Unbuilt Detroit

[Aaron]

Although I've seen it before (and perhaps many of the regulars here have as well), I just rediscovered this absolutely fascinating article from the Detroit Free Press magazine from October 27, 1991. It's basically drawings and descriptions of plans that ultimately fell though for the city's skyline. There are several drawings of how the skyline would look today. Highlights:

- Two Detroit Center, which would have been an awkward twin of the first

- A whole pile of ugly phases of the RenCen complex

- The two unbuilt towers of the Fisher complex, including the 60 story central one

- The absolutely massive 70+ story tower proposed by the Book brothers, but killed by the depression

- Proposed towers for the then-vacant Kern Block, and still vacant Kennedy Square

- Development of the riverfront into parkland, which is now underway

Obviously, many things here were just visions or proposed, so it's not like every tower here was inches from going up. It's also more than a bit weird to see that much glass in the air, in contrast to Detriot's mostly vintage-style skyline.

Note: The article is split into 4 PDFs totaling 36 megabytes; 56k beware!

[DallasTexan]

Why don't they show the Full RenCen?

[SNWEB]

I have seen little bits from it,

great find Aaron.

[Jonzo]

Wow Detroit looks absolutely breathtaking with a skyline like that! Teriffic find. and hey, maybe in fifty years from now, we'll see a new skyscraper!

[boo]

this is awesome. one detroit center (comerica tower) has long been my fave scraper downtown and i always figured two would be better than one- until i saw the rendering posted!

[rbdetsport]

Its hard to think how beautiful our city could have been. It makes me so mad when I see all of those drawings.

[Loughlin]

Would that 70 story tower you were taiking about be bigger than Detroits current tallest?

[Allan]

The 70 story tower actually would've been 81+ stories. At the time of its completion, it would've been the world's tallest building (until surpassed by the Empire State Building).