ART DECO AND STREAMLINE MODERNE BUILDINGS AS CHRONICLED BY VINTAGE POSTCARDS

This article by Pam VanderPloeg appeared in the April 2023 newsletter of the Michigan Postcard Club.

Art Deco architecture is a rare sight on Michigan streets due to demolition and excessive remodeling of buildings that were designed in this relatively rare style. Luckily, collectors of vintage Art Deco postcards have a record that captures the style's vertical elements, stepped forms, stylized motifs such as sunbursts and chevrons, glass and neon lights, chrome trim, and smooth surfaces. Here are just a small selection of these postcards.

Art Deco was born in the prosperous 1920s when the 1925 Paris Exposition des Arts Decoratifs et Industriels Modernes featured the newest design trends in furniture, architecture, and decorative arts. The world was ready for fun following the devastation of World War I. Women had the vote and couples of means owned more than one automobile, often impossibly long stylish roadsters with an elegant Art Deco hood ornament that implied speed.

World War I's aeronautical advances translated into an obsession with stunt flying and transatlantic flights. Charles Lindbergh was greeted by 50,000 when he landed in Grand Rapids. Excursion flights in hydro-planes took off from Reeds Lake. These flying enthusiasts formed the Grand Rapids Aero Club when they broke ground for the first airport in Kent County in 1919 on Madison Street, just four miles from downtown. Grand Rapids engineer George Gay Carman, the grandson of the Berkey & Gay Furniture Company founder, took a Michigan Air Transport flight from the Kent County Airport in 1928 with his wife and four-month-old baby Elizabeth, who slept through the flight. She became the youngest passenger to take off from the new airport. By the 1930s, Art Deco architecture, born in Europe, took root in the United States. It inspired not only the early Kent County’s first airport terminal but the Art Deco Greyhound Bus Terminal, where travelers of more limited means embarked on coast-to-coast excursions, now accessible to all. On this postcard, notice the vertical Greyhound marquee, the steel windows designed in wrap-around ribbon style on the upper floor, and the modern clock mounted on the building's plain facade.

According to the Smithsonian Institute, publishers printed Art Deco-era postcards with a high rag content that created a linen-like appearance. Better printing technology produced brighter postcard colors, and the white border around the edge saved ink. This linen card shows the 1932 Grand Rapids Civic Auditorium, planned for decades by city leaders as a temple-like auditorium dedicated to music, the arts, and all entertainment. Conventions were to cover the operational costs. When the Depression threatened building completion, City Manager, George Welsh, invented scrip wages, redeemable for groceries to keep construction workers on the job to feed their families. The architects were Detroit-based Smith, Hinchman & Grylls, and Grand Rapids-based Robinson & Campau. The soaring colonnade references Art Deco's verticality and the symmetry of Neoclassical architecture. The limestone facade, with its bas-relief sculpture by renowned sculptor Corrado Parducci, featured the city seal, the muses, and the zodiac. Although the building escaped the wrecking ball in the 1980s, workers demolished it in 2003 to make way for the new Devos Center. They saved the beautiful facade and the stunning Art Deco lobby with its burnished wood paneling, marble floors, and decorative metal railings. Financing problems and cost overruns also plagued the construction of the 1938 Art Deco Grand Rapids Public Museum, designed by Roger Allen. Notice the smooth facade of the horizontal stone block that contrasts sharply with the narrow vertical glass block topping the museum's deep display windows. Completing this beloved city building, now a city high school, required Federal Works Progress Administration funding and private donations.

Entertainment was an obsession in the Art Deco period. In the and 1930s, radio stations broadcast concerts, radio dramas, sports, and the news into the nation's living rooms. Detroit station WWJ hired renowned architect Albert Kahn to design their gorgeous 1938 broadcasting station. Kahn was known for designing the exquisite Fisher Building and using steel-reinforced concrete to construct Henry Ford's long-span automobile plants. Swedish sculptor Carl Miles created the granite emblems on the facade (not visible on this postcard). The Indiana limestone exterior has stepped-back elevations and large piers that frame the ground-level entry doors. This accessible main entrance is similar to the Grand Rapids Public Museum, which breaks with historical precedent by eliminating the grand staircase seen in many public buildings, for example, the Grand Rapids Civic Auditorium. An underground tunnel connected WWJ to the Detroit News buildings.

Art Deco architecture reached into Michigan cities with chain establishments like the Kresge Store on Saginaw Street in Pontiac, Michigan. Often referred to a "dime store," it was a modern take on the old dry goods store, providing shoppers with a colorful variety of inexpensive goods. Downtown Grand Rapids had both a Kresge store and a Woolworth store, and they added a modern look to downtown's traditional brick blocks. Orlie Munson used the streamlined modern-style ribbon windows in his design of the Art Deco J.W. Knapp building in Lansing. Completed in 1939, it was the largest department store in Lansing. Today the beautifully restored iconic building has a cream and blue color scheme.

Architect Wirt Rowland, the lead designer at Smith, Hinchman & Grylls, designed the 40-story Detroit Guardian Building completed in 1929. Today it is considered one of the most significant Art-Deco skyscrapers in the world. According to HistoricDetroit.org, the steel-framed building is known for the 1.8 million specially-formulated orange bricks, called by the architects "Guardian orange. The opulent interior has giant columns of Italian and Belgium marble, mosaic and stained glass, gold leaf, vaulted ceilings, Rookwood pottery, and Pewabic tile. In Grand Rapids, Rowland designed the former Grand Rapids Trust building, later owned by Michigan National Bank. The bank building's terra-cotta facade incorporated sculpture by Corrado Parducci in Michigan and Native American motifs. These vintage Art Deco postcards remain the rare artifacts of a critical, brief period of architecture.