Designing Detroit: Wirt Rowland and the Rise of Modern American Architecture By Michael G. Smith

Abstract

Because Detroit’s role in the history of twentieth-century architecture has largely been overshadowed by Chicago and its abundance of architect heroes, individuals like Wirt Rowland—a creative local designer who transformed the city’s skyline in the pre-Depression era—remain generally unknown and unappreciated. Michael G. Smith’s Designing Detroit: Wirt Rowland and the Rise of Modern American Architecture aims to correct this glaring omission, adding new information to Rowland’s story and filling in the many poorly understood periods of the architect’s practice. Smith reviews Rowland’s prodigious output of the 1910s-20s, a period in which he worked for the city’s most prominent architectural firms.