Early 90s Free Press or News Article about Detroit Skyline

[dtowncitylover]

Hello all!

There was the very 'famous' [[I guess for us in the Detroit area) article from either the News or the Free Press about a revisionist take on the Detroit skyline, what if all the buildings proposed in the past 50 years had been built? It was from the early 90s and I love looking at it from time to time. However it's been too long to remember where I went to view it. Does anyone have a link to this, maybe scanned it or even remember it?

I didn't want to come here but Google wasn't producing any results. I ask because it would be cool for someone to postcard-ify the image and sell it. It was such a cool skyline to wonder about. And not even that, I believe the streetscape was vastly different. Thanks!

[Khorasaurus]

Hello all!

And not even that, I believe the streetscape was vastly different. Thanks!

I always wondered what the actual history of some of those proposals was, especially the really weird stuff [[like the building built on top of Washington Blvd).

[mtburb]

It was called "Unbuilt Detroit" and appeared in a 1991 edition of the old Sunday Free Press magazine.

[dtowncitylover]

It was called "Unbuilt Detroit" and appeared in a 1991 edition of the old Sunday Free Press magazine.

Thank you mtburb!

And below is the old website's thread about it, too! Unfortunately it looks like some of the links used from the Google search are now dead. Just my luck...

http://www.atdetroit.net/forum/messa...684/72496.html

[dtowncitylover]

Also, a Detroit-Windsor subway could have been a thing.

[Khorasaurus]

Here's a picture from that old thread. Some observations:

-Second [[bigger) Book Tower behind 211 W. Fort

-Big building behind the Guardian that is probably on the Kern's site [[current Compuware site) and another one of the other side of the Guardian that is probably where One Kennedy Square is now.

-Tower in Hart Plaza.

-Weird modernist buildings on the far north end of downtown [[maybe on Adams?)

-Towers just north of Cobo, presumably on Congress or Fort.

-No Stott building - or is it hiding?

Anyone know anything about the actual history of some of these?

[Khorasaurus]

And here's an aerial view I found on Google. All sorts of crazy stuff.

-Building in the middle of Washington Blvd

-People Mover extension [[the unbuilt regional network?) visible on Michigan Avenue.

-Weird semi-circular thing across from the Fox Theater.

-What the hell is going on north of I-75? It looks like Versailles.

-I find the lack of development in the Broadway/Library/Compuware garage area interesting. That area has seen a lot of real-life attention in the last few years and it was clearly an afterthought in this drawing - meaning very little was even proposed for that area for a long time. Maybe being "behind" Hudson's was the problem?

[mtburb]

And here's an aerial view I found on Google. All sorts of crazy stuff.

-Building in the middle of Washington Blvd

-People Mover extension [[the unbuilt regional network?) visible on Michigan Avenue.

-Weird semi-circular thing across from the Fox Theater.

-What the hell is going on north of I-75? It looks like Versailles.

-I find the lack of development in the Broadway/Library/Compuware garage area interesting. That area has seen a lot of real-life attention in the last few years and it was clearly an afterthought in this drawing - meaning very little was even proposed for that area for a long time. Maybe being "behind" Hudson's was the problem?

Don't forget about the apartment complexes taking up half of Comerica Park and a large portion of Ford Field and that large grass balcony where the Rosa Parks Transit Center is that even extends over Cass into the then-Ameritech Building.

And it even predicted Monroe Street's median about a decade before it was put in. Also, parts of the predicted I-75 capping are being incorporated into the new arena district.

[zeromillincrease]

