The initial renderings of what has become Hudson’s Detroit showed a very different look from what has finally emerged.
That first concept from New York-based SHoP Architects released eight years ago boasted curves and swirls and twists and great diagonal voids slashing down the façade that some likened to giant snow slides. It was dazzling, but was it Detroit?
Businessman Dan Gilbert’s Bedrock real estate team building the project didn’t think so. So they pushed for something more recognizably Motor City, as explained by James Witherspoon, Bedrock’s VP of Architecture and Design.
The goal, he said, was to create a building that users and visitors would experience, not just gawk at. Emphasis was put on the functionality of the interior spaces, like the colossal yet minutely detailed “Department” or public event space. So flexible and spacious are these event spaces, with all the electronic bells and whistles seamlessly integrated, that anything from small meetings to weddings to major conventions can be hosted and feel right at home.
And if the tower portion of the complex strikes some as rather plain – a cliff-like wall of shimmering glass rising to nearly 700 feet – Bedrock has recently begun to create interesting light shows illuminating the tower in iridescent pinks and other colors. It hints at how this new Hudson’s Detroit won’t be a static presence but will show a colorful and ever-changing face to the city.
“SHoP has an amazing collection of buildings in their portfolio, but when they first came here, they hadn’t lived in Detroit,” Witherspoon said. “As they got to know the city, they got to know the architectural legacy here.
“We started to talk about how you reference things like the Art Deco stepping motif that shows up in buildings like the Penobscot and the David Stott Building, how do you reference things like the screening decoration of folks like (Minoru) Yamasaki at McGregor (Memorial Conference Center).”
By the time Bedrock and SHoP (working with Hamilton Anderson Associates of Detroit) released a third rendering in 2018, the design had evolved dramatically. Gone were the swirls and snow slides, replaced by something more sedate but recognizably of and for Detroit. The screening around the lower of the two buildings does indeed evoke what Yamasaki tried to do with his buildings on Wayne State’s campus, providing visual interest and sun shading at the same time, while the open-air passageway between the two portions of the project aims to welcome the sort of street life that long defined Woodward Avenue in the past.
And if Witherspoon cites Detroit’s great Art Deco skyscrapers of the 1920s like the Penobscot and mid-century modernists like Yamasaki as influences, one might also see echoes of Albert Kahn’s city-defining industrial work. With its simple geometries and generous use of glass and natural light, Kahn’s factories became brilliantly conceived engines of everyday life, an architecture for the working day. And so with Hudson’s Detroit.
“I think that was a function of us driving the design team to make sure that this building wasn’t just another building in the portfolio,” Witherspoon said. “It was really a Detroit building. Something about it feels like it could only be built here, and for me, that’s the success of the project.”
Still undergoing final construction, Hudson’s Detroit has already hosted its first major events in the Department in the shorter of the two parts of the project. Mayor Mike Duggan delivered his final State of the City address there in March, and 2,000 attendees gathered for a tech-flavored “immersive ideas festival” called Summit Detroit soon after.
Still to come, of course, will be a move by General Motors Co. from its World Headquarters in the Renaissance Center to Hudson’s, and still later the opening of the planned luxury Edition hotel in the tower portion of the new skyscraper, probably in a year or so.
A legendary name and site
Initially conceived as one linked building, the project took shape as two distinct buildings, the shorter one an office, retail, and event block and the much taller one a hotel and residential tower. The two are separated by a plaza running from Farmer Street on the east through to Woodward Avenue that Bedrock is informally calling Nick Gilbert Way in honor of Gilbert’s late son.
And while few of the public has gotten inside the new building yet, early reviews are upbeat. The Department event space is huge and able to be subdivided into many configurations for gatherings of different sizes. An outdoor balcony running the length of the building provides sweeping views up and down Woodward and promises to become a prime spot for watching parades and other street life. The public plaza between the two parts of the project will enjoy year-round programming, Witherspoon said.
And street-level retail with overhead garage doors that open to the plaza outside will be a big draw for shoppers and passersby. That, too, is by design. As Witherspoon said, Hudson’s Detroit is all about the experience, not necessarily making the cover of design magazines.
