Former Kmart HQ was later the Detroit Institute of Technology
S. S. Kresge World Headquarters, Detroit Michigan

The Kresge World Headquarters Building is a meticulously preserved, Art Deco style office structure of outstanding architectural qualities designed by a noted American architect, Albert Kahn. It is also important for its central role in the growth of a nationally important retailer, the S. S. Kresge Company.
Albert Kahn's firm designed the Kresge Building in 1928 to provide a new headquarters for the Detroit-based, five and ten cent store chain. The building was a radical departure from the prevailing skyscraper norm for office buildings at the period, in that it was designed to spread out horizontally rather than soar upward.
To accommodate the large structure, a site just outside the central business district in a pleasant, but fading, late Victorian residential area was selected. From the beginning, it appears that the company had in mind a quiet, campus-like setting for its headquarters, a concept widely adopted by other major corporations in the late 1950s and 1960s. This no doubt reflected the ideas of the company's founder and chairman of the Board, Sebastian S. Kresge, who was to continue his active involvement with his firm until shortly before his death in 1966.
The resulting structure, a five-level, limestone-faced, concrete-framed building containing 250,000 square feet was designed in the then fashionable Art Deco style. This building is a product of the Kahn firm's transition from a classical vocabulary, illustrated by such projects as the monumental General Motors Building, (1922) to a more modern commercial style. In the mid-1920s, the only modern style that was at all widely popular was Art Deco. An early example of the firm's break with historicism is the Detroit Free Press Building of 1923, although the huge Fisher Building (1927) is a more fully developed essay in Art Deco. All of these buildings exhibit similar characteristics: limestone facing; a strong vertical emphasis reinforced by a clearly articulated pier system; tall central pavilion massing with lower side wings; and a sparing use of Art Deco ornament. In the Fisher Building, the steeply-pitched copper roof with cresting, seen also in the Kresge Building, makes its first appearance. The facade of the Kresge Building is, in many ways, one of Kahn's most interesting compositions of this Period because of its sophisticated use of ornament, its massing and its horizontal format. The interior detailing, however, owes much to Kahn's love of the classical and his masterful stylization of it to reflect the avant garde Art Deco influence.
The building's architectural merits were signified by the medal it received in 1930 from the Detroit Chapter of the American Institute of Architects as the best commercial structure of the year. Unfortunately, the onset of the Great Depression, lead to a general cessation of office building construction in Michigan and Kahn had little opportunity to experiment further with his Art Deco commercial style. For the rest of his career, he devoted his energies almost exclusively to designing factories in the International and Moderne styles.
The Kresge Company was founded in 1898 in Detroit by Sebastian S. Kresge, the company soon grew from one store into a major national chain. Its growth parallels that of other major retailers founded about the same time, such as the F. W. Woolworth Company. These competing giants originally operated 5 and 10 stores where many, low-priced, goods could be purchased. By the 1920s most of these companies had opened separate chains of .25 to $1.00 stores offering more expensive goods.
Through aggressive marketing techniques, mass purchasing and extensive advertising these firms eliminated competition from the many, smaller, locally-owned specialty and variety stores previously in existence and captured a large part of the nation's growing consumer goods market. Soon, Kresge's and Woolworth's standard design storefronts could be found on the main streets of practically every sizable American town. With standard store designs and signage came a standardized assortment of goods, the result of centralized purchasing and distribution, which strongly influenced the nation's consumer habits and helped mold a more regionally uniform set of tastes and aesthetics across America.
The heyday of the dime store was the 1920s and 1930s. By the later 1920s, Kresge's was a major national retailer. To symbolize the prominence of his company and also to streamline the administrative operations of his highly centralized chain store empire, S. S. Kresge hired Albert Kahn, Detroit's most prominent architect, to design a new corporate headquarters. Kresge, who was sixty-two when the new building was begun, typified the paternalistic entrepreneurs of the early twentieth century. He conceived of the facility not only as the company showplace, but also as home to his headquarters family of five hundred workers. Throughout the building, not just in the lobby and executive suites, walnut and marble were used liberally and the latest lighting, ventilating and communications equipment was installed to make the building as pleasant, comfortable, and efficient as possible for the employees. In addition, a cafeteria, lounge, and other conveniences were provided.
The building remained adequate for the company's needs until the late 1960s. During the intervening period, Kresge's grew into the nation's third-largest retailer with over 915 stores doing more than $1 billion a year in sales. Sebastian S. Kresge himself remained interested in the company and its headquarters building throughout those years. It was only after his death in 1966 at the age of 99 that the company began to seriously consider establishing a new headquarters. By that time, the superbly maintained building housed almost 1200 employees and the need for more space was critical. In 1972 the company moved to its new headquarters in suburban Troy. In 1977 the company was renamed the Kmart Corporation. At its peak in 1994, Kmart operated 2,486 stores globally, including 2,323 discount stores and Super Kmart Center locations in the United States. There are currently 6 stores remaining.
