The Detroit–Columbia Central Office Building is a building located at 52 Selden Street in Midtown

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 ...

. It is also known as the Michigan Bell Telephone Exchange. The building 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 1997.

History

The Detroit–Columbia Central Office Building was commissioned by the Michigan Bell Telephone Company in 1927 at a cost of $1.2 million.Detroit–Columbia Central Office Building
from the city of Detroit The building was designed by Smith, Hinchman, & Grylls, and construction was completed in November 1928. The "dial system" office building, built to relieve the function of earlier "manual" exchanges, originally served around 7000 telephone customers in the central

Woodward Avenue A woodward is a warden of a wood. Woodward may also refer to: Places ;United States * Woodward, Iowa * Woodward, Oklahoma * Woodward, Pennsylvania, a census-designated place * Woodward Avenue, a street in Tallahassee, Florida, which bisects th ...

district of the city. The building is still owned by

AT&T AT&T Inc. is an American multinational telecommunications holding company headquartered at Whitacre Tower in Downtown Dallas, Texas. It is the world's largest telecommunications company by revenue and the third largest provider of mobile te ...

, a successor company of Michigan Bell.

Description

The Detroit–Columbia Central Office Building is a rectangular three-story

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 Unite ...

building constructed of steel and reinforced concrete and faced with brick and limestone. The building measures 105 feet wide by 116 feet deep by 64 feet tall. The first floor is faced with limestone; the limestone continues upward in the shape of five pilasters dividing the facade into six bays. The upper floors between the pilasters are faced with light brown brick. The entrance is located in the eastern bay, and is topped with a carved panel. An identical panel also tops a slight recess located in the western bay to match the entryway. The other four bays contain semi-round arched openings with subdivided windows on the ground floor. Two-story rectangular openings above contain one group of windows on each floor. On the interior, the basement contains a cable vault, a battery room and the heating plant. The first and second floors contain the switching equipment, and the third floor contains operating rooms.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Detroit-Columbia Central Office Building Office buildings in Detroit National Register of Historic Places in Wayne County, Michigan Historic district contributing properties in Michigan Infrastructure completed in 1927 AT&T buildings Telecommunications buildings on the National Register of Historic Places

History

Description

See also

References