Former Television Broadcast Studio Building in Detroit MI

WJBK-TV Studios Building, Detroit Michigan

Date added: November 17, 2024

East (front) and north (side) facades (2015)

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The former WJBK-TV Studios Building in Detroit, Michigan, housed pioneering Detroit television station WJBK when it was constructed in 1956 by the Storer Broadcasting Company. The Storer Broadcasting Company was an early national television network based in Toledo, Ohio. It is Detroit's only building designed by John L. Volk, a noted architect from Palm Beach, Florida, who planned over 2,000 buildings in his career. The WJBK-TV studio building is the only intact example of a 1950s television studio left in the city.

The former WJBK-TV Studios Building was constructed in 1956 by the Storer Broadcasting Company, an early national television network based in Toledo, Ohio. Television began in Detroit with the first station in Michigan "signing on" on March 4^th, 1947. This was WWJ, Channel 4, owned by the Evening News Association (parent company of the Detroit News). The second phase of Detroit television began when WXYZ-TV debuted on October 9^th, 1948. WXYZ was owned by the American Broadcasting Company (ABC) and specialized in sports programming with initial broadcasts including the World Series baseball game between the Cleveland Indians and Boston Braves, part of a football game between the University of Michigan and Notre Dame, and a Detroit Lions football game, live from Briggs Stadium in Detroit. WJBK began as an AM radio station in Detroit. On October 24^th, 1948, when WJBK-TV began broadcasting as Channel 2 television in Detroit, it was Detroit's third station to go on the air and was an affiliate of the DuMont Network and the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS); it was owned by George B. Storer's Storer Broadcasting.

George B. Storer began his business career in the steel and gas industries. He had been a student at Cornell University when he inherited his father's job as president of the Standard Steel and Tube Company in Toledo, Ohio. Storer later branched into the gasoline business, founding Fort Industry Oil Company, whose "purpose was to save money on distribution costs by putting gas stations next to railroad sidings so gas could be sold more cheaply." The cornerstone of what would become the Storer Broadcasting group of stations was set with Toledo's WTOL-AM. Storer Broadcasting began in 1927 when George Storer purchased the Toledo AM radio station WTOL for $3,500 with profits from his gasoline service stations. He soon discovered that radio was an effective advertising medium. He purchased two Detroit radio stations in the 1920s and 1930s, WGHP-AM and CKLW-AM, but sold CKLW one year later. Storer went on to purchase radio stations in Wheeling, West Virginia; Fairmont, Ohio; Lima, Ohio; Zanesville, Ohio; and Miami, Florida. Storer was chairman of the National Association of Broadcasters in the 1950s and 60s and was instrumental in developing the Television Code.

Storer already had something of a reputation as a well-connected operator by the time he purchased WJBK-TV in 1947. When Storer purchased WJBK-TV's license from businessmen James F. Hopkins and Richard A. Connell for $550,000, he also obtained television licenses for Miami and Toledo. Building television stations in Detroit, Toledo and Miami simultaneously was considered a gamble, given the untried nature of the new medium.

Through buying, selling and trading stations, by 1961 Storer Broadcasting was the sixth-largest network in the United States, eventually owning eleven television and nine radio stations around the country. Storer Broadcasting acquired Northeast Airlines from Howard Hughes in 1965. In the early 1970s, Storer passed control of his broadcast operations to his sons, George B. Storer Jr. and Peter Storer. Between 1978 and 1980, the younger Storers sold all of the company's radio properties in order to expand holdings in cable TV. Storer Broadcasting reorganized as Storer Communications in 1983. By this time it held franchises to provide cable television to over 500 communities in eighteen states and had over 4,800 employees. The company was dissolved after a hostile leveraged buyout in 1987 and the company's cable television assets were sold to Comcast Corporation.

In 1956 Storer moved the WJBK operations from the Detroit Masonic Temple to the new studio building built for the station on Second Avenue in Detroit's New Center. While at this location WIJBK's news broadcasts were rated number one among the Detroit stations. Television news originally was patterned after radio news and was just fifteen minutes long with weather and sports being separate shows. However, in the 1950s television news began to expand their broadcast schedule and WJBK did something unusual for the time in hiring two "intellectuals" for their news department. Dr. Everett Phelps, a meteorologist, worked at the station from 1951 to 1958, and Dr. John Dempsey, a political analyst, was hired in 1956 and oversaw the news department until 1962. Jac LeGoff was hired in 1953 and was a popular anchor. He was fired in 1959, but was brought back in 1962, because of guidance from consultant firm McHugh and Hoffman, Inc.

But something else was going on in Detroit that would eventually change the course of television news across the country: Storer Broadcasting began employing the services of a research consultant, McHugh and Hoffman, Inc. The firm would eventually become the biggest and most influential company in the field, divining attitudes for more than a hundred television stations in markets big and small across the United States.

