifties, rather rich for Rochester's blood.

Anyhow, the elevator is where we'd go to get fertilizer and seed and cardboard flats of newborn chicks, every last one of them peeping up a storm. The elevator is where my dad and grandfather, circa 1932, picked up the first 24 of our Guernsey milk cows that formed the foundation of our herd. Dad and my grandfather walked -- walked -- those two-dozen head of cattle almost four miles to our farm -- a mile east on Main Street (Rochester Rd.), left onto Tienken a couple miles until a right on Brewster, then up a hill and down, past the old farmers' cemetery, across Sargent's Creek, and up a low rise to Romany Woods Farm, as my grandmother had romantically christened our enterprise (romany = gypsy) .

The Rochester Elevator -- a vestige of the town's unpretentious past.

A.B.'s a total sucker for vivid texture. This building houses the Home Bakery and sits at Main Street and E. Third.

Rochester's a funny place. The creation and then disappearance of gas stations at a key intersection or two has left downtown a little gap-toothed in places. The north side of Main Street and University, for example, would be far crisper and give greater definition to the crossroads if the north side echoed the several-story, turn-of-the-century brick buildings, built right up to the edge of the sidewalk, across on the south side. Yet it's on balance a handsome, satisfying commercial strip. A.B. has always felt it would work better, however, were Main not so wide. A narrower thoroughfare would feel more intimate, and cast more attention onto the buildings -- or so A.B. imagines.

Perhaps the biggest problem, visually, is the way downtown abruptly ends as you cross the bridge and climb the south hill up to Avon Road. South hill was effectively clear-cut and paved with car dealerships and fast-food joints years ago. The problem is that, tilted as it is towards downtown, it thrusts a naked, brutal landscape right in your face, giving you the best possible view, and smacking your newfound sense of how cute the town. Were Main Street flat, that commercial strip wouldn't shrink in visual importance, and in no wise be nearly as visible and offensive. (And yes, A.B. apologizes for the lack of a helpful picture.)

Onto other subjects. Every good town has a few icons in it -- structures or locations that represent the spirit of the place. In Rochester, that's Red Knapp's Dairy Bar, a modernist white-metal storefront of great charm largely unchanged from the late 1950s. (A.B.'s assuming it was up well before 1960. He admits he could be wrong.)

Beloved by generations of high school kids, Red Knapp's is -- visually, at least -- a defining presence in the center of downtown. Take it away, and Main Street's less fun to drive down.

A happy marriage of color and light.

Unchanged for over 40 years.