National Bank of Detroit/Bank One Michigan
611 Woodward at Campus Martius in downtown Detroit
There are some buildings that almost take your breath away because of the innovations of the brilliant architects who designed them. There are other buildings that you recognize as innovative, but you are quite glad the innovation was not repeated. This structure may fit into the latter category. Albert Kahn died in 1942 but his firm continues to operate and occupies the Albert Kahn Building on Second Street in Detroit’s New Center area. Albert Kahn Associates designed this building for the National Bank of Detroit. The ground floor is recessed but the upper 14 floors appear to be supported by it. The major feature is the use of white marble squares alternating with windows to produce a checker-board pattern on all four sides. All of the windows are outlined in brown aluminum. Walking just a few steps, you can compare this modern 1950s-style building with the classical First National Bank Building that Albert Kahn designed in the early1920s or the marvelous quintessentially Art Deco Guardian Building that Writ Rowland designed in the late 1920s. The Chase Tower may not hold up well in those comparisons. The architectural contrasts that you find across the street from each other in Detroit are highly provocative, especially in this area of downtown. In fairness to the designers, they may have believed that the use of marble in the National Bank of Detroit Building would ascetically link the building to nearby buildings that were using somewhat similar styles such as the Coleman Young City County Building, the One Woodward Building or the now razed Ford Auditorium.
Most banks in Michigan were closed by the State of Michigan and then by the federal government in early 1933. Officials feared a run on the banks since most of them were operating at a loss and had few reserves. Quite a few of the banks were eventually reorganized and reopened under different names or with different investors and structures. Many depositors eventually were able to withdraw their deposits after numerous delays and difficulties but the nation’s financial institutions were in terrible shape for much of the Depression.
Despite the national banking crisis, General Motors was a large firm in need of banking services and credit. That firm encouraged the formation of a new bank—the National Bank of Detroit. That bank opened in 1933 with offices in Albert Kahn’s First National Bank Building across Woodward from the Chase Tower and also facing Judge Woodward’s Campus Martius. The National Bank of Detroit prospered in the 1940s and after World War II as jobs were readily available and the economy grew persistently and at unexpectedly high rates. This bank needed additional office space so they commissioned Albert Kahn Associates to design the structure you see.
From the earliest years of this nation’s independence to the present, there have been lively debates about whether and how federal and state governments should regulate banks and other fiscal institutions. People recognize that banks can amass tremendous financial power and could use that power inappropriately so Congress, from time to time, has passed legislation either very favorable to the interests of banks or legislation that restricted their powers and sought to protect the interests of depositors and borrowers. Needless to say, banks have lobbied diligently for favorable legislation.
The McFadden Act of 1927 sought to end branch banking in the United States. Today, branch banking seems as normal as McDonald’s having franchises in many locations. But there was a fear that banks would get too large and too powerful. One effective way to curtail the potential power of banks was to make it very difficult for a bank to operate at more than one location. If you drive around some of the more desolate neighborhoods of Detroit and the pre-World War II suburbs, you will frequently find substantial buildings that were once banks, building that were typically abandoned in 1933 but some were used for other purposes. Are there more abandoned banks or abandoned churches in metropolitan Detroit? The McFadden Law remained on the books after World War II when suburban growth meant that banks’ customers often lived far away from the central business district where most banks were located. Banks sought to establish branch banks in the suburbs after World War II. The Bank Holding Company Act of 1956 more or less allowed that and, National Bank of Detroit, as well as almost every other large central city bank established numerous branch offices in the “crabgrass frontier.”
Federal laws also prevented banks from operating across state lines. This was intended, in part, to keep, banks modest in size and power. The Riegel-Neal Interstate Banking and Branching Efficiency Act of 1994 was among the early steps in the deregulation of the nation’s financial services industry. Distinctions between banks, savings and loans, and brokerage firms quickly waned. It also helps to explain why the city of Detroit is much less of a leading financial center than you might expect given its size and its industrial productivity.
In 1995, National Bank of Detroit—then headquartered in the building you see—was taken over or merged with the First Chicago Corporation and the name was changed, very briefly, to First Chicago NBD. It was in 1995, this building ceased to be the home office for a bank. In that age of deregulation and the amalgamation of financial service firms, First Chicago Corporation was taken over and became Bank One in 1998. The name of the building you see was changed to Bank One Center. This name was used for some years but then, six years later, Bank One was purchased by or taken over by the New York firm, JPMorgan Chase. Hence, the name of the building was change in April, 2006 to Chase Tower.
Given the history of industrial development in Detroit, you might ask why it is not now and never has been a major banking center. General Motors was, for some time, the nation’s largest corporation and Ford and Chrysler were not far behind. There are several reasons for Detroit’s modest role as a financial center. Apparently Detroit banks, in the early years of the vehicle industry, were skeptical about investing in the auto industry. Henry Ford took a very dim view of most bankers. Detroit lost the competition in 1913 to become a Federal Reserve city, ending up with a branch of the Chicago Federal Reserve Bank. When Alfred Sloan took over General Motors from Wil Durant, I believe he used financing from New York, not Detroit, banks. It was New York bankers who handled the sale of Dodge after the sudden and unexpected deaths of the Dodge Brothers and when Walter P. Chrysler founded his huge vehicle company in the late 1920s by amalgamating such firms as Dodge, Maxwell, and Chalmers; I believe that he also obtained funding from east coast banks. Comerica was the largest national bank to recently have its headquarters in downtown Detroit. In 2009, they began the migration of their headquarters to Dallas.
Dan Gilbert, the chief officer of the Quicken Loans firm, began buying or taking options on office buildings in downtown Detroit in 2009. Presumably, he will continue to shift employees from Quicken Loans suburban offices to downtown Detroit. This seems likely to be a major stimulus for the economic revitalization of Detroit’s traditional financial district. In 2011, he obtained an option for Albert Kahn’s First National Bank Building as well as for the Chase Tower. In addition, by late 2011, he either owned or had taken options on the office building at 1500 Woodward, on the former Lane Bryant Building at 1520 Woodward, the former Arts League Building at 1528 Woodward, the Daniel Burnham designed Dime Building at 719 Griswold, the Madison Theater Building on Grand Circus Park and, perhaps, the two buildings on West Fort that once served as the Detroit branch of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago
Architects: Albert Kahn Associates
Date of Construction: 1959
Use in 2011: Office building
City of Detroit Designated Historic District: Not listed
State of Michigan Registry of Historic Sites: Not listed
National Register of Historic Places: This building is contiguous to the Detroit Financial Historic District that was listed on December 14, 2009. However, I believe that it was not included within that district since it did not meet the age requirement for a building: 50 years of age.
Photograph: Ren Farley
Description prepared: December, 2011