Please join us for a very special and exclusive two-hour walking tour as we consider Finnish architect Eliel Saarinen's U.S. masterpiece, the Cranbrook complex in Bloomfield Hills, including the Cranbrook Art Museum, Cranbrook School for Boys (as it was known), and Kingswood School for Girls.

Each institution is built in a different material and architectural style, so to traverse Cranbrook is to pass through successive chapters of 20th-century American design — from red-brick Arts and Crafts (the old boys' school) to Prairie-inflected Art Deco (Kingswood) to the "stripped classicism" of the great sandstone peristyle of the Cranbrook Art Museum and Library.

New York Times architecture critic Paul Goldberger called Cranbrook "one of the masterworks of American architecture."  We will consider the architecture, as well as Cranbrook's creation in the mid-1920s by the idealistic and fabulously wealthy publisher of The Detroit News, George G. Booth.

Our guide is Columbia grad Michael Hodges (SIPA ’87), biographer of Albert Kahn and a 1972 graduate of Cranbrook’s boys' school. He’s currently at work on a biography of Eliel Saarinen for Wayne State University Press, to appear in 2028. A former fine arts writer for the Detroit News, Hodges authored “Building the Modern World: Albert Kahn in Detroit" and has led club tours of Midtown Detroit and the New Center Area.

Details:

When:  Sunday, August 23, 11-1 p.m. Tour starts promptly at 11 a.m. 

Cost: $10 per person. No charge for children under 12.

Where: Meet under the peristyle — the great arch at the Cranbrook Art Museum, which should be shady. (Image above.)

Address/Maps: Cranbrook Art Museum, 39221 Woodward Ave., Bloomfield Hills, MI 48303. (Museum Front Desk: 248-645-3320), https://cranbrookartmuseum.org/visit/.
PDF map: 
https://cranbrookartmuseum.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Cranbrook-Art-Museum-Map-2016-1.pdf.
Map of the Cranbrook complex with QR code to download the app: http://www.cranbrook.edu/sites/default/files/uploads/CEC%20Campus%20Map%202024.pdf

Parking: Allow extra time to find parking: First choice - Cranbrook Art Museum parking lot.
If that's full, there's limited parking on Academy Way, as well as a small lot on Lone Pine Rd. where Academy Way starts.
Less ideal (because it's a longer walk) is the huge gated lot at Lone Pine & Orchard Ridge Rd. (Anyone can get in.)

NOTE: Getting to Kingswood School: If time and heat permit, we'll return to our cars after walking around the Art Museum complex and the boys' school, and drive the half mile down Tamarack Way to Kingswood School, which has ample parking.

What to bring: A water bottle and hat if it's hot. Academic buildings will all be locked. Umbrella if rain is predicted. 

Photos courtesy of Michael Hodges.