Albert Kahn - Architect

(Image Courtesy of the University of Michigan Bentley Library)

It's not often that I will post a picture that I haven't taken on this blog. In fact, I think all of the pictures posted on this blog have been my own. However, since I can't travel back in time and take a picture of the man above, I will have to settle on someone else's picture.

The man in the picture above is Albert Kahn which is a name that has been frequently mentioned on this blog. He designed many buildings in Detroit and the surrounding area and at one point designed about 20% of the factories in existence in the United States in the early 20th Century. Probably his most famous building is the Fisher Building in Detroit but he has a number of other buildings there as well. He also has quite a few buildings outside of Detroit, including many of the buildings on the University of Michigan Ann Arbor campus.

He was born in Rhauen, Westphalia, Germany in 1869. His father was a Rabbi. In 1880, the Kahn family emigrated to Detroit. Financial difficulties forced Albert to start to look for work and he found it as an apprentice for the architectural firm of John Scott and Associates. Later, he apprenticed for Mason and Rice.

In 1891, he won a traveling scholarship from the American Architect and Building News and traveled mostly in France and Italy. He learned alot in this period. However he had no formal education so he won his clients with hard work.

In 1903, he started to work with his brother who was a civil engineer (who studied at the University of Michigan). The pair of them developed new construction methods for factories which landed them lots of work. One of them was using steel to reinforce concrete (for which Julius Kahn had the patent). The list of buildings that Albert Kahn designed is pretty extensive and he was probably one of the more prominent architects of the Industrial Age. He died in 1942.

Anyways, I think one of my projects is going to try to take pictures of his buildings in the area. It's quite an extensive list and will keep me busy for a while.