Old Detroit Free Press Building

[walker]

I don't know if anyone reads the Detroit forum anymore, I'm still waiting for ZachariahDaMan to post the pictures from his UP trip last year. But if someone is out there I thought I'd mention this new plan to rehab the long empty old Free Press building:

321 Lafayette

This is one of my favorite Albert Kahn buildings. It's not a favorite because it is his most important building but rather because I used to work in it. If you count up to the tenth floor and look at the middle window on the left, you'd be looking in the window that I would look out.

Even if Detroit had any kind of robust downtown real estate market, this property would be problematic. The Fisher and old GM buildings not withstanding, Kahn was most known for building factories and the old Free Press building despite its appearance as an office building, is mostly designed to be a factory for printing newspapers. Once you get past the small lobby and elevators, the first floor and the basement and sub-basement were the home to the large rotary presses and Linotype machinery where the paper was printed. Other than as indoor parking, as they propose, this space isn't very practical unless you are going to publish a nineteen-thirties technology newspaper.

Here's a story; when I worked there decades ago there were a few people who used to feed the pigeons by throwing scraps of food out the back windows. These weren't bird lovers, nobody much cared for the pigeons. The reason they fed them was because a handful of the most important executives had parking spaces behind the building and by feeding the pigeons, the pigeons would congregate and leave their calling cards on the cars below. Sort of the classic Detroit management/labor guerrilla war.

[ZachariahDaMan]

I meant to post this, the Free Press Building is a beauty.

I regularly check the forum and go to take pictures in Detroit. I took so many pictures in the UP I didn't get to posting them but I will try to soon.

[LA Dave]

I don't know if anyone reads the Detroit forum anymore, I'm still waiting for ZachariahDaMan to post the pictures from his UP trip last year. But if someone is out there I thought I'd mention this new plan to rehab the long empty old Free Press building:

321 Lafayette

This is one of my favorite Albert Kahn buildings. It's not a favorite because it is his most important building but rather because I used to work in it. If you count up to the tenth floor and look at the middle window on the left, you'd be looking in the window that I would look out.

Even if Detroit had any kind of robust downtown real estate market, this property would be problematic. The Fisher and old GM buildings not withstanding, Kahn was most known for building factories and the old Free Press building despite its appearance as an office building, is mostly designed to be a factory for printing newspapers. Once you get past the small lobby and elevators, the first floor and the basement and sub-basement were the home to the large rotary presses and Linotype machinery where the paper was printed. Other than as indoor parking, as they propose, this space isn't very practical unless you are going to publish a nineteen-thirties technology newspaper.

Here's a story; when I worked there decades ago there were a few people who used to feed the pigeons by throwing scraps of food out the back windows. These weren't bird lovers, nobody much cared for the pigeons. The reason they fed them was because a handful of the most important executives had parking spaces behind the building and by feeding the pigeons, the pigeons would congregate and leave their calling cards on the cars below. Sort of the classic Detroit management/labor guerrilla war.

Boy, your post sure brought back memories. When I was a cub reporter at the Michigan Daily, sometimes we would go to Detroit to see an alumnus at the Freep. It was going to the big leagues -- the smell of ink in the pressroom, the clatter of a hundred typewriters going full-speed, the feel of a major metropolitan daily.

Alas, all gone.

[walker]

I meant to post this, the Free Press Building is a beauty.

I regularly check the forum and go to take pictures in Detroit. I took so many pictures in the UP I didn't get to posting them but I will try to soon.

Didn't mean to make you feel guilty so don't feel compelled to post them if you are busy (or just don't want to.) Mostly because I've enjoyed your other pictures and because I have ties to the Houghton-Hancock area, I was curious as to what photographically you found interesting.

[walker]

Boy, your post sure brought back memories. When I was a cub reporter at the Michigan Daily, sometimes we would go to Detroit to see an alumnus at the Freep. It was going to the big leagues -- the smell of ink in the pressroom, the clatter of a hundred typewriters going full-speed, the feel of a major metropolitan daily.

Alas, all gone.

Although I worked for the Free Press on the business side, I too had been a college journalist. In college we considered the Free Press during the reign of Kurt Luedtke (another Grand Rapidian) to be one of the greatest of American newspapers. A writer's paper it was called. So to work there a few years later, even if it wasn't on the news side, was like dying and going to heaven.