Total cost is well over $1 billion, and total height of the tower is close to 700 feet, making it the second highest in the city, just behind the RenCen’s Marriott Hotel.
Hudson’s Detroit, of course, derives its name from the legendary department store that occupied the site in evolving and expanding fashion since the first smaller store opened there by Joseph Lowthian Hudson in 1891. By the time it reached its final dimensions of more than 2 million square feet, Hudson’s ranked as the tallest department store in the world and played a central role in the life of the city.
As architectural historian Dan Austin has written, “For generations, it was as synonymous with Christmas and fashion as it was Detroit.”
But the city’s dwindling population after 1950 and the rise of suburban shopping malls saw the trade decline. Hudson’s finally closed in 1983 and stood empty as an unsightly reminder of Detroit’s downfall until its massive implosion in 1998.
After the implosion, the site served as nothing more than an underground parking garage for another generation. Vertical girders sticking up above the underground garage were supposed to anchor a future project. But the future took a very long time coming to downtown.
It was only after Dan Gilbert moved his mortgage company downtown in 2010 and still later broke ground on Hudson’s Detroit in 2017, more than 30 years after the store closed, that the hoped-for future finally seemed to be coming nearer.
A new chapter
And now, after delays for the COVID-19 pandemic and the usual roadblocks facing any massive project (the underground footings left behind from the garage proved unusable and had to be replaced) the new Hudson’s Detroit is almost ready for its debut.
Will Hudson’s Detroit succeed as a business venture for Gilbert and Bedrock? No one can tell the future, and the work-from-home trend and other challenges may get in the way of a robust launch. But Gilbert’s team seems unperturbed by the near-term challenges now that their signature project is nearly done.
It helps to remember that this site has played many roles in the city’s 300-plus years. Even before the Frenchman Cadillac arrived in 1701, that portion of what became the city of the strait was home to Indigenous people. Cadillac’s Fort Pontchartrain stood not far away, and throughout the 1800s, Woodward Avenue saw an evolving roster of shops and churches and elegant civic structures. Perhaps only Campus Martius itself has a longer history.
But it was that dispiriting interlude from the store’s closing in 1983 to the more recent optimistic years that defined for many the death of a once-great city. Those decades of loss, abandonment and dashed hopes looked to many like the city’s last and final chapter.
But now, following many other wins and successes for Detroit, including the reopening of long-derelict Michigan Central, the new Hudson’s Detroit is a reminder that Detroit has risen from the ashes before. It rebuilt after the fire of 1805, pivoted to the new auto industry in 1900, rode out the Great Depression and World War II.
Each time, Detroit found a new way forward. And now Hudson’s Detroit stamps an emphatic exclamation point on the skyline. It stakes a claim that a half-century of loss is definitively in the past.
On an historic site and with an historic name, Hudson’s Detroit proclaims that a new chapter for this old and proud city is now underway.
John Gallagher was a reporter and columnist for the Detroit Free Press for more than 30 years. He is the author of multiple books on architecture and Detroit’s future, including “Yamasaki in Detroit: A Search for Serenity” and his new memoir “Rust Belt Reporter,” both from Wayne State University Press. John and his wife live on Detroit’s east side.
The original plans was to have a 90 story building with a enclosed observation deck on 90th. Floor. Hotel rooms and rental apartments on the upper floors. This was like headline news in our Free Press newspaper big time news. That did not last long, a week later. 20 stories will be knocked off the building and no observation deck., lack of money was the reason. The final plans reduced to 49 stories what a disappointment
I was thinking the same thing. And the thought that the original plan may not have been a look the motor city we use to as a stupid reason not to go forward with it. The skyline needs a drastic update with a modern look and twist, and to have it at the 900+ feet tall should’ve been a definite yes. Hell even sawed off Oklahoma is trying to build the worlds tallest skyscraper with barely any skyline as it is which is going to look dumb there. But anyway, I absolutely agree with you.
I always enjoy reading John Gallagher’s take on architecture, its connection or relation to other buildings and parts of the city, and its connectiions to Detroit’s history.
@Gary Eleinko – Concur!