The Coleman A. Young Municipal Center is a government office building and courthouse located at 2 Woodward Avenue in Downtown

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 U.S. state, state in the Great Lakes region, Great Lakes region of the Upper Midwest, upper Midwestern United States. With a population of nearly 10.12 million and an area of nearly , Michigan is the List of U.S. states and ...

. Originally called the City-County Building, it was renamed for the former Detroit Mayor Coleman A. Young, shortly after his death in 1997. It serves as the City of Detroit government headquarters. The Coleman A. Young Municipal Center houses offices, courtrooms, and meeting rooms. The class-A office building stands near the

Renaissance Center The Renaissance Center (also known as the GM Renaissance Center and nicknamed the RenCen) is a group of seven connected skyscrapers in Downtown Detroit, Michigan, United States. The Renaissance Center complex is on the Detroit International Riv ...

Hart Plaza Philip A. Hart Plaza, in downtown Detroit, is a city plaza along the Detroit River. It is located more or less on the site at which Antoine Laumet de La Mothe, sieur de Cadillac landed in 1701 when he founded '' Fort Pontchartrain du Détroit' ...

Ally Detroit Center Ally Detroit Center, formerly One Detroit Center, is a skyscraper and class-A office building located in Downtown Detroit, overlooking the Detroit Financial District. Rising , the 43-story tower is the tallest office building in Michigan and ...

Courtyard by Marriott Courtyard by Marriott is a brand of hotels owned by Marriott International. One of Marriott's mid-priced brands, the hotels are primarily targeted to business travelers, but also accommodate traveling families. Rooms have desks, couches, and fre ...

-Downtown Detroit, and the Millender Center.

Architecture

The modernist

International-style International style may refer to: * International Style (architecture), the early 20th century modern movement in architecture *International style (art), the International Gothic style in medieval art *International Style (dancing), a term used in ...

building was designed by the architectural firm of Harley, Ellington and Day. Construction began on the skyscraper in 1951 and was completed in 1954. It is 20 floors tall, and including the basement has 21 total floors. Three sides of the building's exterior are faced with white Vermont

marble Marble is a metamorphic rock composed of recrystallized carbonate minerals, most commonly calcite or dolomite. Marble is typically not foliated (layered), although there are exceptions. In geology, the term ''marble'' refers to metamorphose ...

with black marble

spandrel A spandrel is a roughly triangular space, usually found in pairs, between the top of an arch and a rectangular frame; between the tops of two adjacent arches or one of the four spaces between a circle within a square. They are frequently fill ...

panels beneath the windows of the Courts Tower to emphasize the building's vertical lines. The verticality of the tower section, with its white marble-clad piers and dark spandrels, offers a distinct contrast with the 14-story Administration Tower office section, in which horizontal lines are emphasized. The brick of the Randolph Street facade was not covered with marble to allow for a more economical future expansion.

Towers

;Administration Tower The 14-story portion of this complex is called the Administration Tower and is tall, from the ground to the mechanical penthouse roof parapet. The Administration Tower holds offices for the City of Detroit and Wayne County, as well as doctor clinics, laboratories, a municipal library, and the City Council

auditorium An auditorium is a room built to enable an audience to hear and watch performances. For movie theatres, the number of auditoria (or auditoriums) is expressed as the number of screens. Auditoria can be found in entertainment venues, community ...

chambers on the 13th floor. ;Courts Tower The 20-story portion of this complex is called the Courts Tower and is tall. It contains office space on floors 1 through 8, and courtrooms, judges chambers, and jury rooms on floors 9 through 19, with the 20th floor housing the building's mechanical equipment. A marble wall element rises high stands west of the Courts Tower, and is connected to the tower by a canopy that forms the Woodward Avenue entrance. Bas reliefs of the Detroit and Wayne County seals are carved in the wall, along with a quote from the Bible (

2 Corinthians The Second Epistle to the Corinthians is a Pauline epistle of the New Testament of the Christian Bible. The epistle is attributed to Paul the Apostle and a co-author named Timothy, and is addressed to the church in Corinth and Christians in the ...

3:17) ''Now the Lord is that Spirit: and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty''.

Statue

'' The Spirit of Detroit'', a tall bronze statue by sculptor Marshall Fredericks, is located at the Courts Tower's marble wall element. As one of Detroit's most easily identifiable landmarks, a sketch of the statue appears as the central element of most of the logos of Detroit's city departments and services. When Detroit sports teams (the Red Wings, Pistons and Tigers) have been in contention for their league's championship, the statue has traditionally been outfitted with a huge version of the appropriate team's jersey.

Skyway

An enclosed

skyway A skyway, skybridge, skywalk, or sky walkway is an elevated type of pedway connecting two or more buildings in an urban area, or connecting elevated points within mountainous recreational zones. Urban skyways very often take the form of enclo ...

over Randolph Street connects to the Millender Center, Courtyard by Marriott - Downtown Detroit, and the

as a sort of "enclosed city within a city". Entrance from the walkway to the third-floor level requires a security pass, and persons without a pass must return to the main floor entrance.

Operations

The Coleman A. Young Municipal Center is operated by the Detroit-Wayne Joint Building Authority, which was created in 1948 by the Michigan Legislature. The building contains a

library A library is a collection of materials, books or media that are accessible for use and not just for display purposes. A library provides physical (hard copies) or digital access (soft copies) materials, and may be a physical location or a vir ...

, a courthouse, and the city hall. When it opened, the City-County Building replaced both the historic

Detroit City Hall The Detroit City Hall was the seat of government for the city of Detroit, Michigan from 1871–1961. The building sat on the west side of Campus Martius bounded by Griswold Street to the west, Michigan Avenue to the north, Woodward Avenue to the ...

and

Wayne County Building The Wayne County Building is a monumental government structure located at 600 Randolph Street in Downtown Detroit, Michigan. It formerly contained the Wayne County administrative offices – now located in the Guardian Building at 500 Griswold ...

. Many Wayne County offices have since moved to the nearby

Guardian Building The Guardian Building is a landmark skyscraper in the United States, located at 500 Griswold Street in Downtown Detroit, Michigan, within the Financial District. The Guardian is a class-A office building owned by Wayne County, Michigan and ser ...

which now serves as the county's headquarters. The offices of the Wayne County Clerk remain in the building as does one division of the Wayne County (Third Judicial) Circuit Court, Circuit Court Administrative Offices and the Wayne County Probate Court. On June 28, 2008, the Coleman A. Young Municipal Center was struck by

lightning Lightning is a naturally occurring electrostatic discharge during which two electrically charged regions, both in the atmosphere or with one on the ground, temporarily neutralize themselves, causing the instantaneous release of an avera ...

during a series of intense

thunderstorm A thunderstorm, also known as an electrical storm or a lightning storm, is a storm characterized by the presence of lightning and its acoustic effect on the Earth's atmosphere, known as thunder. Relatively weak thunderstorms are some ...

s, and caused a

transformer A transformer is a passive component that transfers electrical energy from one electrical circuit to another circuit, or multiple circuits. A varying current in any coil of the transformer produces a varying magnetic flux in the transformer' ...

fire within the building. It re-opened for service on July 9, 2008. The smoke and fire damage was easily visible across the river in

Windsor, Ontario Windsor is a city in southwestern Ontario, Canada, on the south bank of the Detroit River directly across from Detroit, Michigan, United States. Geographically located within but administratively independent of Essex County, it is the southe ...

References

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External links

* * {{Detroit Skyscraper office buildings in Detroit Young Municipal Center Young Municipal Center Young Municipal Center Government buildings completed in 1954 International style architecture in Michigan Modernist architecture in Michigan