The kind of shabby Art Deco building made the whole experience something like what used to be pictured in grainy nineteen-thirties newspaper movies. By the time I worked there though the stereotypical rough reporters that you'd see in those movies, who had started as fifteen year-old copyboys and had worked there way up, were almost all gone and instead the newsroom was populated by mostly middle-class people with journalism degrees from good schools. Instead the crusty Runyonesque characters were all over on the business side with me.

Kurt Luedtke left for Hollywood. Eventually the Art Deco interior on my floor was gutted and replaced with fake wood-grain cubicles from Hayworth, and the old rotary presses were stilled when a new highly automated offset printing plant was put into operation down by the river. The riverside plant which never operated as well as expected has since been torn down.

Eventually I moved on too. But for awhile it was a good ride.

Edited July 2, 2010 by walker

[LA Dave]

Although I worked for the Free Press on the business side, I too had been a college journalist. In college we considered the Free Press during the reign of Kurt Luedtke (another Grand Rapidian) to be one of the greatest of American newspapers. A writer's paper it was called. So to work there a few years later, even if it wasn't on the news side, was like dying and going to heaven.

The kind of shabby Art Deco building made the whole experience something like what used to be pictured in grainy nineteen-thirties newspaper movies. By the time I worked there though the stereotypical rough reporters that you'd see in those movies, who had started as fifteen year-old copyboys and had worked there way up, were almost all gone and instead the newsroom was populated by mostly middle-class people with journalism degrees from good schools. Instead the crusty Runyonesque characters were all over on the business side with me.

Kurt Luedtke left for Hollywood. Eventually the Art Deco interior on my floor was gutted and replaced with fake wood-grain cubicles from Hayworth, and the old rotary presses were stilled when a new highly automated offset printing plant was put into operation down by the river. The riverside plant which never operated as well as expected has since been torn down.

Eventually I moved on too. But for awhile it was a good ride.

Wonderful writing, Walker. Sure you weren't on the other side of the building?

Yes, the Freep in those days was a great paper, with some of the best young writers in the US (IMHO) on its staff. I still remember reading one wonderful piece in the Sunday Freep about a few of the younger staff members driving to Cass County to find some "Cass County Red." (Readers of a certain age will know what I am talking about.) I still remember one of the lines in the piece, about having to move the dial from CKLW to WLS to find Top 40 tunes on the radio. In the 1970s, that was how you knew you had moved from East to West Michigan.

It was an absolute dream to even get an Ann Arbor stringer position with the Freep. I was fortunate enough to get one with the News, which while not as "cool" as the Free Press, had a much larger circulation. Great people worked at the "grey lady" as well. I miss those days terribly.

[walker]

Well the deal I wrote about three years ago fell through obviously.  But yesterday the old Free Press Building sold at auction for around four million.  Someone must think they can do something with it.  It wasn't me.

 

http://www.freep.com/article/20130911/BUSINESS04/309110118/Old-Free-Press-building-sells-just-over-4-million-auction 

 

It's in pretty bad shape.  It was a little worn when I worked there but nothing as bad as these videos show:

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BvfS6XARo0Q

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5VCU_Of-anc

[walker]

Well, the Chinese gave up on the building too.  The latest rumor is that Dan Gilbert (Quickin Loans, Bedrock real estate, etc.) has bought it.  I first heard this back in October from an executive from one of Gilbert's companies.  It was sort of an aside and I didn't follow-up on it because I thought he was talking about the old Detroit News Building, also on Lafayette, that was shared by both the News and the Free Press till recently when they both moved to smaller quarters.  Gilbert owns that building too, along with about ninety others in Detroit.  But then today, while looking for something else, I found this short story from back in November that says the same thing:

321 Lafayette Bldg to Gilbert

Edited January 9, 2017 by walker
to fix a typo

[walker]

So John Gallagher of the Free Press confirmed today that Dan Gilbert / Bedrock had bought and will redevelop the old Free Press Building.  Story contains a nice slide show of a tour of the inside.  Makes me sad how bad it looks:

Bedrock to turn Freep Bldg into Offices, Retail, and Residential

So as I said in the previous post, if I had been paying attention back last October, I would have had the scoop (an old newspaper term) for urbanplanet back then.  

Edited January 27, 2017 by walker
to fix typo

[walker]

I know I'm likely just talking to myself here.

