In 1953 Hungarian architect and furniture designer Marcel Breuer designed the Grosse Pointe Central Library in Detroit. From the Detroit Free Press article:
Getting Breuer to design the library in the Pointes was considered a coup. He crafted a small but elegant structure, two stories tall, with a front façade that was partly unadorned brick to echo the traditions of Grosse Pointe building materials, and partly a series of tall windows that created a transparency inside and out.
In 2007 the” community’s library board plans to demolish the Grosse Pointe Central Library and replace it with a newer, bigger structure”
No renovation, no preservation, no restoration just demolition.
The sanity award of the day goes to local architect and member of the historical commission William Hartman who told the library trustees- “that destroying Breuer’s library would be a form of cultural illiteracy — a plundering of the contribution that modernism has made to Michigan”.
If the site doesn’t work for the library they should sell it or donate it to a historical society. I can’t imagine there isn’t another property available in Detroit where they can build their dream home.
Here is a link to the library board website. Feel free to email them your thoughts.
Thanks to things magazine for the lead
