Ford Building

615 Griswold – Ford Building – Steel-frame eighteen-story office building faced in white terra cotta (1907-08) – D. H. Burnham & Company, architects. The square property site at the northwest corner of Griswold and Congress Streets is fully occupied. The fenestration pattern of vertical banks of paired double-hung windows is identical on both the Griswold and Congress facades. The building contains a light court through the alley (rear) façade in order to allow more light and air to interior offices. On the Griswold Street entrance, an overhanging marquee extends over the sidewalk. The terra cotta building façade is broken by bands running above and below the third floor. At the eighteenth floor, the top windows are arched. The seventeenth story is divided from the floors below by a band of terra cotta. The building displays Neoclassical detailing including a two-story base with columns and Ionic columns around a central entry and a two-story attic with piers supporting arches that span the uppermost window bays. The roof is flat, although a large elevator penthouse is located in the center of the building toward the Griswold side of the roof. Toledo, Ohio, glass manufacturer Edward Ford and his son, John B. Ford, general manager of the Fords’ Wyandotte, Michigan, alkali plant, had this building – then Detroit’s tallest – constructed as investment property. An article in the March 22, 1908, Free Press celebrating the building’s approaching completion explained that the Fords turned to investing in Detroit only after becoming disgusted with some Toledo property owners who kept raising prices on them after they agreed to purchase.