The Guardian Building is a landmark skyscraper in the United States, located in Downtown Detroit, Michigan, within the Financial District. Built in 1928 and finished in 1929, the building was originally called the Union Trust Building and is a bold example of Art Deco architecture, including art moderne designs with a very strong influence of the Mayan architecture. It was designated a National Historic Landmark on June 29, 1989, and the associated Detroit Financial District is on the National Register of Historic Places. The Guardian building includes retail and a tourist gift shop.
The exterior of the building has a granite base with carvings by Corrado Parducci, with multistory windows surrounded by tile. Rising beyond the base is the orange brick facade, with portions setback to reveal a north and south tower connected to create an I shape. Elegant detail is seen throughout the facade and large amounts visible on the north tower crown.
The interior, however, was as elaborate more than the exterior. Upon stepping through the doors, visitors would enter the 150-foot-long main lobby, with a three-story vaulted ceiling above them, that consisted of a Mayan and Aztec design with multicolor, interlocking hexagons.
The giant columns in the room are formed from Travertine marble imported from Italy. At the base of each of these columns is a block of black marble imported from Belgium. Numidian marble was chosen for its unusual blood-red color. No mines in the world quarried it at the time, so Rowland went to Africa, where a mine that had been closed for 30 years was reopened just long enough for Rowland to pick out the marble he needed for the lobby.
The wall between the elevators contains a large mosaic of a pine tree and text outlining the bank’s purpose. From there. The building’s elevator lobbies feature stained glass figures representing Fidelity. The ceiling, color and stained glass give the Guardian a church-like feel and helped give it its nickname, the Cathedral of Finance.
By the time the building was completed, Union Trust had bought up several other banks and become the Guardian Detroit Union Group, which held 40% of Detroit’s banking resources. But the Great Depression hit Detroit — and the bank — hard. In 1932, the bank went into receivership as the New Union Building Corp.
During World War II, the building was used as a command center for the Army as it coordinated ordinance production. The New Union Building Co. took the building back over after the war, but the bank filed for bankruptcy in 1949. It was sold at auction in 1952 to the Guardian Building Co. of the Michigan Bank Corp.
The Sterling Group bought the Guardian in the fall of 2003 and plunked down more than $14 million in improvements into it. But the biggest change was the announcement that Sterling would open the building up to the public, the first time in more than a quarter century that non-employees were allowed to enter the masterpiece.
Text by: Cătălin CREȚU
Photography: Steve Brown
© The Bunget 2017
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