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March 21: The Architect of Industry

lawrencebush
March 21, 2012

Albert Kahn, known as “the architect of Detroit,” who designed Henry Ford’s massive production line factories and by 1938 had designed some 20 percent of the architect-designed industrial buildings in the U.S., was born in Prussia on this date in 1869. He came to the U.S. at age 11 and established his architectural firm in Detroit in 1895. Kahn’s designs replaced wood with poured concrete, which provided fire protection and voluminous, unobstructed interiors. His firm built more than 500 factories in the USSR between 1930 and 1932. His most famous buildings (some sixty of which are on the National Register of Historic Places) include the Art Deco Fisher Building in Detroit, several classic buildings on the University of Michigan campus in Ann Arbor, and the headquarters of all three of Detroit’s daily newspapers. Kahn lived until 1942.

“I remember when all of this was trees.” —Albert Kahn