The Detroit Financial District is a United States historic district in downtown Detroit, Michigan. The district was listed on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places on December 14, 2009, and was announced as the featured listing in the National Park Service's weekly list of December 24, 2009.
It includes 33 buildings, two sites, and one other object that are deemed to be contributing to the historic character of the district, and also three non-contributing buildings.
The American Institute of Architects describes Detroit's Financial District as "one of the city's highest concentrations of quality commercial architecture". According to the National Park Service:
"From the 1850s to the 1970s the Financial District in downtown Detroit was the financial and office heart of the city, and it stills retains an important banking and office presence today. Banks began to locate along Jefferson Avenue in the Griswold and Shelby streets area in the 1830s. Substantial office buildings, often containing banks in their street levels, began to line Griswold in the 1850s. Detroit's massive early twentieth-century auto industry-related growth and economic boom resulted in large-scale redevelopment of the area between 1900 and 1930, and another wave of development took place in the 1950s and early 1960s. The Financial District continues today to be an important financial and office district in Detroit."
In the new millennium, the 47-story Penobscot Building stands at the center of the district as a state of the art class-A office tower and serves as a hub for the city's wireless Internet zone and fiber-optic communication network. Other major class-A office renovations include the Chrysler House and the Guardian Building, a National Historic Landmark. The Financial District is served by the Detroit People Mover and QLine light rail. Viewed from the International Riverfront, the district is bordered on the left by the 150 West Jefferson skyscraper which replaced the Detroit Stock Exchange Building and on the right by the One Woodward Avenue skyscraper.
The Financial District underwent a dramatic transformation at the beginning of the twentieth century, heralded by the arrival of Detroit's first skyscraper, the Hammond Building in 1889; Chase Tower now stands on this site. In 1905, the thirteen-story original Penobscot Building was constructed on Fort Street, followed by the nearby eighteen-story Ford Building in 1907 and the 23-story Dime Building in 1913. In the 1920s, even larger skyscrapers invaded, culminating in the 40-story Guardian Building and 48-story Greater Penobscot Building, both built in 1927–29. When completed in 1928, the Penobscot became the world's eighth-tallest building and the tallest outside of New York and Chicago. It was the city's tallest from 1928 to 1977. The Penobscot stands at the center of the Detroit Financial District.
The Great Depression halted the construction of buildings in the Financial District, and substantial new construction wasn't undertaken again until the late 1940s with the construction of the annex to the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago Detroit Branch Building. This was followed in 1959 by a new National Bank of Detroit Building, and in the early 1960s by the Michigan Consolidated Gas Company Building and the Detroit Bank and Trust Tower.
There are 36 buildings within the Financial District, 33 of which are contributing properties. The buildings within the district were designed by a suite of notable architects and architectural firms, including D. H. Burnham & Company; Donaldson and Meier; Albert Kahn Associates; McKim, Mead, and White; Smith, Hinchman, and Grylls (and Wirt C. Rowland); and Minoru Yamasaki. The Financial District is flanked by other skyscrapers in Downtown Detroit, including One Detroit Center and the Renaissance Center skyscrapers.
Four of the contributing properties in this district were previously individually listed on the National Register. These include the Union Trust (or Guardian) Building, an Art Deco–style building and a U.S. National Historic Landmark, the State Savings Bank Building, the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago Detroit Branch Building, and the Vinton Building. Other significant properties in the district include the 1927 Greater Penobscot Building, tallest in the district at 47 stories, the 1959 International Style National Bank of Detroit Building, the 1920 First National Building, the 1925 Buhl Building, the 1909 Ford Building, the 1912 Chrysler House, and the 1925 Detroit Free Press Building.
Eighteen of these buildings initially housed banks or financial institutions; many of the remainder were used for office space.
The buildings below are listed in rough geographic order beginning from the southeast corner of the district (the intersection of Woodward and Jefferson) and proceeding northwest.-
Detroit Financial District