It is this City Hall set in a public square that makes the
story of the rise and decay of Detroit the quintessential American story.
This same setup, the post-Civil War munic ipal building in the center of
town can be found in hundreds of towns and cities across the midwest and
the country. The rise of modern industry impacted all these towns, if not
quite as heavily as it did Detroit, and washed away the sense of unity and
cohesiveness that Americans sought after the war that divided the nation.
At the center of each town, American culture expressed with bricks and
geography a new civic consensus to heal the fractured nation.
Today, that central focus is lost as the once proud town center lies fallow while Americans busy themselves in sub-divisions, strip malls, and fast-food plazas isolated by interstates and beltways. In smaller towns, these places may be only a mile or t wo from the old town center out on the bypass, where in Detroit they are much further out and go on for mile after noxiously repetitive suburban and exurban mile; the effect, however, is the same. This in itself may represent a sort of unity: a McDonald's or a Blockbuster, after all, looks much the same whether in California or Maine. However, the physical unity represented by the old town centers and their forced mingling of municipal and regional pedestrians is gone, as obsolete as the brass spitoons th at flanked the entryways of the county court houses and city halls across America.
This City Hall is often mistaken for the still standing County Building of 1901.
The two are seen here as they appeared in
1907. The Old City Hall cupola is in the foreground, and the County
Building is in the background at the oth er end of Cadillac Boulevard.
While the two share general shape, dimension, and materials, they are not
architecturally alike.
The City Hall was built between 1861 and 1871, the extended construction time partly the result of Civil War restrictions, but mostly from city government haggling over architecture, building contractors and the like. A jumble of Italian, French and Renaissance styles, the finished product was stately but shoddily built and unsatisfactory for its entire time of service. Iron joists under the floors began to twist soon after construction was completed, and Detroiters often debated whether the floors or the politicians that walked them were more crooked. The soft sandstone exterior discolored quickly in the coal-burning era and practically dissolved later in the face of auto pollution. To fit the growing number of city offices, the interior space was forever being partitioned and divided until it became a confusing mass of dimly-lit warrens. Nonetheless, Detroiters adopted it as the symbol of their rising city, and public affection followed it until the day the wrecking ball caved in its walls in 1961.
The tower, one-hundred-eighty feet above the cobblestone and cedar-block paved public square, afforded the best view of the city until the erection of the Hammond Building in 1890. Newlywed couples, having made their vows in the chambers below, tradionally went to the top of the tower to survey the city in which their lives would unfold. Among them was a twenty-five-year-old Henry Ford, who took in the view on April 11, 1888 with his new bride, the former Clara Bryant. Ambitious and forward-looking, Ford probably had a vision of the future he would help make, but it is doubtful that even he could conceive of the changes he would personally force on the panorama that played out below him.
The County Building was completed in
1901. The intervening prosperity gave civic leaders a bigger budget, and
they used all of it to execute a structure that redressed all the
deficiencies of the sister building down Cadillac Boulevard. The new
building featured steel floor joists and higher quality sandstone, with
the first two stories faced with granite. While it too succumbed to the
pernicious practice of subdivision and partition, the building's basic
soundness merited it a complete restoration in the mid-1980's. Currently,
Wayne County is the sole tenant (and may soon or may already have
exercised its option to buy back the expensive, restored building from the
private partnership which bought it for one dollar, restored it at great
cost and currently leases it back). Parts of the building, including
restored court rooms, are open to the public.
Today, so many downtown buildings have been torn down that previously
impossible views of the cityscape have emerged.
Above, the County Building is viewed from the corner of Gratiot and Woodward, no rth of Camous Martius. The clock is all that's left of the Kerns Department Store that once dominated this corner, and the open space in the middle once housed blocks of storefronts.