Michigan Theater Building

Designed by Maurice Finkel of Detroit, the Michigan Theater Building consists of an 1800-seat theater fronted by a commercial/office block. The building's decorative scheme is Lombard Romanesque in inspiration. The high point of the structure is the Michigan Theater. In architectural terms the finest theater in Ann Arbor at the time of its opening on January 5, 1928, it remains important today despite the elimination of some of the Romanesque trim and simplification of the once lavish color scheme that was carried out in the 1950s.

The Michigan is now the only theater in Ann Arbor surviving from the vaudeville-silent picture era. The Michigan is Ann Arbor's only surviving movie theater from the vaudeville-and-silent-picture era. Its Barton theater organ, installed to provide accompaniment for mute movies, also survives intact. (A sound system for 'talkies,' not part of the original plans, was introduced several months after the Michigan opened.) For decades, filmdom's foremost offerings found their first local audiences here. Vaudeville acts, live concerts, and touring stage plays brought in-person appearances by luminaries of the entertainment world, including Jack Benny, Bing Crosby, Paul Robeson, and Ethel Barrymore.

The world's first 'author's premier' of a film was held here in 1949 for It Happens Every Spring, a Hollywood comedy starring Ray Milland which was inspired by a story written by Shirley Wheeler Smith, University of Michigan Vice President and Secretary. Although the theater building and auditorium were damaged by inappropriate remodeling in 1956, the structure yet remains a handsome local exemplification of the grand theaters appearing in larger cities such as Detroit. The soaring, expansive spaces of the balconied auditorium and two-story inner lobby (their elaborate plaster ornament now, unfortunately, masked by dull gray paint, awaiting restoration to the bold colors and mirrored sparkle of fifty years ago) yet remain two of the largest, fanciest, and most interesting interior spaces in Ann Arbor. As no historical or comparative studies have been made of Maurice Finkel's other projects, it is not possible to claim significance for the Michigan Theater on the basis of its architect's personal significance or to assess its importance vis-a-vis other specimens of his work.

A biographical paragraph published when the Michigan opened claimed that Finkel was a specialist in theater design (Ann Arbor Daily News, January 5, 1928). The architect's only other thus far documented, surviving theater is the Michigan in Jackson, Michigan, a Baroque fantasy completed in 1931.

The Michigan Theater Building is a large, two-story block facing south on East Liberty Street in the heart of Ann Arbor's central business district. Constructed in 1927, the structure consists of the Michigan Theater itself--an 1827-seat auditorium oriented with its stage at the west end and entrances at the east and connected to East Liberty Street by lobbies extending in a north-south direction--and, facing on the street in front of the theater and flanking its entranceway, a business block section containing seven stores on the first floor and offices above. The building's exterior is constructed of brown brick, with cement and terra cotta trimmings. The facade's main section, a three-bay wide section containing the theater entrance and one store front on either side, is Lombard Romanesque in style.

The remaining part of the facade toward the west (six of the seven stores are located to the west of the theater entrance) is more simply constructed with a band of square-head double-hung, sash windows topped by a continuous, concrete, lintel band in the second floor. In this western part of the facade, two slightly recessed sections that front on the stairwells to the second floor are each decorated with multi-colored, square, brick patchwork and a concrete lozenge in the center containing a black marble medallion. The roofline parapet of each section carries the name of the building. In 1956 most of the building's first floor facade was refaced with black marble and imitation fieldstone trim and a metal signboard installed above the shop windows running the full length of the structure on either side of the theater entrance.

The present theater marquee was installed in 1945.