As
deep
as lay
the workers’
city below the
earth, so high above
it towered the complex
known as the “Club of the Sons”
~ Metropolis, 1927
Rising Rooted, After the Fall
When the Guardian Building was unveiled in April of 1929, it was hailed in the local newspapers as a “Cathedral of Finance” and a “Temple of Banking.”
The comparison to religious architecture is an astute one. Anyone who enters the Guardian will experience a moment of awe, after walking beneath the portico arch. Inside, the length of the building is hollowed like the long nave of a church, punctuated with light and colour, pattern and shape. Altogether, it is enough to take one’s breath away.
The effect is similar to that described by Abbot Suger of St Denis:
“…the multicolour loveliness of the gems has called me away from external cares, and worthy meditation, transporting me from material to immaterial things, has persuaded me to examine the diversity of holy virtues, then I seem to see myself existing on some level, as it were, beyond our earthly one, neither completely in the slime of earth nor completely in the purity of heaven.”
~ Abbot Suger of St Denis, c. 1144
The Abbot was writing of the cathedrals he had witnessed in France, during the height of the Gothic period, when every church aspired to be taller than the last. This period was one of incredible advancements in architecture. Gone were the small, rounded windows of the Romanesque, and the thick layers of stone formed into rounded ceilings. All was changed, all made new, when the technology of the pointed arch was discovered! Ceilings were freed from their constraints, soaring high as a bird, and walls that were once dimly lit could now be pierced through with bright windows like jewels, strung from floor to heaven above. The world was changed, quite visibly. In their race to the clouds, some of the cathedrals of France grew so tall, so spindly and thin, that they began to topple - their balustrades and buttresses buckling under the weight of such towering ceilings. One of the tallest remaining churches of that time, Beauvais, at 47 metres, is now held up with extensive inner supports after two structural disasters.
But is it not human, to reach for the unseen? To dream? To imagine and create, to envision and hope beyond hope?
…
Now, I must call us back to the scene at hand. Our stage is set almost a millennia forward, circa 1929; and this temple - the Temple of Finance - is only a wink to those cathedrals of the past. Our human story has changed much since the 1100s, and architecture heralds these changes: in New York they are building towers that scrape the sky! Society is flourishing in the 1920s, after the harsh years of war and rations, and hope is in the air. It is in this climate that the Guardian Building is built; commissioned by the Union Trust Company, a financial institution that was on the up and up, and designed by eminent architect Wirt Rowland.
Researchers and authors have speculated about Rowland’s design and its likeness to a church. The nave-like structure of the lobby and great hall defy the logistics of the building above, a 40-some storey skyscraper that immediately became the second tallest building in Detroit. But Rowland knew his intentions: he wished to create a temple to commerce.
Commerce. Its presence is everywhere in the architect’s designs. From the writings on the wall beyond the entrance, to the symbols on the door handles: an entwined ‘U’ & ‘T,’ for Union Trust. On the far wall, where an apse would stand in a church, high up in the place where Christ might be shown on a cross, or a large gleaming window might shine with the light of heaven, there is a painted mural, 3 storeys high. It shows the lady Commerce, personified now, like one of the muses of old. Around her are illustrations of wheat and fish, ships and mines, all symbols of the commercial products and wealth of the State of Michigan. Above her head is a symbol for the banks: FINANCE written in large gold letters. In her hands she holds not one, but two overflowing cornucopias.
Indeed, the atmosphere is one of reverence for wealth. In place of a holy spirit, the spirit that resides here is Commerce, and her image is lifted up into glory by the beauty of the building, ascendant, an almost-deity.
The vision is one that seems at odds with the city outside, when I visit Detroit in 2018: papers blow in the gutters and empty streets sit silent at certain hours, the only sound soft like rubber soles, a distant moaning of wind through broken panes. Somewhere, a siren wails.
How? Why? What happened?
…
The Tides Of Detroit
In researching the history of Detroit, I have come to feel that this city could be hailed as an emblem. We have all heard of the rise and fall of the Roman Empire, something that supposedly haunts the daydreams of most cis men on this planet. But what of our own place in the continuum of human history? Because we are here: in the midst of it, being battered by the tides of our own time. It is 2025, and I see my world in the mirror, when I look into Detroit. What I see both scares and soothes me.
Detroit has been through many tides. This is apparent when we learn that the city’s two mottos
Speramus Meliora
"We hope for better things"
Resurget Cineribus
"It will rise from the ashes"
were written not after the mass exodus that I am about to detail, but long before; in the youth of the city, when it was razed by the Great Fire of 1805.
And ever since that fire, Detroit has been marked by the rise and fall of the tides of the world. What follows is an account of these ebbs and flows, which brought the city to the point of ruin and rebirth…
Detroit’s story is akin to the ancient Chinese Parable of the Old Man and the Horse, which begins with the lines: “Good luck and bad luck create each other, and it is difficult to forsee their change”…
As luck would have it, the city was razed by the Great Fire of 1805.
