Penobscot Building
Printer-friendly version
Send to friend
Towering over Campus Martius is the 47-story Greater Penobscot Building, an Art Deco masterpiece that has dominated the city's skyline for 80 years.
The building is named after a tribe of American Indians in New England. Simon J. Murphy, who made a fortune as a lumber baron before coming to Detroit, spent his youth working on the Penobscot River in Maine. As the nation moved west, Murphy’s lumber empire moved with it, and he settled in Detroit. When it came time to name his new building, his thoughts returned to his roots.
There are actually three Penobscot buildings. The first is the 13-story building Murphy erected in 1903. It was joined by a 24-story tower in 1916. The third, the 47-story tower known as the Greater Penobscot, was built at a cost of $5 million. It opened Oct. 22, 1928.
The Penobscot was the eighth-tallest building in the world when it opened Oct. 28, 1928, and was the fourth tallest in the United States. At about 567 feet, it was the tallest building in Detroit until 1977, when it was surpassed by the 729-foot Renaissance Center. It is now the city’s third-tallest also having been overshadowed in 1993 by Comerica Tower, which stands about 623 feet tall.
There is an urban legend that the building’s 100-foot tower with its winking red orb was once used as a port for a dirigible. In truth, it was simply an aviation beacon. These days, the tower and its blinking red light is simply for decoration. The orb, which is 12 feet in diameter, was first turned on when the building opened 79 years ago and can be seen 40 miles away.
The building has not been without controversy over it's eight decades. For example, those are indeed swastikas adorning the Penobscot, but they weren’t put there by Nazis. The swastikas are part of the building’s American Indian motif and symbolize sun worship. Suggestions during World War II to get rid of them were discarded. The swastikas on the Penobscot also are angled differently than those used in Nazi Germany.
More on this building coming soon.
