This is a dominating building that clearly illustrates the history and importance of the Motor City. Detroit was the fastest growing large city in the United States in the 1920s thanks to the booming vehicle industry. By 1930, its population reached 1.6 million. Only New York, Chicago and Philadelphia were larger. If you had extrapolated demographic and economic trends based on the changes of the 1920s, you would have predicted that Detroit would soon surpass Philadelphia to become the third largest city. In the late 1920s, much of the northern and northwest sections of the present city of Detroit were vacant lands so there was very much room for a half million or more additional residents. No one foresaw the Depression and the way it would curtail growth in Detroit. Nor did people appreciate how federal housing policies in the 1940s would promote suburban growth. By 2010, the city’s population had fallen to about 45 percent of what it was 80 years earlier.
City tax revenues grew in the 1920s and governmental officials used those monies to erect impressive government buildings. The structure you see is a tremendous example. The first floor was devoted to the fire trucks that provided protection to much of the downtown area. The floors above housed the many offices of the bureaucrats who administered what was, likely, the fourth largest fire department in the nation. Along Larned, you see four large arches with doors that allowed the fire trucks to enter and leave. Along Washington Boulevard, there are three similar large arches for the entry and departure of trucks. This building was completed in 1929. The city’s fire department retired their last horses seven years previously so this was among the first Detroit fire houses designed without facilities for horses. The building is a massive and, you might say, a powerful one with rich decoration. Perhaps the architect wished to convey the message that Detroit residents were safe because of their fire department’s strength and devotion.
By 2011, this building no longer housed fire fighters and fire equipment. However, it continues to be the administrative headquarters of the Detroit Fire Department. In 2010, there was discussion that the city of Detroit might secure the building that had previously been the MGM Casino before that casino’s new building opened. City leaders and Common Council discussed plans to use that former casino building as a new headquarters for the fire and police departments. I have not heard much about that recently. The economic troubles of the city in 2011 may have put on hold plans to move the fire department headquarters to another building. I do not know what plans Mayor Bing and Common Council had for this lovely 1929 ediface. In some cities, real estate speculators would quickly obtain rights to such a structure with hopes of converting it into desirable, expensive lofts or into office space. But, at present, office space in not dear in downtown Detroit.
Hans Gehrke, was a productive and creative architect working in Detroit before World War II. He began designing upscale homes for such neighborhoods as La Salle Gardens and Grosse Pointe in the pre-World War I period. He may also have designed some of the elegant homes in the Sherwood Forest historic neighborhood. He was the architect for the 1914 the modernization of the Saint-John-St. Luke Evangelical Church designed by Julian Hess that visitors to the Eastern Market see frequently but may not fully appreciate because of its location on Russell east of the marker. Hans Gehrke won commissions to design most of the fire houses built by the City of Detroit in the 1920s as well as fire stations in neighboring communities including one in Royal Oak. His Detroit Fire Department Headquarters may be his greatest accomplishment. Unfortunately, I know of no biography of this architect nor a list of the structures Hans Gehrke designed.
Architect: Hans Gehrke
Architectural Style: Neoclassical
Date of Completion: 1929
Use in 2011: Administrative offices of the Detroit Fire Department
City of Detroit Designated Historic District: Not Listed
State of Michigan Registry of Historic Sites: Not listed
National Register of Historic Places: This building is a contributing structure included within the Detroit Financial Historic District that was listed on the National Historic Register on December 14, 2009
Photograph: Ren Farley
Description prepared: December, 2011
Return to Government Buildings
Return to the Detroit Financial Historic District
Return to Home Page