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Category: Architecture

Ah, modernism

ArchBlogger was bombing up the Southfield Freeway, just south of Seven Mile, when he spied this little academic exercise in modernism on an otherwise throwaway building.

Turns out the building in question is -- or was -- a Detroit Edison substation, put up in 1951. ArchBlogger couldn't help smiling at how radical this design must have looked in those early years after the war, as Bauhaus concepts penetrated ordinary American buildings.

Anyhow, while no great shakes, A.B. was nonetheless struck by its purity of design -- rectangle floating upon rectangle -- and so bailed out at the first exit, working his way back south till he found the substation.

He wishes the light were better, but unsure when he'd be back in the neighborhood around Curtis and the Southfield, he just shot and ran.

[All photos by ArchBlogger]

Category: Architecture

Zipping through Woodbridge

The stolid neighborhood west of Wayne State University around Commonwealth and Warren, has always charmed ArchBlogger, looking like a bit of residential Chicago airlifted into Detroit.

Mixed in with the four-square brick homes, which predominate, are a handful of nice clapboards working that Queen Anne look. A few examples -- and a photo of the sort of rot and decay that the city tolerates even in its nicer districts.

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This in an otherwise pretty neighborhood. But our City Council could give a rip. It's that "embarrassing" train station that's gotta go.

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Category: Architecture

Still going, going...

His loyal readers know that ArchBlogger opposes ripping down the Lafayette Building in downtown Detroit -- less because it's great architecture (it's throwaway 1920s stuff, although that's generally better than anything that will replace it), and more because its loss opens yet another gaping hole in the building wall along the Michigan Avenue and Lafayette Boulevard sidewalks.

Such gaps are not, as a rule, comforting, contrary to standard American opinion ("Oboy! Open space!"). Unless filled in by a cool park or something, they mostly unsettle the pedestrian -- first by disrupting the pleasing symmetry of the sidewalk wall, and then by implicitly giving bad eggs a hiding place from which to spring upon the passer-by. (With American cities, you've always got to take the personal-insecurity issue seriously, whether the crime rate justifies it or not. We're a timid people, urban-wise.)

All that said, A.B. has to confess that the slow-motion destruction of a large building is kind of fascinating. A few pictures of the Lafayette as it looked in mid-January, 2010. A.B.'s guessing it'll be down by the end of February.

What a giant claw can accomplish. [All photos by ArchBlogger]

That's the David Stott building on Detroit's Capitol Park rising up in all its orange-brick glory. (Note the little rooftop tree, stage right.)

A room with a view.

Category: Architecture

United Artists, revisited

In his previous entry, ArchBlogger referenced the artwork, much of it Mayan-inflected, that used to grace the United Artists Theatre building right outside Grand Circus Park (until the owners, the Ilitches, scrubbed it clean just before the 2006 Super Bowl at Ford Field).

The principal graffiti artists (a number cycled through the building) were Gram, Coupe, Fosik and Kevin Joy. The latter also did most of the windows on the Lafayette Building, which is now about one-third of the way through its regretable demolition (see previous blog).

Anyhow, a reader was kind enough to send a good image of the United Artists work, so we can all get nostalgic about cool, now vanished, guerrilla art. [Photo credit to Rich Ayers]

Category: Architecture

Lafayette Building: going, going, gone

It's pretty close to curtains for the Lafayette Building across Michigan Avenue from the Westin Book-Cadillac Hotel. The wrecking claw is suddenly moving with a gusto that's taken ArchBlogger by surprise.

Like a patient undergoing exploratory abdominal surgery, the Lafayette Building gets opened wide. [All photos by ArchBlogger.]

Lost in the process will be the amusing, gorgeous and occasionally subversive window art by Kevin Joy (see next picture), whom A.B. wrote about in his capacity as art-guy for the newspaper.

One of Joy's windows -- "DON'T" -- appears to comment on the city's decision to knock down yet another downtown landmark.

A.B. mentioned in the article that Joy had also worked on the hauntingly beautiful windows at the United Artists Theatre building on Bagley just west of Grand Circus Park.

Anyhow, to make a long story longer, shortly after the piece appeared, A.B. got a thoughtful note from a photographer pointing out that there's an entire history and culture to Detroit window art that A.B. had succeeded in completely eclipsing.

(You can check out some cool pictures of local graffiti art here).

What made this reader's good observation even more galling is that Joy himself had cited his predecessors on the United Artists windows, but A.B. managed to leave that gracious observation out of the paper.

