General Motors Building

About this property

Cadillac Place, formerly the General Motors Building, is a landmark high-rise office complex located at 3044 West Grand Boulevard (between Cass and Second Streets), in the New Center area of Detroit, Michigan, United States. It was renamed for the Royal French founder of the earlier French / British settlements of the Fort Detroit and subsequent City of Detroit, by Antoine Laumet de La Mothe, sieur de Cadillac (1658–1730). It is a National Historic Landmark in Michigan, listed in 1985. After much pressure by the General Motors Corporation Board of Directors, William C. Durant (1861–1947), agreed in 1919 to construct a permanent headquarters in Detroit for the company he formed a decade earlier in 1908. The corporation then purchased the block between Cass and Second Streets, facing on West Grand Boulevard and removed the earlier 48 smaller longtime structures from the site to begin work. Albert Kahn (1869–1942), was hired as architect to design the huge massive multi-winged structure, then one of the largest office buildings in the United States. Groundbreaking was held June 2, 1919, and the Cass Avenue wing was ready for occupancy in November 1920 while the remainder of the building was under construction. The building was originally to be named for Durant, but an internal power struggle led to his ouster two years later in 1921 and the structure was then renamed the General Motors Building. However, the initial "D" had already been carved above the main entrance and in several other places on the building where they remain visible today. The structure was completed in 1922, and served as General Motors world headquarters from 1923 until 2001. It is approximately 2 miles (3.2 km) to the southwest of the Detroit/Hamtramck Assembly, where Cadillac luxury automobiles are currently built. In 2001, GM moved the last of its employees into the Renaissance Center on the Detroit River. In 1999, General Motors transferred the property to New Center Development, Inc., a non-profit venture controlled by TrizecHahn Office Properties which acted as developer and began renovation on the upper floors which GM vacated in 2000. The Annex was constructed shortly after the main building, and in the 1940s, it was connected to the adjacent Argonaut Building with a pedestrian bridge on the fourth floor. A parking structure was constructed to the east across Cass Avenue and also connected with a pedestrian bridge. A third bridge was constructed across Grand Boulevard in the early 1980s, to connect the building with New Center One and the St. Regis Hotel. The building now houses several Government of Michigan agencies, originally, under a 20-year lease agreement approved in 1998. At the end of the lease, the State had the option to purchase the structure for $1. In 2011, the Michigan Economic Development Corporation (State of Michigan) purchased the structure.

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Property data from the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service (public domain).

Description adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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