Headline:	A DREAM OF DETROIT
Subhead:
Byline/Affiliation:	JOHN GALLAGHER
PubDate:	Sunday, 10/27/1991
Memo:	SPECIAL REPORT: UNBUILT DETROIT
Correction:
Text:	A skyline is the sum of a thousand visions. Some mature into mortar and steel; others succumb to politics, to lack of money or to common sense. But what if all the dreamers' dreams came true? What would Detroit look like then? Welcome to Unbuilt Detroit. It's the city that might have been. It contains all our familiar landmarks --and much, much more. Like a soaring glass canopy over Woodward Avenue, and a new racetrack on the near west side. In this version of Detroit, most of downtown's once vacant lots now sprout skyscrapers. And yes, a new Tiger Stadium -- one with a dome that opens and closes like a camera lens -- has replaced the old ballpark at Michigan and Trumbull. Fanciful? Of course. This is Detroit as dreamers have envisioned it over the years. No one ever saw the city in just this way. But we collected as many of the unrealized plans for new buildings and projects as we could find. Then we plugged them all into the skyline, where their creators wanted them to go, to see what Detroit might have looked like. Why? Because a city's history includes the flops as well as the successes. Because some of the schemes came tantalizingly close to reality. And because even the failed projects convey a sense of the creative power that dreamers have focused on Detroit. Consider: In the 1920s, Albert Kahn conceived the Fisher Buildings -- not one tower, but three. The colossus would have spanned the full block of Grand Avenue between Second and Third. A 60- story skyscraper would have been flanked by two smaller towers. But the Fisher family built only the first of the smaller towers. And, today, we know it as the Fisher Building. Before Kahn could proceed with the rest of his scheme, the Great Depression wrecked the building industry. Kahn's masterpiece, the 60-story tower, was never built. Also in the '20s, architect Eliel Saarinen created a design for Detroit's civic center plaza, now known as Hart Plaza. Saarinen's design included a domed memorial hall to honor America's veterans. Near it, he envisioned a soaring tower that would dominate the riverfront skyline. It came close to reality. Voters approved the plan in a referendum. But money could never be found to actually build it. Just last year, architect Cesar Pelli created his controversial design for a new Comerica Inc. headquarters. It, too, would have gone on the riverfront, where Ford Auditorium stands. But the plan didn't survive the bitter public debate over the auditorium, and the bank decided to lease offices elsewhere in downtown. All American cities have these unbuilt histories. And sometimes the unbuilt cities are more interesting, and exert more influence on architecture, than the real ones. In the 1920s, the Chicago Tribune asked architects to submit designs for a new Tribune Tower. Ideas poured in. It became architecture's most famous design competition ever. Bold new modernists like Eliel Saarinen and Walter Gropius offered designs. Their schemes fired the imaginations of architects everywhere. But the winner? A backward-glancing design with a late medieval look. It made a pretty postcard, and it satisfied those who seek "authentic" architecture. But even in the 1920s, architects learned more about skyscrapers from the unbuilt designs than from the one that made it. All architects mourn their favorite unrealized plans. For Detroit architect William Kessler, it may be his proposal for a domed Tiger Stadium in the '60s, or perhaps the one for a Wayne County courthouse skyscraper next to the City-County Building in the late '70s. "Some of the best ideas go down the tubes, " Kessler says ruefully. But if we regret some lost schemes, let's face it -- many are better off forgotten. Lots of developers have pitched deals over the years for new downtown hotels and office buildings. A few succeeded. The other plans, if built, might have just increased the glut of empty space. Maybe if the Fisher Buildings had been built as proposed, they would have sucked more jobs and tenants out of downtown Detroit to New Center. No one knows. Or consider Detroit's riverfront. Some dreamers have wanted to build it thick with high-rise towers. Others wanted the riverfront preserved for public use, and cheered the demise of the high-rise plans. But schemes for a waterfront park, stretching from downtown to Belle Isle, also went nowhere. Why do projects fail? Clearly, one reason is money. William Kessler's high-rise courthouse for Wayne County was part of the county's wish list in the '70s. It didn't survive the budgetary light of day. Lack of land is another reason. A mid-'80s plan for a hotel and office complex near Fort and Cass hinged on landowners selling their different parcels to developers. But some refused to sell, and the plan folded. Some proposals just don't generate much interest among prospective tenants. That's the case with numerous plans for downtown office towers. And political or popular unrest has killed many a project. Today's latest round of proposals for a new Tiger Stadium may yet fall into the unbuilt pile. After all, stadiums have been proposed here before. And so it goes. Over time, most architects grow reconciled to the high attrition rate. It's the nature of their business. Perhaps in no other endeavor is so much creative effort wasted. And wasted it is. Dreaming unfulfilled dreams may be a learning experience. But there is no central archive, no idea bank, where unbuilt plans go for further study. They get shelved and collect dust until somebody clears them out and throws them away. Odd as it seems, some architects even enjoy losing the occasional design to the unbuilt pile. Architects make money in two phases: first from design work, and second from overseeing the actual construction. Often, the profit margin is higher on the design phase. And problems in construction can cut deeply into an architect's profit. Sometimes the problems are bad enough to turn a job into a loss. So a job that's canceled after the design phase but before construction at least generates some profit. Still, money isn't everything. The game is in getting things built, not in drawing pretty pictures. Architects like Cesar Pelli know that. Pelli had already reshaped the skyline of lower Manhattan when he got the commission to design Comerica's riverfront headquarters. It was a dream assignment. It gave Pelli a historic chance to put his stamp on Detroit's skyline. True, many later found his design lackluster. Certainly it was controversial, mostly because building it would have required the razing of Ford Auditorium. Many critics were aghast that the city would even consider selling public riverfront land to private developers. But, if nothing else, Pelli's design would have provided Detroiters decades-worth of material for discussion. Detroiters still talk about the work of Albert Kahn, who designed General Motors' headquarters and many other projects, 50 years after his death. Fifty years from now, they might have talked about the impact of Pelli's slim tower on the riverfront. Now, they never will. "It's always very disappointing, " Pelli says of losing a design. "Because in order to design, one needs to engage the site, the city, the people as deeply as one can. "A design is something that one does with everything one has. One must embrace it with one's mind and one's emotions completely, with all the optimism and faith possible, " Pelli says. "Because that's what architecture is all about -- faith in the future." But there is another moral to draw from our unbuilt saga. All our existing buildings had false starts and shaky beginnings. Even the Renaissance Center had birth pangs. Our large number of unbuilt designs merely proves that Detroit is imbued with the drive to create. And nowhere is that more true than with Tiger Stadium. Since the 1960s, there have been no fewer than four plans to replace or renovate the ballpark. Each was an attempt to adapt to our changing, contemporary needs. That effort continues today. Whether we see a new Tiger Stadium, or the current ballpark patched up, we ought to see the many schemes not as cacophony but as a sign of hope. Our noisy, contentious, even rancorous public debate proves that here in Detroit, the desire to excel still burns within. DICK ROCHON founded his architectural illustration practice in 1961 after working 10 years as an architectural designer in the Detroit area. At his office in Dearborn, he has worked in all mediums, from transparent to opaque watercolor, pencil and ink. His publications include the illustrations for "Color in Architectural Illustration" published this year. In 1990, he was made an honorary member of the Michigan Society of Architects. JOHN GALLAGHER has written about architecture and real estate development for the Detroit Free Press since 1987. A native of New York City, he is a graduate of DePaul University in Chicago.