McHugh and Hoffman's first report showed that competing station WWJ-TV was the dominant station in Detroit, and guided WJBK-TV in creating a team "that would later be described as "the New York Yankees of local television news." McHugh and Hoffman recommended a formula of presenting the news in a palatable way that was easy to comprehend, trustworthy, in a relaxed manner, unbiased, and that made folks feel a part of the community. Using this approach, WIJBK moved to the top of the Detroit market, and in 1965 they hired John Kelly to anchor the news with Jac LeGoff and Jerry Hodak for the weather. An innovation of this WIBK-TV news team was the invention of "Happy Talk" in 1965 when Jerry Hodak joined the team. Although also encouraged by McHugh and Hoffman, station executives encouraged LeGoff and Kelly to joke with newcomer Hodak to calm his nerves. The bantering between newscasters on the air was a success, over 400 callers expressing their approval to the station within an hour of the broadcast.

WJBK-TV news was still the dominant newscast in the market when the 1967 Detroit riots broke out, and the location of the studio in Detroit's New Center put the studio in the middle of the action. "Reporters and camera crews from all over the world used our station as a base, including John Hart and John Lawrence of CBS News as well as media people from England, Japan, West Germany and the Netherlands. I stood on the roof of WJBK and watched people smash windows and loot Saks Fifth Avenue and the S&H green stamp redemption center. On one occasion, bullets penetrated our building." According to a visitor at the station, Marilyn Barnett, "The intention was for them - the folks who were rioting - to take over the TV station."

In addition to the news, two locally popular shows, Sagebush Shorty and Sir Graves Ghastly, were produced in the studios. In 1956, just after the new studio was constructed, George Storer brought in a new station manager, Bill Michaels, who eventually became the chairman of the board of Storer. Sagebrush Shorty (Ted Lloyd) was brought to Detroit in 1957 from Storer's station in San Antonio, Texas, by Michaels. Sagebrush Shorty was a ventriloquist and had the dummy Billy Bob Buttons as his sidekick. The children's weekday morning show on-air work consisted of shtick before commercial breaks and introducing cartoons, but the Saturday show included magic tricks and a live audience. The Sagebrush Shorty show was replaced by WJBK-TV with B'Wana Don about 1963. Lloyd's wife was working with her husband on the Sagebrush Shorty show, and sued the station after being bitten by a chimpanzee on the set. That ended the Sagebrush Shorty show, and Ted Lloyd and his wife moved to Los Angeles.

Sir Graves Ghastly (Lawson Deming) began at WJBK-TV in 1967 and hosted a Saturday horror movie program until 1982. The Sir Graves Ghastly show became so popular that the station edited the movies to fit around Deming's antics. In addition to playing a vampire to go in and out of commercials, Deming created other characters that he also played. So that the different characters played by one person could interact with each other, special effects were used. It was said, "No other Detroit TV show utilized as many special effects as Sir Graves Ghastly presents." Deming made many public appearances because of his love of children, and he wore his costume out in public. "When WJBK was still on Second Avenue in Detroit, across the street on Second Avenue and Bethune was Momo's Bar. There was a brief period when the show first started when we ran it on Friday nights. After Lawson did the opening, there was about twenty minutes of downtime. He came into the bar in full costume … and the guy who owned the bar would never acknowledge him either. He would sit at the end of the bar and we'd hear people saying, ‘Get a load of the guy at the end of the bar’ as they were pretending not to look. And of course Lawson picked up on what was going on. So when he walked toward the door to exit he'd let the Sir Graves laugh go and then leave."

According to a 1971 Detroit Free Press article about WJBK-TV moving out of the building, the studio housed the first color TV transmitting equipment in Detroit. By that year, WJBK had outgrown the space and completed the process for its move to a new location. Storer Broadcasting moved both the television and radio station to the newly created "Storer Place" studio located between Greenfield and Southfield roads on Nine Mile Road in the suburb of Southfield, Michigan, near the Northland Center Mall. The new studio was a much larger, state-of-the-art studio with acreage for transmitters and room for expansion. WJBK-TV remains in that location today.

WJBK sold their 7441 Second Avenue building to Detroit's public television station WTVS, Channel 56, for $750,000 in 1971. WTVS financed the purchase through a $350,000 grant from the Kresge Foundation and a $400,000 loan from the Ford Foundation. The move enabled WTVS to broadcast in color, which it had not been able to do previously. Additionally, a Kresge Foundation grant of $153,000 provided for the purchase of new technical equipment including a color television camera. Channel 56 first went on the air in October, 1955, as Detroit's first UHF station. It was the third educational television station to go on the air nationally. With the advent of cable television, in the late 1990s WTVS changed its call letters to DPTV. WTVS/DPTV constructed a new studio building in the suburb of Wixom and sold the building to Mosaic Youth Theater for use as a youth theater company and its offices in 2009. Mosaic Youth Theater sold the building in 2014 to a development firm which has plans to convert the building to residential units.

