Woodward Avenue (M-1) - Automotive Heritage Trail
Guardian Building, MI

Between the two world wars, America was engaged in a period of feverish building activity, constructing tall buildings particularly in New York, Chicago, and Detroit. The automobile manufacturing city was busy building public and industrial buildings, hotels and movie palaces that were lavish by any national standards. Some of the most impressive structures were downtown and a number were the work of Smith, Hinchman and Grylls, an architectural firm that employed a number of talented designers.

The Union Trust (now Guardian) Building is one of the most ebullient examples of the use of Arts and Crafts tiles covering a steel skeleton. Only the 1920s- 1930s could have produced such a structure – an amalgam of the past and present taste in building. One of the most unusual architectural features of the Union-Guardian Building was the use of the stepped or notched arch. This was suggested by the natural way of piling brick without adding any curved or molded forms.