New book celebrates ‘best of the best’ in Detroit architecture

According to the story:

A couple of years ago, two guys on assignment for The New York Times came to Detroit to do a story about the renovation of the Book-Cadillac Hotel.

Architecture critic Robert Sharoff and photographer William Zbaren were in awe of the city’s buildings. After doing research back home in Chicago, they discovered that almost every book about Detroit architecture was out of print, they decided to write a book themselves.

They contacted Robert Wislow, chairman and CEO of U.S. Equities Realty, one of Compuware’s developers, and he eagerly funded the project. That was the beginning of “American City: Detroit Architecture 1845-2005,” an informative, gorgeously executed and desperately needed book.

The result is a tall and slender 144-page book showcasing 50 buildings, including museums, schools, monuments and libraries. There are 90 color illustrations; full-page, full-bleed images and double-truck photo spreads set off by ample white space, giving the glorious larger-than-life sculptures room to breathe.

“American City” is not a guide book or textbook. It’s sort of a “best of the best” in Detroit architecture, organized chronologically according to each major design period. They hadn’t planned it that way, but in doing the legwork, Sharoff realized that Detroit, unlike other cities, didn’t have masterpieces in merely one or two eras; there are impressive commercial and civic buildings spanning all of them. “It’s like there’s uranium in the ground or something,” Zbaren says. “There is just such consistently good design.”

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