Well, in the sausage-making biz, sometimes good stuff winds up on the floor.

In any case, A.B. would like to amend the record on the United Artists Theatre building. As the note correctly pointed out, a number of artists worked on the UA windows, including graffiti-art heavyweights Gram, Coupe and Fosik. (A.B. regrets that he doesn't have any of their window art to show here, but the Ilitches, who own the United Artists Theatre building, scrubbed the living daylights out of the art-filled windows (Mayan-inflected, in many cases) just before the world arrived for the 2006 Super Bowl. You know, because out-of-towners might point fingers and laugh at us.)

A.B. would also like to salute a couple other artists from the Lafayette building, albeit artists who work in a form completely different from Joy. Both RIKU and GRAY had painted their commanding, block letters up there along with WARD, whom A.B. did mention in the article. The observant will recognize these names -- Can we call them tags? -- from abandoned buildings all over town. (Amusingly, Riku spelled it "RIKKU" on the Lafayette building, but artistic license is surely her right.)

With all this behind him, ArchBlogger would like to thank his correspondent for the polite note pointing out A.B.'s screw-ups. (Most people who write newspapers are not polite.) And while A.B. did not have the chance to interview, say, Gram or Fosik, he'd love to hear from them if they want to drop him a line. His email is: mhodges@detnews.com.

Joy's signature image -- the multi-windowed grasshopper, which is also on other buildings around downtown. If you hurry, you might still be able to catch his "Storm Trooper Grasshopper" on the Lafayette Boulevard side of the structure. It's the all-white, creepy looking insect.

Category: Architecture

The Book-Cadillac's lanterns get lit

From pretty much the day they opened, the Westin Book-Cadillac had cool little uplights just beneath the Louis Kamper building's three copper ziggurats on the roof. But the lanterns -- alright, fake lanterns -- at the top remained in the dark.

Until now. ArchBlogger's noticed in the past week or so that suddenly the lanterns, perched atop the ziggurats (stepped pyramids) have suddenly come into their glory with their own uplights.

To whoever made this happen -- nice work.

Category: Architecture

More magnificence on Kiawah Island

Before ArchBlogger landed in Charleston, the Sunday after Thanksgiving, he spent four days with his older brother and family on Kiawah Island, a barrier island about 45 minutes from downtown "Chas," as they like to call it there.

A.B. has always been a bit stupefied by the size and luxury of some of the "second homes" that have been shoehorned in all over Kiawah (although 1/3 of the island is a wildlife preserve). The default drive is to imitate classic 18th century Charleston homes, so much of the design is perfectly acceptable, if entirely derivative.

This looks more Long Island than Charleston, but is still a handsome example of high-class historic reproduction. Every one of the houses on Kiawah, by the way, has to build one story up -- leaving open space on the ground floor that hurricane surges can pass through without destabilizing the entire structure.

Once you get into some of these manses, however, you realize that many are just subdivision-spec houses with fancy-pants exteriors. Others, however, are as sumptuous inside as they try to be outside. ArchBlogger and his relatives did an open house at one that he would've bought in a heartbeat -- if he had $3.1 million, and didn't mind being 50 feet off a somewhat busy road. (Lagoon and marsh views, however, were haunting.)

Another gorgeous manse under construction -- easily 7,000 square feet, PLUS a garage with guest house on top. The livin' is easy.

Some designs are less classic than others.

Well, it was a concept. ArchBlogger calls this "Nesting Gables."

Not everyone, of course, has taste. This honker looks like it'd be more at home in a subdivision on the Jersey shore. Not that there's anything wrong with that, of course.

ArchBlogger is proud to say that he snuck into this house while it was under construction several years ago, and was much impressed and amused by the humongo chimneys.

Why pay a fortune to live on Kiawah? This picture of the Atlantic beach and the following one of marshland at the other end of the island do a pretty good job explaining the appeal. Houses on the beach, by the way, go in the neighborhood of $10 million. Remember when we used to think the South was poor?

Lovely as the beach is, A.B. would far prefer a marshland view, if he had the spare change. They're unutterably beautiful and thick with wildlife.

Category: Architecture

ArchBlogger does Charleston

If it's Thanksgiving, this must be South Carolina -- at least in ArchBlogger's family.

(As his regular readers know, every year A.B.'s older brother, one of the doctors, rents a big old house on Kiawah Island off Charleston. Every year A.B. offers to kick in $500, and every year his brother turns him down. A.B. loves his brother.)

