National Bank of Detroit Building

611 Woodward - National Bank of Detroit (NBD) Building/now Chase Tower - Steel-frame fourteen-story building (1959) - Albert Kahn Associated Architects and Engineers, Inc., architects. The National Bank of Detroit Building fills the block bounded by Woodward Avenue and Griswold Street between Fort Street and West Congress. A rectangular-shaped building measuring 281 feet by 130 feet, its entrance doors are on the Woodward side of the property. The Griswold side of the property is the rear of the site, and only one entrance point at the south end of Griswold is accessible. The modern bank headquarters building is finished in a checkerboard curtain wall pattern of white Georgia Cherokee marble panels alternating with rectangles containing square windows outlined above and below by brown porcelain-enameled aluminum panels - the marble and windowed panels outlined in projecting stainless steel ribs. On the first floor the steel spandrel panels are a royal blue color. The building's upper stories form a box that rests on a taller recessed base surrounded on all sides by a loggia fronted by the outer square columns of the structural system. Structural columns are also spaced throughout the two-story lobby space. On top of the roof is a setback utility floor faced in brown metal louvers housing the heating and cooling system. The roof is flat. The rectangular-shaped building is set back from the street on all sides to create a generous walkway enhanced with planters on all sides.