Volk and George B. Storer (1899-1975) were friends and Storer was a long-time client. Volk's first of a long list of commissions from entrepreneur Storer was his home and guest house in Miami; Florida (1947), and then the Storers' other homes in Saratoga, Wyoming (1953), and Lyford Cay, the Bahamas (1971 and 1974). These commissions led Volk to do several Storer commercial projects including "Old Baldy," a golf and vacation club in Saratoga, Wyoming, and several office buildings for Storer Enterprises. Through Storer's position as chairman of the board of the Miami Heart Institute, Volk received the commission to design the Arthur F. Adams Research Building there in 1969. Volk designed television studios for Storer in Miami and New York in addition to the Detroit studio. The WGBS Radio building on Brickell Avenue in Miami, designed for Storer Broadcasting, is similar in style to the WJBK-TV Studios Building in Detroit as it has a brick facade, pediment over the second story and classically detailed central entrance. The Storer Broadcasting Building in Miami is a three-story white building with a pediment at the attic story and a center entrance, using some of the same design language as the WJBK-TV Studio Building. Another part of Volk's career work was a number of radio broadcasting stations in West Virginia for the Greer family's chain of fifteen radio stations.

The WJBK-TV Studio is the only work of Volk's in Detroit. in which Volk specialized in its Georgian Revival design, and it included his signature elements: the Ionic portico, limestone details and a monumental curving staircase and paneling.

The site of the WJBK building contained two single-family houses until 1937 when the Fisher Building Company constructed a surface parking lot and guard shelter on the site. When the studio building was designed it took the surrounding buildings into account by using an architectural style and scale that is compatible with the surrounding neighborhood and reflected the Neo-Classical style favored by the architect.

Although the exterior of the building was designed to fit with the neighborhood, the interior spaces mirrored television studio design thinking at the time. According to an article in TV. Guide, the WJBK-TV Studio was constructed with "two huge television studios and the business offices of the station" on the ground level, and "One of the television studios will be so large that passenger cars and trucks can enter one side of the building, drive into the studio and leave by the Bethune side of the building." The new studios, Studio A and Studio B, had a special client's viewing room that overlooked the director's control rooms and both studios. One of the new studios could seat 150 persons, and was available for business meetings with closed circuit TV presentations. This was undoubtedly marketed to General Motors for shareholder meetings and similar business meetings. Executive offices and a radio studio were located on the upper level front half of the building. The basement housed a film laboratory.

The TV Guide article stated that WJBK "had strong encouragement from a national network with relation to the possibility of national network-originated programs from Detroit." The plan was for Detroit-produced national network shows to originate from the WJBK studio. This plan was possible in Detroit because of the automotive companies' potential sponsorships in the multi-millions of dollars that were available to back such a production. It is not known that any one-time national broadcast shows originated from the WJBK studio, but it is known that no regular national programs were produced there.

The TV Guide article, undated, included the architect's drawing of the proposed studio building with a third story, never constructed. The article also stated that an underground passageway would connect the WJBK-TV Studio with the New Center Building (across Second Avenue) and thus connect underground to the Fisher and General Motors Buildings. This underground tunnel was also never built.

The September, 1953, issue of Progressive Architecture was dedicated to television stations, highlighting them as a new building type and giving guidance on building placement, studio, office and lighting design, as well as the installation of transmission antennas. The newly constructed WWJ-TV Studio in downtown Detroit, designed by Giffels & Vallet, Inc., and Louis Rossetti, was featured in that issue. The photograph shows a very modern looking building; however, the building no longer retains this appearance today. The WWJ-TV Studio was dramatically altered after the 1967 riots to increase security. This makes the former WJBK-TV Studio Building the only intact example of a 1950s television studio left in the city; no others exist.

Building Description

The former WJBK-TV Studios Building sits on the southwest corner of Second Avenue and Bethune Street in Detroit's New Center area. The WJIBK-TV Studios Building is a two-story, red brick, Georgian Revival building that features limestone trim and brick quoins. The floor plan is comprised of two sections, a rectangular front office section facing the street and a larger rectangular studio section at the rear. The studio section is set back slightly on the alley side, and set back on the Bethune Street side to accommodate a side entrance. The building abuts the sidewalk on the east and north elevations, an alley runs along the south side, and there is an asphalt-paved parking lot at the rear. The front on Second Avenue contains a slightly projecting central section with a limestone-trimmed entry portico with a slender unfluted Ionic column on each side supporting a flat-top entablature with low two-part architrave, tall frieze and classical cornice. Surmounting the center of the building's main facade is a limestone-trimmed pediment with an oval window in the center.

