USA: Detroit’s Art Deco is one of the world’s most beautiful art deco buildings in the Art Deco Historic District in Miami Beach. The Detroit is situated in Albert Kahn Designs and Castle. The attractive design patterns of Detroit’s Art Deco were the styles of the 1920s and 1930s and are home to the nation’s largest concentration of sleek and bright architectural styles.
Detroit’s Art Deco-style Guardian Building is pretty remarkable from the sidewalk: The bricks are painted a light tangerine, and colourful details are clustered up high to arrest the attention of motorists zipping by far below. It is 40 stories tall, and two stone figures are sentry by the doors. The natural marvel, though, isn’t visible from the outside.
Indoors, everything from the elevator banks to the soaring vault ceiling is awash in a riot of colour. The geometric blue, green, and ochre mosaics—many made with tiles crafted at Pewabic, a local pottery firm—borrow from Aztec and Native American patterns. A massive mural of Michigan, ribboned with gilded details and homages to the state’s natural resources, looms on the far wall. All this, just upstairs from an unassuming snack shop and county commissioners’ offices.
The Detroit’s Art Deco building was opened in 1929 to house the Union Trust Company in an era when the city was pushing to establish a solid financial district. The structure towered over much of the skyline and earned the nickname the “Cathedral of Finance,” a nod to its kindness to the Woolworth Building in New York.
Brick, terracotta, marble, and metal details—not to mention a wealthy Tiffany clock—add up to something wondrously dizzying. Putting it all together was no small feat, and a tile in the lobby commemorates the dozens of artisans who worked to make it all come together.
