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Cover Story

Albert Kahn: Architect, Artist, Visionary

A

lbert Kahn changed the face
of Detroit with his inspired
architecture. His world-
famous structures, such as
the General Motors Building and the
Fisher Building, are monumental
works still preserving the stability of
the inner city.
Versatile in style, conscientious in
detail, responsive to the needs of his
clients and concerned with the health
and safety of the workers whose facto-

2<

The eldest son of an itinerant rabbi,
the 11-year old Kahn immigrated to
Detroit from Germany with his family
in 1880. He abandoned hope of a for-
mal education as he got jobs to help
support a family with eight children.
The painter Julius Melchers gave Kahn
free art lessons until it was discovered
that Kahn was colorblind.
Hired as an office boy in the archi-
tectural firm of Mason and Rice, Kahn
worked his way up to draftsman and
apprentice architect. Mason encour-
aged the 21-year-old apprentice to
apply for the scholarship that funded
his trip to Europe. His 250 expert line
drawings from the trip were published
in the magazine that provided the
scholarship.

Cars Fuel Kahn's Passion

Architect Albert Kahn
in his office, a photo of
the inspiring Pantheon
on his wall.

ries he created,
Kahn designed
ageless, timeless
buildings. Of his
thousands of
structures world-
wide, most are still in use.
The former Temple Beth El, now
Wayne State University's Bonstelle
Theatre, is a modified version of the
Pantheon in Rome. The Pantheon so
impressed Kahn that he kept a large
framed photograph of it on his office
wall. His second design of Temple
Beth El, on Woodward Avenue, now
the Lighthouse Cathedral, is based on
Greek temple architecture. ,
Kahn had always been impressed by
classically inspired architecture, which
he studied in Europe on a scholarship
early in his career, leaving Detroit a
legacy of classical columns and capitals
on banks and civic buildings.

Norma Wynick Goldman is an
adjunct professor at the College of
Lifelong Learning at Wayne State
44 IN
7/20 University in Detroit.

2001

34

Although his commercial, civic, insti-
tutional and domestic buildings are
evident throughout the city of Detroit,
Kahn is most famous as the "father of
industrial architecture."
He worked in Detroit at the crucial
time when automobile manufacturers
needed factories to produce their cars.
Before Kahn, factories had been dis-
mal, dark, airless, unhealthy firetraps
with oil-stained wooden floors. Kahn
transformed them into handsome,
well-lit, well-ventilated, healthy work-
places. And, most important, he was
able to translate into architecture the
assembly-line process that increased
productivity.
For the automotive industrialists,
Kahn designed factories: the Packard
plant, General Motors plants, Chrysler
plants. His early Ford factory in
Highland Park (1909), airy and well-
lit, was dubbed "the Crystal Palace."
In 1917, he completed the first struc-
ture of the vast Ford complex along the
Rouge River, which eventually became
the largest automobile factory in the
world. The murals painted by Diego
Rivera in the Detroit Institute of Arts
document the men and machines on
the assembly lines that transformed raw
materials into shiny new Fords, and
also transformed the architecture of fac-
tories around the world.

Beyond The Factory

Early in his career, Kahn was deter-
mined that his younger brother, Julius,
receive the technical training that he
never had. Upon graduation from the
University of Michigan College of
Engineering, Julius became an engi-

ert Kahn Assoc iates

NORMA WYNICK GOLDMAN
Special to the Jewish News

The General
Motors Building
in Detroit's New
Center area.

SIDNEY BOLKOSKY
Special to the Jewish News

A

t age 50, in 1927, Fred M.
Butzel received tributes of
the sort usually reserved for
older men. Perhaps no
other individual in Detroit Jewish his-
tory matches his reputation for non-
partisan leadership, genuine humani-
tarianism and common sense.
A mentor to Jews and non-Jews, by
profession a lawyer, by temperament a
humanitarian, by choice a philanthro-
pist, Butzel seemed to become every-
one's ideal.
A tribute describes him as a "light of
idealism." New York Court of Appeals
Judge Irving Lehman described Butzel
as a "stalwart American, a learned and
successful lawyer, a deep student of
social service, in all his activities ...
inspired by love of Jewish traditions
and by Jewish ideals."

Sidney Bolkosky is a history professor
at the University of Michigan-Dearborn
and author of the book "Harmony and
Dissonance: Voices ofiewish History in
Detroit, 1914-1967"