As luck would have it, the city had a river that brought in a lot of commerce, and the city grew prosperous once again.
As luck would have it, a great many people began to migrate from the lands all around, coming to the city to find work.
As luck would have it, a man named Ford and his peers were able to offer people jobs in new assembly lines, creating cars.
As luck would have it, the people were given more money for their work, making them into modern day consumers.
As luck would have it, this boom created more jobs, and more people migrated to the city, which was more prosperous than ever.
As luck would have it, people discovered the new assembly work was hard, and the conditions poor. Discontent began to grow.
As luck would have it, the workers rallied and created unions, and better conditions for their working lives.
As luck would have it, competition for jobs began to be fierce, and racism abounded. White Protestant people discriminated against all other peoples, and the KKK spread fear and violence, targeting the Black, Catholic and Jewish communities.
As luck would have it, the market crashed during the Great Depression, and the city that had swelled with workers and jobs was plunged into insecurity.
As luck would have it, a second world war began and the manufacturing industry experienced a resurgence. There were jobs again.
As luck would have it, there was another wave of migration, as 400,000 people migrated to the city from 1941 to 1943, drawn by the promise of jobs during the war effort.
As luck would have it, the racism of previous eras was still present, and it began to eat away at the stability, the very foundations, of the city.
As luck would have it, the Packard plant took a step towards an inclusive future, when it promoted three black people to work next to the white people on the assembly line.
As luck would have it, the white community of Detroit chose to entrench themselves in their racism instead of integrate. 25,000 people walked off the job, saying they would rather let the Germans win than work alongside black people. Segregation continued as an unspoken rule.
As luck would have it, the war ended, and Americans returned home to a time of new hope and prosperity.
As luck would have it, people began to idealise a suburban lifestyle, and a new migration happened. New highways needed to be built, and industries relocated to the outskirts. The poorer suburbs, which had long been segregated through use of zoning laws and lack of infrastructure, were often the ones that were affected by new roadways.
As luck would have it, a delineation began to grow - between the wealthier suburbs where more white people lived, and the city centre, where more black people lived.
As luck would have it, the inner city’s tax base was undercut by this suburban exodus, and the city began to decline as jobs became out of reach to urban, low-income workers.
As luck would have it, the Civil Rights Movement brought new hope to the city, and black people began to march for their rights. Martin Luther King Jr. gave a speech about a dream he had for a better future.
As luck would have it, young black people, who wanted a change, came to blows with the police, who were still operating on a racist agenda.
As luck would have it, the tensions culminated into the Twelfth Street Riot, during which many buildings were destroyed and lives were lost. The Black community wished to be heard, and for action to be taken, they had had enough.
As luck would have it, the riots were witnessed by the white community, who chose again to defer, instead of integrating and working towards equality. They began to leave. The city’s population slowly declined from 1.8 million to its current 600,000.
As luck would have it, the industries began to leave too; a change exacerbated by the oil crisis and the rising demand for smaller, more fuel efficient foreign cars. Jobs became scarce.
As luck would have it, the city was plunged into an economic downturn that persists to this day.
故福之為禍,
禍之為福
化不可極,
深不可測也Bad luck brings good luck, and good luck brings bad luck.
This happens without end, and nobody can estimate it.
The tale of Detroit can teach us a lot.
Firstly, one might discern that luck is a fickle thing. I would argue that fate, as a principle, is uncertain, and that change is the only reliable constant. The creators of the Guardian Building were banking on the city’s luck remaining steady, but history shows us that no state of being is steady, change will inevitably come. Tides will rise and tides will fall. Seasons of plenty are followed by seasons of scarcity. A smart, nay, a lucky society would be the one that preempts changes by building a strong foundation on which to fall back, when scarcity comes knocking.
Secondly, the arc of time reveals the weaknesses of certain values held by the city dwellers. While Commerce has great gifts to bring when we are in her good graces, she does little to sustain us when her interests are turned elsewhere or are diminished by a change in the financial system. Moreover, systems that stem from the values engendered by racism - othering, segregation, violence and oppression - are unveiled in all their nastiness and hubris, as they eventually undermine the very foundations of the city, perpetuating issues that led to the ruin of the economy and people’s wellbeing.
These historic events felt especially poignant to me, unearthed in the light of this day, when my own city, Wellington, is being affected by the decisions of lawmakers - with job cuts leading to a mini exodus; and in the light of the wider world at this present time, where diversity and inclusion measures are being rolled back in a new wave of nationalist, populist and racist sentiment.
But what of hope? For, the story is not over, and there may yet be another change.
Endings and Beginnings:
Turning away from the mural of Commerce with her cornucopias, and all the glorification of the 20th century with its grand promise of production and consumption, I can see something else. Something different. A spark of hope caught, inadvertently, in the details of the Guardian Building.