As usual, after four days on Kiawah -- an uber-developed, albeit undeniably gorgeous little resort island -- his brother and sister-in-law shoved him out the door in the historic district of Charleston on their way back to N. Carolina Sunday. A.B. spends the night in colonial heaven, and then flies out Monday.

Per usual as well, he rented a bike, and spent most of the afternoon and much of the after-dinner hours tooling around that city's heartbreakingly handsome old neighborhoods.

Founded in 1670 (albeit slightly northwest of its present location), Charleston was one of the most-important cities of the colonial era, and interestingly, had the colonies' largest Jewish population until well into the 18th century. (The things you learn in an undergrad American Colonial Social History course.)

Balustrades and cornices compete along the Battery, facing Charleston Harbor -- where the first shots of the Civil War were fired.

Today, Charleston has a magnificently preserved historic district -- large enough so it feels like a real place, not some Disneyfied museum -- that mostly dates from the 18th and 19th centuries, but has a few structures, exhilaratingly, from the very late 1600s.

It is, of course, unutterably handsome. Charleston bears a strong resemblance to that other colonial-and-federal city that somehow survived the architectural ravages of modernity, Savannah, Ga. By A.B.'s lights, the latter has the more impressive public buildings, but Charleston has a better downtown shopping district. Indeed, King Street in Charleston -- smart, upscale and jammed with businesses both national (Pottery Barn, Williams-Sonoma) and local -- strikes him as very close to the handsomest shopping strip he's ever seen in an American town.

King Street at night -- still mobbed with pedestrians and bicyclists.

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King Street is lined cheek-by-jowl with shops, bars and restaurants, all seemingly thriving despite the downturn, which doesn't seem to have hit this wealthy city in one of the poorest states very hard. Part of what gives King Street its charm is the scale of the two and three-story buildings lining it, and also its relative narrowness -- which gives a sense of intimacy to the streetscape.

One of two marvelous neon signs on King. The other follows right below.

Inspired neon work, yet oddly attached to the top of a sign for a Thai restaurant. Go figure. Still, a lovely sight as you progress up the avenue.

One of the grand homes facing the Battery.

The rooftops and chimney pots of Charleston.

In an old city built to human scale, grace notes like church steeples really stick out.

Speaking of grace notes, this odd, barrel window -- the chamber between the wrought iron and the window within is about three feet deep -- caught A.B.'s attention as he flew his bike around downtown just short of midnight.

So where are we again? Charleston or Cambridge, Mass.? Hard to tell.

Many of Charleston's oldest homes famously present their narrow side to the street, thereby gaining a long "side garden" and the opportunity to have long porches on all floors facing it.

Classic side porches.

A churchyard.

Along Broad Street, which sort of amounts to the city's Main Street. Note that the building on the left is cast iron -- a touch of SoHo in Charleston.

Part of what distinguishes Charleston from the old parts of Boston, which it resembles, is the use of stucco (and clapboard) done up in tropical colors -- here, an unapologetic lime that would look absurd up north, but is just perfect here.

More King Street woohoo.

The man who started all the fuss: John C. Calhoun atop his pedastal in Marion Square, the S. Carolina senator who provided the intellectual basis for the secession of Southern states from the union.

Category: Architecture

What a little sunset can do

Among other things, it makes the MGM Grand Casino Hotel (Hamilton Anderson Assoc. and SmithGroup) -- a building ArchBlogger's conflicted about, seeing both positive and negative -- shimmer like a gemstone.

Category: Architecture

Isolated structures on M32

This would be M32 up north, west of Gaylord and west of US131.

ArchBlogger's always loved the 15 miles or so between 131 and East Jordan. The winding, two-lane road turns surprisingly hilly, even for northern Michigan, and passes a number of itsy-bitsy crossroads with cool old vernacular buildings, as well as a couple modest-but-intriguing cemeteries.

In particular, A.B. likes the abandoned structure immediately below -- longtime readers will recognize his affection for poignant abandonment -- as well as the old schoolhouse at the bottom, which obviously is still in good shape.

Right across the blacktop county road from the schoolhouse is a fieldstone church of considerable charm, also below.

Slumped but not yet beaten, this weathered shed still seems to yearn to move forward.

An exercise in classic simplicity -- a onetime schoolhouse, by the looks of it, that probably used to serve the scattered farm population between mighty Elmira and East Jordan.

ArchBlogger's always been a complete sucker for almost anything built of fieldstone. But this modest little church has always struck him every time he's driven past.