The old headquarters building was donated, with much of the furniture, to the Detroit Institute of Technology (D.I.T) a private four-year college emphasizing Arts and Sciences, Business Administration and Engineering. The school was organized in Detroit in 1891 and has offered instruction, primarily to Detroit residents, since that time at various locations downtown. In 1972-73 the Kresge Building was renovated at a cost of $3.2 mission to better serve the Institute's then enrollment of about 1,300 students.
By 1979, a third of its students were Iranian citizens. As the Iran Hostage Crisis led to the cancellation of their visas, the college abruptly lost a large percentage of its students. This loss of income, paired with the early 1980s recession, proved too much for the Institute, which formally closed down in 1982. After the college's demise, this building became a part of Wayne State University where it is used as an incubator for startup companies, and is currently referred to as the Metropolitan Center for High Technology.
Building Description
The Kresge World Headquarters Building occupies the block bounded by Temple, Third, Ledyard and Second Avenue just north of the central business district in downtown Detroit. It faces Cass Park, a formally landscaped, city square. Although the surrounding blocks still contain the rapidly eroding remnants of a Late Victorian residential district. Cass Park itself is surrounded by substantial institutional buildings including the monumental Masonic Temple on Temple Avenue, the city-owned Cass Technical High School and the Wayne County Department of Welfare and Social Services Building. Filling the rest of the land around Cass Park are the Michigan Chronicle Building and the Park Plaza residence for Senior citizens.
The Kresge Building is a rectangular, E-shaped, four-story, copper-mansard-roofed, limestone-faced, Art Deco style office building 372 feet in length by 160 feet in width encompassing two courtyard light wells in the rear.
The principal elevation faces Cass Park. The building is massed using a five-part symmetrical scheme with a projecting center pavilion a story-and-a-half taller than the rest of the building connected to projecting end pavilions by means of long hyphens. The vertical massing is enriched by the treatment of the fourth floor as a separate element. This floor is articulated using piers and belt courses to appear as though it were recessed, although in fact only the middle bays of the center pavilion are actually set back from the face of the unified lower stories.
The elevation of the first three levels is composed of tiers of large, paired, bronze, double-hung windows with polished-marble spandrels between the first and second stories and fluted spandrels between the second and third floors. The bays are separated by colossal, fluted piers which terminate abruptly in the middle of the wide, plain, limestone band between the third and fourth stories. This space is further ornamented with a series of carved, stone blocks projecting from the wall between the tops of the piers. These frieze blocks on the hyphens and end pavilions are carved with an Art Deco stylized plant motif, while those on the center pavilion are carved in high relief to depict allegorical figures.
The fourth story's fenestration does not relate to that of the lower stories. Plain stone piers separate the double-hung, bronze windows on the end pavilions and hyphens. The center pavilion is more richly articulated. The upper two stories are set back from the face of the building behind a bronze picket balcony railing. Two tiers of tall, narrow windows separated by attenuated stone piers emphasize the verticality of the design. The addition of stone fins springing from boldly projecting carved stone blocks at the attic level reinforces the upward visual thrust as do the gilded terra cotta cresting and the standing seams of the steeply-pitched copper mansard roof.
The central entrance is the most elaborately detailed feature of the facade. A broad flight of granite steps leads to a monumentally enframed entrance of gray polished granite. The plain enframement is ornamented with a bold relief mask of Mercury over the door with five smaller blocks carved in varying stylized decorative motifs relating to commerce flanking the door on each side. The brass framed plate glass doors are surmounted by patterned bronze grille work in an Art Deco stylized plant motif.
The interior is divided into office suites flanking double-loaded corridors. The lobby and the executive offices on the second floor are the most notable interior spaces.
The lobby extends the width of the central pavilion. It is lavishly detailed with full-height walnut paneling, marble pilasters and a polychromed, gilded, plaster ceiling in a rosette pattern. Three large brass chandeliers of colonial design, some of the original upholstered furniture, and the Art Deco style carved walnut information desk maintains the original ambiance. A short flight of marble steps leads to the marble-walled elevator lobby. This space also retains all of its original features including the frosted-glass Art Deco lantern-style light fixtures, the gilded plaster ceiling with rosettes and stylized classical moldings, and the bronze and brass stair railing and elevator doors.
The executive offices in the second-floor front part of the building are lavish essays in Art Deco interior decorating.
The main corridor providing access to them is sheathed from floor to ceiling in light gray marble as is the elevator lobby. Ornately inlaid walnut paneling and doors set off by elaborate carved wood moldings and fretwork bands can be found in the principal offices and board rooms. The paneled and gilded plaster ceilings and many of the original furnishings and light fixtures help maintain the period appearance, although most of the teakwood floors are concealed by carpeting or vinyl tile.
Elsewhere in the building, the original simply-finished offices have been converted to classrooms and educational facilities without altering the essential character of the floor plan.

Second Avenue elevation (1979)

Main entrance (1979)

Frieze detail on east elevation (1979)

Lobby (1979)

Lobby ceiling (1979)

Elevator lobby (1979)

Typical Art Deco light fixture (1979)

The Board Room (1979)

Double door entrance to the Board Room (1979)

Detail of the carving in the Board Room (1979)

Typical executive office (1979)
