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Arts & Entertainment

Grosse Pointe's Bauhaus Building: Central Library

Grosse Pointe's Central Library was designed by a Bauhaus architect, Marcel Breuer.

Modern art and architecture tends to elicit one of two responses:  “I love it!” or, “I hate it!" Very few people have an opinion between. 

The of the Grosse Pointe Public Library is one such modern building, and one of the few that graces the Grosse Pointe Landscape. Indeed, Central Library is one of the great Grosse Pointe architectural ironies: while , located directly across the street, was designed by Robert O. Derrick in 1929 specifically to blend in with the residential neighborhood, the Central Library, designed by Marcel Breuer in 1953, doesn’t exactly ‘blend’ into anything. Our library is nothing like its other neighbor, the Neo-classical Georgian .

Briefly, it’s Bauhaus

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The Bauhaus is a school of contemporary German design under the leadership and talent of Walter Gropius in 1919. 

Walter Gropius' Manifesto explains the fundamentals of this new school of design, "The decoration of buildings was once the noblest function of fine arts, and fine arts were indispensable to great architecture. Today they exist in complacent isolation, and can only be rescued by the conscious co-operation and collaboration of all craftsmen. Architects, painters, and sculptors must once again come to know and comprehend the composite character of a building, both as an entity and in terms of its various parts."

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The Bauhaus school existed in three German cities. First in Weimar from 1919 to 1925, then in Dessau from 1925 to 1932, and then finally in Berlin for a short time, from 1932-1933. 

By Breuer

Breuer, as a student of the Bauhaus movement, may best be remembered for his furniture designs, in particular the Wassily Chair, but his architectural designs--nearly 150 buildings on 4 continents--speak to his influence on modern architecture around the world.  Grosse Pointe was no exception.

Dexter M. Ferry  and Murray W. Sales commissioned Breuer to design the Grosse Pointe Central Library in 1951. Dexter Ferry's son, W. Hawkins Ferry had been a student of Breuer's at Harvard University. 

Perhaps one of the most interesting and recognizable features of Central Library are its large windows. Marcel Breuer: the Career and the Buildingsby Isabelle Hyman details the Breuer design, "The large and luminous main reading room has one wall almost fully glazed, compartmentalized by three full pilasters making four large bays, each subdivided by mullions into four lights over three in a typical Breuer rhythm of 1, 3, 4."

According to James Moffet, Assistant Director of the Grosse Pointe Public Library, the "large window wall to admit light and allow the artwork to be viewed both inside and outside the building, and the syncopated window mullion treatment to give visual interest to the glass.” Indeed, the large wire mobile in the main reading room is visible from across the street.

Moffet has spent a great deal of his own personal and professional time researching our library, and often gives tours to groups from the Detroit Institute of Arts. “Breuer viewed the library not as a repository of books but as a meeting point of social, cultural, and civic functions for the community. He said a library building should be ‘a synthesis of architecture, furnishings, and fine art.’”

While this modern structure doesn’t necessarily fit in architecturally with the rest of the area, Breuer was asked to to  sure his design at least had some elements that would help it to peacefully coexist with the surrounding buildings, including Grosse Pointe South. According to Hyman,"guidelines for Breuer suggested that the new library 'not conflict' with the school's traditional architecture."

The timing of Breuer's commission of Central Library is also noteworthy according to Moffet, “At the time of his commission to design Central Library he was one of the best known architects in the world, and at the same time he was working on Central was commissioned to design the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Headquarters, in Paris.”

But Is it beloved?

Well, the jury may be out on whether or not Pointer’s have been enraptured by the mid-century modern library at the corner of Kercheval Avenue and Fisher Road for past 58 years, but the building was met with rave reviews at the dedication on Jan. 25, 1953. 

According to a front-page report of the dedication from the Jan. 29 issue of Grosse Pointe News, "Pointe residents...estimates went as high as 3,000...flocked to Kercheval Avenue and Fisher Road Sunday afternoon to attend dedication services an inspect their new Central Library.  All came away thoroughly impressed with the beautiful modern structure..."

Whether you love it or hate it—or are one of the rare few who has a soft spot for the Bauhaus building in our backyard—there is more to our little library than its exterior. Another unique aspect of our Central library is its original commissioned modern art, most notably: a Wassily Kandinsky tapestry, an Alexander Calder wire mobile and a Lymon Kipp 22’ tall installation of steel entitled, “A Salute to Knowledge.”

A discussion of Kandinsky, Calder, and Kipp is, of course, reserved for next week.

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