While researching this long story, I came across the term “Mayan Revival Architecture.” This style, a subset of the Art Deco period, seems anachronistic, when viewed alongside the hyper modern, sleek, streamlined designs of the time. But Rowland was not alone in his use of ancient and ethnically diverse inspirations - the Mayan Revival sat alongside the Egyptian Revival as examples of a growing interest in all things “exotic,” a trend helped along by the accessibility and lowering cost of overseas travel. Art Deco sought to remake the world anew, in the modern image, and to Western people of the time, anything that was not Greek, Roman or Gothic in influence seemed “new.”
The reality, of course, is that these “Mayan” designs were appropriated from the designs of Indigenous cultures, across the Americas.
Looking at the ceilings, with their multicoloured tiles and hand-painted patterns, I was reminded of something I wrote a very long time ago, about the Mayan people’s careful measurements of time…
The Mayans kept track of time using various different calendar systems. The Haab' calendar coincided with the solar year and counted 365 day cycles. The Tzolk'in calendar aligned with the movements of stars and the cycles of corn cropping, and counted in 260 day cycles. The Long Count calendar ran in a series of interlinking cycles of days, counting periods of up to 2,880,000 days. These calendars linked like cogs and wheels, the various parts moving in complex patterns, and cycling in seemingly random natures due to the discord of the numbers. And yet, as with every cyclical thing in the Universe, the loop eventually comes back around.
It may be a symptom of our own times, that we have developed a kind of Myopia or shortsightedness.
Many of us live in a personal bubble of our own creation, thinking only in terms of days, weeks, years, and our own lifetime. Our shortsightedness limits our concerns for those things outside our personal bubble: other inhabitants of the Earth, and the future. Consequentially, we are also limited in our abilities to create long-term communal connections or make long-term rational decisions that will benefit not only ourselves, but others around us and those who will come after us.
The Mayans understood that time moves in many cycles, large and small, and that these cycles bring periods of change.
This wider view of time is reflected, too, in the Iroquois concept of Seventh Generation Stewardship:
“Look and listen for the welfare of the whole people and have always in view not only the present but also the coming generations, even those whose faces are yet beneath the surface of the ground -- the unborn of the future Nation.”
~ Constitution of the Iroquois Nation
It is this wider view of time that I see as the spark of hope, hidden in the architecture left behind by a community who saw only an immediate dream of abundance.
It is this wider view which is taking root in the city, now; and the city is slowly rising..
Rising Rooted
The seeds of hope have taken root once again in the city of Detroit, and this time, the hope is founded upon something different.
Not built upon a teetering golden throne of prosperity,
but tended from the ground up, like grassroots that grow strong.
In the recent documentary, The Rise, Fall and Rebirth of Detroit, we learn that the people who stayed in the city are slowly rebuilding. However, they are building something new: a dream of their own. Their own systems, which will hold them tight against the tides that currently threaten our world. They are growing gardens, urban farms, to counter the blight of the modern “food deserts” and bring fresh food to their families and communities. They understand that wellness begins and ends in nourishment and provision. They are building their own businesses, hiring their neighbours, providing jobs to those who were overlooked by the top-down system. They are making it their business to rebuild, one burnt or abandoned lot at a time. There are kids creating a life for themselves out of the ruins, making skateparks in abandoned lots. There are people composting, people caring, people thriving.
People are even moving back to Detroit.
There is a possibility that things will cycle back to a low point, as gentrification currently threatens the city and the suburbs the same way systemic racism once did: raising prices, pushing people out of their own neighbourhoods, thus creating further harmful delineations and disparities.
But there is also the possibility that we might learn from our past, and choose to weather the changes of the world differently. Some newcomers are choosing to integrate and to support their neighbours’ efforts - their visions for a better future.
When we dream up a better future,
may we dream of betterment beyond our own lives.
Further Resources,
for those who are interested:
Articles about the Guardian Building and its semi-religious architecture
Smith, M.G., Fletcher, R. Proportioning systems in Wirt C. Rowland’s Union Trust Guardian Building. Nexus Netw J 17, 207–229, (2015)
Gabriele, Matthew. What You Didn’t Know About Medieval Detroit. Forbes, (2018)
Rubin, E. Skyscrapers and Tall Buildings. Oxford Research Encyclopedia of American History, (2018)
Two great documentaries about Detroit’s history and its revival
The Rise, Fall and Rebirth of Detroit | Abandoned. VICE, (2023)
Requiem for Detroit. dir., Julien Temple, (2010)
Information about the Art Deco period and “Mayan Revival” style
Bird, Matthew. History of Industrial Design Week 5: Art Deco, a lecture for Rhode Island School of Design. YouTube, (2020)
Hammond, David. How Ancient Mayan Architecture Shaped Frank Lloyd Wright. New City Design, (2017)
Other fascinating bits and bobs referenced
Lang, Fritz. Metropolis. Paramount Pictures, (1927)
The old man lost his horse (but it all turned out for the best). The Huainanzi, chapter 18. (c. 139 BCE)
Law 28 of the Constitution of the Iroquois Nation
