South and East Elevations


South elevation  ...  2015 photo

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Rear / east elevation facing Washington St.             2006 photo

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Including significant landscaptng next to a skyscraper was innovative on Yamasaki's part                     2022 photo

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Note spandrel panels and green marble, details below                   2022 photo


Spandrel panels                         2022 photo

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Spandrel panels: bronze-toned, anodized aluminum with a slender rose-bud vase design embossed on it  (2002 photo)                        Another example of  Yamasaki-decorated spandrel panels: IBM Building

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Marble detail.           2022 photo

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Rear (East elevation, Washington St.) of building with extruding "spine" which contains mechanicals like elevator shaft, heating equipment., plumbing, etc.                21 story spine constructed in two weeks using the continuous pour slip form methoddeveloped in Buffalo in 1906 for grain elevtors                   2002 photo

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East elevation on Washington Street

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Looking into the building on Washington Street (east elevation)

Minoru Yamasaki, (born December 1, 1912, Seattle, Washington, U.S.—died February 6, 1986,Detroit, Michigan), American architect whose buildings, notable for their appeal to the senses, departed from the austerity often associated with post-World War II modern architecture.

-  Encyclopaedia Britannica (online Dec. 2018)

Now that I’m about to turn seventy I finally feel able to reveal a shameful secret: I was a teenage Yamasaki addict. I have no good excuse for why I got hooked, but Minoru Yamasaki was the first contemporary architect who entranced me. 

Minoru Yamasaki, who practiced in the Detroit area for over forty years, was one of the world's best-known architects in the early 1960s, appearing on the cover of Time magazine, serving on President Kennedy's committee to redesign Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C., and being selected to construct the World Trade Center in New York, which was briefly the tallest building in the world. 

His popularity arose from a unique form of architecture developed in the 1950s which melded his interest in invoking feelings of "serenity" and "delight" with insights gained from studying historical buildings in Europe, India, and Japan. 

His work offered a gentler, more decorated style of modernism distanced from the obsession with function or structure that characterized muchof contemporary architecture. 

- Sarah Cox, "Yamasaki's Most Important Architecture In & Around Detroit," Curbed Detroit, 2013(online Dec. 2018)

Yamasaki’s early training and experience were influenced by the austerity and practicality of the Modern and International Style movements. However, in 1955, his perspective on the state of architecture and his personal aesthetic ambitions substantially changed. That year, he was commissioned to design the U.S. Consulate in Kobe, Japan. While there,he took the opportunity to embark on an architectural heritage tour of Japan, Italy, and India. Having never traveled outside the U.S., thetrip proved to be eye-opening and career changing. 

As he described in his 1979 autobiography, the Japanese temples hidden amongst the crowded city streets made a particular impact. He was most taken, he said, by the element of surprise he experienced when emergingfrom the city’s commotion into the temple’s peaceful gardens and pools. In Italy, he studied Renaissance architecture in Venice and Rome,admiring their public squares and soaring Gothic cathedrals, whose texture and ornamentation are unmatched anywhere. Finally, he visited India and was awed by the sense of aspiration that the Taj Mahal’s silhouette against the skyline elicited in him.

From these travels, Yamasaki developed an architectural philosophy that shaped the rest of his career. He openly eschewed the monotonous “glass boxes” that his contemporaries designed. Instead, Yamasaki sought to humanize architecture by combining historic decorative elements with new technology. In a 1962 speech in Seattle, he articulated his disillusionment with modern architecture, declaring itto be in a state of anarchy.

Architecture critic Ada Louise Huxtable perhaps best described it in a1962 New York Times article: “The work is so characteristic of its designer that it could be picked out as Yamasaki’s in any simple guessing game,” she wrote. “There are pools and plants, skylights and courts, domes, vaults, arches, arcades, canopies and colonnades. Materials are sumptuous; surfaces are intricate. These are exotic,elaborate designs intended to delight the senses.”

He did all of this using innovative structural engineering methods and modern materials, such as pre-cast concrete. Although frequently criticized for being over-decorated like “wedding cakes” or “jewelry boxes,” his designs were also often praised for being interesting, if not beautiful to experience. At the very least, his work never lacked controversy and was always distinctly Yamasaki.

- Denise McGeen, "Minoru Yamasaki (Dec. 1, 1912 - Feb. 7, 1986 )," in HistoricDetroit.org (online Dec. 2018)