[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6m98ZUcH-A[/youtube]
The good people of the dETROITfUNK blog have produced a series of videos of their city that we’ll show here over the next few days. This first one deals with the Donovan building, the former Motown World Headquarters that was located only a few blocks away from the new downtown baseball and football stadiums.
This was the Motown HQ after they moved out of the famous Hitsville USA location in 1968 and before the company moved to Los Angeles in 1972. The building on the left — The Donovan — was built by Albert Kahn, architect of the “Arsenal of Democracy,” as he designed many of Detroit’s huge factory buildings and corporate headquarters before and during the war. The building on the right was the Fred Sanders Henry Street Chocolate Factory and as dETROITfUNK points out, was complete with “Louis Comfort Tiffany glass mosaic Art Deco sign and facade decorations.”
Both fell victim to the cleansing of downtown Detroit for the 2006 Superbowl (I made a post nearly two years ago of some observations in downtown Detroit a month before the Superbowl).
These hippies also produced a video exploring the Donovan, and here and here Detroit Blog documents some artifacts from the building.
One comment
Mmmmm.. no city did dilapidation like the D! This makes me want to track down video of the ol’ Packard Plant getting demolished. That is most certainly was the spiritual successor to the Donovan building.
The fabulous ruins of Detroit Indeed!