The Argonaut Building, renamed in 2009 the

A. Alfred Taubman Adolph Alfred "Al" Taubman (January 31, 1924 – April 17, 2015) was an American businessman, investor, and philanthropist. He was convicted in 2002 for a price-fixing scheme involving the top two auction houses in the United States. Backgro ...

Center for Design Education (originally the Argonaut, or General Motors Research Laboratory), is a large office building located at 485 West Milwaukee Avenue in the

New Center New Center is a commercial and residential historic district located uptown in Detroit, Michigan, adjacent to Midtown, one mile (1.6 km) north of the Cultural Center, and approximately three miles (5 km) north of Downtown. The area ...

area of

Detroit Detroit ( , ; , ) is the largest city in the U.S. state of Michigan. It is also the largest U.S. city on the United States–Canada border, and the seat of government of Wayne County. The City of Detroit had a population of 639,111 at t ...

Michigan Michigan () is a state in the Great Lakes region of the upper Midwestern United States. With a population of nearly 10.12 million and an area of nearly , Michigan is the 10th-largest state by population, the 11th-largest by area, and t ...

, across the street from

Cadillac Place Cadillac Place, formerly the General Motors Building, is a landmark high-rise office complex located at 3044 West Grand Boulevard in the New Center area of Detroit, Michigan. It was renamed for the French founder of Detroit, Antoine Laumet de ...

GM's former corporate headquarter office. It was listed on the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic ...

in 2005.

Description

The building was constructed in two phases between 1928 and 1936,Fogelman, p.32. with the finished structure forming an L shape. The high-rise is eleven floors tall, with an additional basement level. The height to the main roof is 42.7 meters (140 feet), and 56.3 metres (180 feet) to the top of the elevator tower. The 275-unit structure is an

Art Deco Art Deco, short for the French ''Arts Décoratifs'', and sometimes just called Deco, is a style of visual arts, architecture, and product design, that first appeared in France in the 1910s (just before World War I), and flourished in the Unit ...

building, and uses primarily red-brown

brick A brick is a type of block used to build walls, pavements and other elements in masonry construction. Properly, the term ''brick'' denotes a block composed of dried clay, but is now also used informally to denote other chemically cured cons ...

and

limestone Limestone ( calcium carbonate ) is a type of carbonate sedimentary rock which is the main source of the material lime. It is composed mostly of the minerals calcite and aragonite, which are different crystal forms of . Limestone forms w ...

in its materials. The building is fifteen bay wide along Milwaukee, and eight bays wide along Second. Building corners have wide brick piers, with narrower windows separating the bays along the facade. The windows in each bay are slightly recessed, containing double-hung windows, with ornamental cast iron spandrel panels on the top two floors. Window on the eleventh and ninth floors have rounded tops. Two entry doors are placed along the main (Milwaukee) facade, one in each of the building phases.

History and renovations

In 1927,

General Motors The General Motors Company (GM) is an American Multinational corporation, multinational Automotive industry, automotive manufacturing company headquartered in Detroit, Michigan, United States. It is the largest automaker in the United States and ...

' real estate division, Argonaut Realty Corporation, commissioned Albert Kahn to design a research laboratory for the company. The building was constructed across Milwaukee from the General Motors Headquarters (now

), and intended for use by General Motors' internal research staff. In 1936, an addition was constructed, providing an entrance on Milwaukee. Significant developments undertaken in the building include the design of the

Hydramatic Hydramatic (also known as Hydra-Matic) is an automatic transmission developed by both General Motors' Cadillac and Oldsmobile divisions. Introduced in 1939 for the 1940 model year vehicles, the ''Hydramatic'' was the first mass-produced fully-a ...

transmission and

Harley Earl Harley Jarvis Earl (November 22, 1893 – April 10, 1969) was an American automotive designer and business executive. He was the initial designated head of design at General Motors, later becoming vice president, the first top executive ever ...

's vehicle designs from the Art and Color Section. The building was used for GM's research staff until the General Motors Technical Center was constructed in 1956. At that time, Argonaut Realty moved into the building. When GM moved its headquarters to the Renaissance Center in the early 2000s, Argonaut moved out of the building, and it stood vacant for a few years. In 2007, General Motors donated it to the

College for Creative Studies College for Creative Studies (CCS) is a private art school in Detroit, Michigan. It enrolls more than 1,400 students and focuses on arts education. The college is also active in offering art education to children through its Community Arts P ...

. It is in use as both a charter high school for art-centric children, as well as CCS's planned graduate program. On top of these uses, CCS moved all of their Design based Undergraduate programs to this location, providing the space for a larger student body, and subsequently larger program. In addition, the building houses approximately 300 in student housing. It is also a school; Henry Ford Academy: School for Creative Studies, having the sixth through twelfth grade. The $145 million renovation was completed in fall 2009. In 2012,

Shinola Shinola is a defunct American brand of shoe polish. The Shinola Company, founded in Rochester, New York in 1877 as the American Chemical Manufacturing and Mining Company, produced the polish under a sequence of different owners until 1960. "Shin ...

renovated the fifth floor and turned it into their corporate office as well as a watch factory and bicycle workshop.

References

External links

Google Maps location of The Argonaut
* * {{Architecture of metropolitan Detroit Skyscraper office buildings in Detroit Laboratories in the United States Office buildings completed in 1928 General Motors facilities College for Creative Studies National Register of Historic Places in Detroit 1928 establishments in Michigan Albert Kahn (architect) buildings