Louis Aguilar of the Detroit News weighed in today on the latest about the old Free Press Building.  Bedrock says the renovation will cost 69.6 million.  That's about five million less than the ball park figure that was mentioned in the Free Press article back in January.  Still seems like a lot of money.  They know more about Detroit real estate than me but I don't know how that will work.  Sure there's fourteen stories but those tower stories aren't that big and you are not going to fit many apartments on each of those floors.

DETROIT NEWS STORY ON FREE PRESS BUILDING   

The story makes it seem like there are fourteen stories in the tower above the six lower floors.  That's not true, there are only eight, and the top floor I believe is all mechanicals so it's not really lease-able.  What is not mentioned in the article is that the building has a large basement and a subbasement which I assume they will use for parking.    

Here's is a full frontal shot of the building from Wikipedia:

321 Lafayette

Edited April 21, 2017 by walker

[walker]

Looks like Lmichigan last week made an attempt to revive the Detroit forum by making a bunch of posts.  I'll do my part by posting this one:

Dan Gilbert's Bedrock real estate company has been busy remodeling / restoring the old Free Press building.  Above is a recent photo of one of the murals in the small lobby inside the front door.  When I worked there around forty years ago people, including me, would hurry through on their way to somewhere else and hardly give a thought to the lobby artwork.  Too bad, it was quite ornate and fascinating. 

Back then the Free Press and the News were locked in a circulation battle to see which paper would be the top dog.  Unlike monopoly one-paper towns where the papers were cash cows, neither of the Detroit papers made much money and in fact they often lost money.  But the competition made both papers much better journalistically than those monopolistic papers.  So today the old nemesis of the Free Press, the News,  had an article about the renovation of the old Free Press building at 321 Lafayette including the lobby.  I hope they have some kind of open house when it's completed.  I'd like to see what my office looks like.  I wonder if my old wooden desk that looks to have been left over from the thirties is still around,

DETROIT NEWS - renovations underway former detroit free press building       

[walker]

Another story about the renovation today;

Michigan Strategic Fund approved nearly $8 million in tax incentives Tuesday to help businessman Dan Gilbert's team remake the old Detroit Free Press building as a mixed-use project

Free Money for Free Press Building

[walker]

On 7/2/2010 at 9:48 AM, walker said:

Although I worked for the Free Press on the business side, I too had been a college journalist. In college we considered the Free Press during the reign of Kurt Luedtke (another Grand Rapidian) to be one of the greatest of American newspapers. A writer's paper it was called. So to work there a few years later, even if it wasn't on the news side, was like dying and going to heaven.

Above is the first paragraph of one of my early posts in this thread.  Early in 1978 I started  work at the Free Press and later that same year Kurt Luedtke left for Hollywood (not that there is any connection between the two events.)  Today it was announced that Luedtke has died.

FREEP: kurt-luedtke-former-free-press-editor-and-oscar-winning-writer-dies 

RIP Kurt Luedtke

Edited August 18, 2020 by walker

[walker]

Over ten years ago I first started writing about the rehab of the old Free Press building.  It's finally completed:

DETROIT NEWS: 2020/09/16/free press-lafayette-ready-roll-again

[walker]

They had a PR event the other day for the media to show off the rehabbed building.  Here are photos from the Detroit News:

DETROIT NEWS: picture-gallery - former-detroit-free-press-building-renovations 10-27-2020 

[walker]

On 7/2/2010 at 9:48 AM, walker said:

 

Although I worked for the Free Press on the business side, I too had been a college journalist. In college we considered the Free Press during the reign of Kurt Luedtke (another Grand Rapidian) to be one of the greatest of American newspapers. A writer's paper it was called. So to work there a few years later, even if it wasn't on the news side, was like dying and going to heaven.

 

 

On 8/9/2020 at 10:46 PM, walker said:

Above is the first paragraph of one of my early posts in this thread.  Early in 1978 I started  work at the Free Press and later that same year Kurt Luedtke left for Hollywood (not that there is any connection between the two events.)  Today it was announced that Luedtke has died.

FREEP: kurt-luedtke-former-free-press-editor-and-oscar-winning-writer-dies 

RIP Kurt Luedtke

I guess I just can't let this thread die out.  Today the Free Press published the obituary of one of the many great journalists that helped make the Free Press such a great newspaper back during the Luedtke era:

  FREE PRESS: Remer Tyson, longtime Free Press correspondent covering politics and Africa, dies at 89