Harmonie Club

The Harmonie Club is significant as the long-time home of a prominent social institution important to the cultural life of Detroit's large German community. It is also significant as a well-preserved example of late nineteenth century, beaux arts, club architecture and as a key visual landmark in this intact urban square in downtown Detroit. The Harmonie Club traces its origins to 1849 when four German immigrants gathered together a group of ten, continuing to meet and sing the German Lieder under the name of Gesang-Verein Harmonie. The membership increased rapidly and in 1852 the club was chartered by the State.

By 1875, when it was incorporated, the club had a reputation for offering the best in German song and music. In that year the Harmonie Club dedicated its first club house at Beaubien and Lafayette. In 1893 this structure burned, but the German community in Detroit had grown so significantly in both numbers and prominence in the intervening years that the need for a larger and more opulent meeting place had long been felt anyway. An architectural competition, in which only German-American architects were asked to participate, resulted in the selection of the design for the present building, which was soon begun at the new site on Harmonie Park.

From the time the club occupied its lavish new home in December of 1895, it gained in prominence in the cultural life of Detroit. It carried out its original purpose to foster musical activities and good fellowship and continued to be a noted musical and social organization down to the mid-twentieth century. The clubhouse offered fine dining, a tavern, card rooms, a bowling alley and elegant lounges for the use of its large membership. The Germans were one of the largest ethnic groups in Detroit by the turn of the century.

They had become especially important in the commercial and industrial life of the city. The Harmonie Club was one of the principal social and cultural institutions of the Detroit German community and its membership included most of the city's prominent German residents. After 1950, the Harmonie club membership dwindled. By this time, the German community had lost much of its ethnic identity.

Nevertheless, the remaining membership undertook several small-scale interior redecorations in the 1950s and 1960s, although the exterior was unchanged. Finally in 1974, with only 350 members and debts aggregating $250,000, the club was sold to its past president.

The Harmonie Club Building is located in the Central Business District of Detroit, at the edge of the shopping district, facing a small landscaped park. The street pattern has left this park somewhat isolated from the main flow of automobile and pedestrian traffic so that it remains a relatively quiet and unspoiled enclave within the downtown. Harmonie Park, which takes its name from the club, is surrounded by early-twentieth-century, multi-story brick, commercial and residential structures which closely abut the Harmonie Club on two sides. The present building was constructed in 1894-1895 at the corner of East Grand River Avenue and Center Street.

It was designed by architect, Richard Raseman who was selected from a competition. It is a rectangular, four-story, hip-roofed, buff-colored brick structure of beaux arts design approximately 75 by 100 feet in size. The two elevations are unified by a large curving corner section. Above the low basement of rusticated stone, the brick first and second stories are banded while the third and fourth stories are faced with flush brick masonry articulated with colossal pilasters on pedestals.

The one-over-one fenestration is symmetrically arranged. The windows on the first and second levels have elaborate splayed lintels of banded brick while those of the third and fourth stories are unarticulated. The fourth story windows have arched tops. The symmetrical facade on East Grand River Avenue is formally composed along classical lines.

The central Ionic ordered entrance is set under a broad arch extending through the second floor. Above the projecting molded metal course separating the second and third levels is a pedimented three-bay pavilion set off by brick pilasters and ornamented with a balustraded stone balcony centered over the entrance arch. The pediment contains a high relief, triumphally-articulated, foliated cartouche. The Center Street elevation is less formally composed with fenestration located to respond to floor plan requirements.

The interior is divided into dining rooms, lounges, meeting rooms, a bowling alley, a rathskeller dining room and two large auditoriums. Throughout the classical plasterwork and dark oak paneling are typical of the heavy-handed, interior decorating popular for social clubs at the period. The entrance leads to a large hall containing the wide Colonial Revival style staircase with bulbous turned balusters. Other than the staircase itself, the hall was refinished in a sleek modern style in 1953-54 and retains none of its original finish.

To the left of the entrance is the main dining room extending the entire length of the building on the southwest side. This room is wainscoted to a height of about seven feet in dark oak and there is a beamed ceiling and the original hexagonal mosaic tile patterned flooring. The rear portion of the dining room is divided from the rest by a wide set of pocket doors with large stained glass panels. The remainder of the first floor is composed of small offices, an elaborate ladies lounge, kitchens, and a large cocktail lounge with 1950s Colonial decor.

The basement is finished as a vaulted rathskeller, decorated with a nautical motif about 1962, a card room, a bowling alley and a locker room. The rathskeller and card room retain an interesting handmade tile floor and wainscoting, probably fashioned of the locally acclaimed Pewabic pottery tile, (Pewabic Pottery, Detroit, listed in the National Register). The second floor contains a large banqueting hall, with adjacent service kitchen, that occupies almost the entire floor. This is reached from the main second floor foyer extending across the front of the building that connects the staircase from the first floor in the north corner to the staircase to the third floor in the south corner.

At the end of the foyer in the round corner pavilion is a ladies' lounge decorated with rococo plaster work in the caved tray ceiling. The banqueting hall itself is simply finished with a wooden floor, plastered walls and ceiling, and a small stage at the far end. A portion of the southwest window wall was partitioned into a small cocktail lounge, apparently, in the late 1930s. It is decorated in the sleek simple Art Moderne style with a blond wood bar and period light fixtures.

The focal point of the bar is a cubist style mural of a city skyline. The third and fourth floors contain a large two-story auditorium with a proscenium arch stage and a small balcony. This space is simply finished with a wooden floor an arcaded wall treatment and arched top, full height windows ornamented with a carved 'H' in their valance decoration.