The former WJBK-TV Studios building stands at the southwest corner of Second Avenue and Bethune Street in the New Center area of Detroit which is approximately four miles north of downtown. To the south are the former General Motors headquarters building and the Fisher Building, and across Second Avenue is the Albert Kahn Building.

The Second Avenue facade (front facade) and the north and south side of the office section of the building are faced in dark red brick laid in common bond with a course of headers every sixth course. The central five bays of the symmetrical eleven-bay front project slightly, with the central three bays projecting a bit more and topped by a pediment, with an oval classical window in its center. The Second Avenue facade has a central entrance that, with non-original aluminum glass entry doors, is fronted by a limestone portico at the first floor. Two limestone Ionic unfluted columns support a flat-top entablature with a low two-part architrave, tall frieze and classical cornice of limestone. A double-hung window with a stone surround rises above the door at the second floor and a stone-trimmed oval window is in the center of the pediment above. Equally spaced aluminum, six-over-six, double-hung windows run across the remainder of the front elevation in the first and second stories. The windows are arranged symmetrically with three bays at the north and south ends, and a single bay on each side of the central bay containing the portico and another window on each side. The second floor is topped with a wide stone frieze and cornice running below a brick parapet wall surrounding the flat roof. A limestone beltcourse runs below the first-floor windows. All of the windows have roll-up metal blinds installed on the exterior of the building. The front door has a roll-up metal blind as well.

The north and south sides of the office section of the building continue the window and wall treatment from the front of the building. There are five bays of double-hung windows on each side facade. The rear end of the Bethune Street side facade's office portion includes two more window bays set under the same stone frieze and brick parapet. The studio section's side walls are set in from the office section's side walls, slightly on the south side but much more on the north-facing Bethune. The studio section's exterior does not reflect the Georgian Revival styling of the office section, though it also has red brick walls of the same bond, and on the Bethune side of the building there is a small projecting wood and glass entrance vestibule. A row of double-hung windows that match the remainder of the building are spaced equally along a one-story side section of the north/Bethune elevation in the studio section. The south and west sides of the studio section have few openings with the exception of loading and pedestrian doors. There is a small, one-story garage attached to the rear of the building. The roof of the studio contains a brick elevator penthouse, a number of large satellite dishes, and a tall broadcast antenna tower.

The interior of the building is also divided into two sections: the office/administrative portion and the studio portion. The office section is entered from the Second Avenue portico door and has a long rectangular entrance lobby and adjacent waiting room paneled in book-matched clear cypress wood. A more recent interior aluminum partition with double doors separates the lobby from the interior of the office section. The doors lead to a dramatic monumental dogleg, two-story open staircase, with curbed transition between rungs, in the center of the office building. The stairs and treads are finished in travertine marble. The staircase lobby is paneled in book-matched three-quarter-inch gum plywood. The paneling faces the enclosed straight lower portion of the staircase, forms an approximately two-foot high facing beneath the upper part of the staircase, and covers the wall behind the stairs. The staircase, paneling and decorative wrought-iron balustrade are all original. The stair railing has a thin circular-plan, brass knob-capped newel. The wrought iron railing is formed of open rectangles with curvilinear forms between the upright posts. The original six-sided brass light fixture hangs above the center of the staircase curve. A passenger elevator is located to the south of the monumental staircase.

A main north-south-running corridor accesses the offices in the front of the building and east-west running corridors at both ends. A conference room and an executive suite on the second floor retain their original book-matched clear cypress wood-paneled walls. The remainder of the offices and corridors have non-original finishes consisting of carpeting, plaster, drywall, and dropped acoustical tile ceilings. Two service staircase towers are located at opposite sides of the building on the north and south ends. A large freight elevator is located at the western edge of the building, accessed from the parking lot. A side entrance on the Bethune Street/north facade allows for access directly into the large studio. An entrance from the rear facade (western facade) allows for access into the building from the parking lot.

There are two studio spaces and a control room in the building's studio portion. The largest is a two-story studio space at the rear (western end) of the building. The large studio has painted concrete-block walls and an open ceiling exposing the steel truss roof system and ductwork. A metal fly loft support system hangs from the roof structure and creates a grid that runs in both directions across the large studio space to hold lighting and other equipment as requirements determined. The studio was a functional space intended to be divided up as needed for different sets to be constructed in the studio at one time. The large studio space has a glass viewing area so a separate audience or related event could be held in the adjacent studio. A number of unfinished storage spaces surround the studio areas. A full basement runs under the entire building. The basement contained mechanical rooms and small rooms for storage of files, videotapes and props.