Book Building

The Washington Boulevard Historic District is significant as an intact streetscape of architecturally distinguished commercial buildings dating from 1901-1930 with a majority built in the 1920s. The buildings individually represent some of the finest early Twentieth Century architecture in Detroit and as a group illustrate the evolution of the commercial style in Detroit as it was practiced by some of Michigan's master architects. The district is also significant as a product of a planned real estate development inspired by the City Beautiful movement and carried out as the private artistic endeavor of one family and their architect, Louis Kamper.

Five buildings in the district were designed by Louis Kamper as part of a private real estate venture by the prominent Book Brothers. The first of the buildings Kamper designed is the thirteen-story, limestone sheathed Beaux-Arts styled Book Building at 1249 Washington Boulevard. Built in 1917, this is a relatively sparsely ornamented office building of Italian Renaissance inspiration with eight stories of symmetrical bays of plain casement windows punched into a smooth masonry facade above the restrained, classically articulated, first four floors. The most striking feature of the facade are the twelve colossal nude caryatids supporting the boldly projecting modillion cornice. The Book Building is composed of two matching parts, with the southern three bays internally constituting a separate structure.