Cass Motor Sales

The Cass Motor Sales building is significant as a fine example of 1920s Art Deco styling as applied to commercial structures, in this case an automobile dealership that originally sold vehicles for the Marmon Motor Company of Indianapolis, Indiana. The relationship between Cass Motor Sales and Marmon Motor Company is illustrative of a phase in the history of the automobile industry when, before the Great Depression of the 1930s, numerous small and medium size automobile manufacturing companies occupied a tiny, but significant, sector of the marketplace. Cass Motor Sales also reflects the transition in land use within the University-Cultural Center away from a more strictly residential area to a commercial and mixed-use area. During the 1920s, the Art Deco movement arose with the avowed aim of uniting art and industry. Stylists frequently adopted the kinds of geometric motifs found on the facade of Cass Motor Sales to adorn commercial structures and occasionally apartment buildings. While Art Deco commonly accented the vertical character of structures much taller than Cass Motor Sales, the elongated Mayan or stepped arch located above the second story window sections tends, instead, to enhance the horizontal appearance of the building.

Located on Cass Avenue adjacent to the Ford Expressway, the Cass Motor Sales building is a three-story, Art Deco styled, rectangular structure consisting of four bay sections separated by engaged columns that run the height of the building. Constructed in 1928, the building originally functioned as an integrated automobile showroom, service garage, and business offices for Cass Motor Sales. The front facade consists of three bays of equal size separated by engaged columns, and a fourth entrance bay smaller in scale. The base of the bay sections is made of black marble, and black colored metal panels provide a decorative separation between the first and second stories. The front facade is asymmetrically arranged, with an automobile entrance bay forming the northern most section, and a double-door pedestrian entrance located off to the right of center. Art Deco styling provides decorative features throughout the front facade. Most noticeable is the stepped-arch treatment given to the arches above the four second story window sections, and to the arch above the front entrance. The geometric pattern of the string course between the second and third floors, and on the front entrance entablature, also point to the Art Deco movement that first emerged in the 1920s. Three of the original four metal-bracketed exterior light fixtures continue to adorn the front facade.