[mikeg19]

I remember reading the article a few years ago and thinking 2 things:

1) Would Detroit, with this influx of buildings [[presumably filled with workers and businesses), be on more stable financial footing because of them? Would the prosparity of downtown and midtown have strengthened the surrounding neighborhoods and maybe lessened the impact felt by Detroiters during the Great Recession?

or

2) Would it not have mattered at all, and our downtown would just be filled with more, bigger, abandoned hulks after the collapse?

It really is incredible to think these buildings were actually proposed here at one time, not just SimCity crap [[although I'm sure more than a few were just pipe dreams). Detroit would maybe have taken on a completely different atmosphere than what is going on down there right now. Thoughts?

[dtowncitylover]

I remember reading the article a few years ago and thinking 2 things:

1) Would Detroit, with this influx of buildings [[presumably filled with workers and businesses), be on more stable financial footing because of them? Would the prosparity of downtown and midtown have strengthened the surrounding neighborhoods and maybe lessened the impact felt by Detroiters during the Great Recession?

or

2) Would it not have mattered at all, and our downtown would just be filled with more, bigger, abandoned hulks after the collapse?

It really is incredible to think these buildings were actually proposed here at one time, not just SimCity crap [[although I'm sure more than a few were just pipe dreams). Detroit would maybe have taken on a completely different atmosphere than what is going on down there right now. Thoughts?

Interesting thoughts. I think for one many of the projects where pre-Depression area too. If they somehow visualized the proposed subway in the 20s instead of the connected people mover, we know for a fact that would have helped Detroit. Also the birds-eye illustration also points out the better cohesiveness of midtown and downtown due to the fact 75 is capped over with a Versailles-like promenade. So in my humble opinion, yes I think there would have been a positive impact on not only downtown but also the city had many of the projects come to life. However they would have only come to life if Detroit's urban and social planning was done better and a population that stayed in the city to support city government and work at these buildings with companies that came here because Detroit made itself attractive.

[Bham1982]

I remember reading the article a few years ago and thinking 2 things:

1) Would Detroit, with this influx of buildings [[presumably filled with workers and businesses), be on more stable financial footing because of them? Would the prosparity of downtown and midtown have strengthened the surrounding neighborhoods and maybe lessened the impact felt by Detroiters during the Great Recession?

or

2) Would it not have mattered at all, and our downtown would just be filled with more, bigger, abandoned hulks after the collapse?

It really is incredible to think these buildings were actually proposed here at one time, not just SimCity crap [[although I'm sure more than a few were just pipe dreams). Detroit would maybe have taken on a completely different atmosphere than what is going on down there right now. Thoughts?

The latter, because buildings don't build a city, people do. When the RenCen was built, it just sucked the life out of older buildings.

Some major proposed projects from somewhat recent history-

One Detroit Center [[Comerica) was originally planned as a twin-towered structure [[with second tower on the site of the adjacent garage). Parking would have been underground. The towers would have been 50-floors each, not the existing 43 floors. Skittish markets led to a downsized project.

There was an enormous development proposed for just east of the RenCen in the early 90's. The working title was Port Atwater. It was basically a row of soaring residential towers. It died sometime in the 90's.

[Detroit500]

Dont forget cadillac place that futurist tower from a few years ago.


I think thefactis, our city has not had much of a history of building better inside, but instead stretching out. That's why these projects wouldn't have had a huge impact on the present. Couldn't help but thinking the lack of feelings regarding the auditorium twenty years later......