One good building ready to shake off the mothballs

Horace H. Rackham Educational Memorial building

• Horace H. Rackham Educational Memorial building

Address: 100 Farnsworth St.

Architecture: Art moderne

History: Opened in 1942

Only a few hundred yards south of the Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA), just across Farnsworth Street, sits another somewhat similar building. The Horace H. Rackham Educational Memorial building is likewise imposing, with a perron and set of columns that are also made of marble.

But it faces the DIA, almost like it has turned to talk to its neighbor. The intimacy makes the whole building feel less austere and more welcoming than such a stately structure might otherwise be.
It feels obvious there must have been a vision for an arts district when the Rackham building opened in 1942 , almost a decade after Rackham died. These two buildings are still attempting to be in conversation with each other and not just with Woodward Avenue.

Rackham wanted the building to be used for the education of engineers. He was not one himself; instead, he had made his fortune from the good luck of being a fledgling lawyer who happened to live near future auto giant Henry Ford . Rackham bought some of the earliest Ford stock, and it worked out for him in Gilded Age fashion.

In about a decade, Rackham gave up working altogether to become a full-time philanthropist. Gifting (most of) the building to the University of Michigan was part of that legacy. Maybe he didn’t fully trust the university because he kept the eastern wing of the building and a significant amount of land tied up in the Rackham Engineering Foundation. The University of Michigan bought it out in 2018 .

In 2021, the university announced it was committing $40 million to the building’s renovation. University leadership has changed since then , and renovation plans don’t appear to have much momentum. A university spokesperson did confirm the money is still committed for the project.

New life for an old legacy?

The classrooms and office space inside the building have only been used sporadically over the last several decades. Other areas have been almost entirely mothballed. Right now, only the lobby is truly accessible to the public. Paul Draus is the director of the University of Michigan Detroit Center. He wants to see the building returned to more productive use.

Draus has started hosting a few small public events in the lobby and inviting ideas for future uses of the building. It does require some imagination. The floors are torn up, ceiling tiles are missing and paint is peeling in much of the building. A deep clean is in order. The biggest issue, Draus says, is that an overzealous steam-powered heating system keeps the building uncomfortably hot. It requires fans and open windows — even in the middle of a Michigan winter.

There is, however, real beauty and potential throughout. A theater with a setback and heavily curtained stage could entertain around 1,000 people, each in a red velvet seat. There’s an old bowling alley in the basement with beautifully incongruous, sci-fi-esque chandeliers where engineers had fun in style. On the second floor sits a library painted in light greens and peaches with almost floor-to-ceiling windows, a balcony surrounding the reading room and card catalogs. A study with a carved marble fireplace sits on the western corner of the first floor and is easy to imagine as the setting for a past or future cozy gathering.

The university has focused attention and resources on plans for the upcoming downtown Center for Innovation , Stephen Ross’ contemporary echo of Horace Rackham. Both are attempts at defining a legacy, one ambitious construction project at a time.

Show and tell

What are your favorite apartment buildings in the city and why? Email me at sarah@outliermedia.org with your favorite, and we’ll dig into its history.

Mine is the now neglected and marooned Laredo Building . It seems to be the perfect size to make both community and privacy possible. Plus, as a person who can’t seem to find a home with ample natural light no matter what, I love those windows.

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