Cadillac Place on West Grand Boulevard was meant to be called the Durant Building, after William C. Durant, the salesman who had built General Motors out of Buick in 1908. Pressed by his board for a permanent headquarters, Durant agreed in 1919 to buy the block between Cass and Second, and Albert Kahn designed a limestone complex of four fifteen-storey wings on a two-storey base. Ground was broken on 2 June 1919. Durant did not last until the building was finished. He had lost control of General Motors once already, in 1910, and won it back. The slump of 1920 caught him heavily in debt on GM stock, and he was forced out for the second time before the building was complete. The name was changed to the General Motors Building, but the letter D had already been carved into the stonework, and it is still there. When it was completed it was the second-largest office building in the world, and it served as GM's headquarters for most of the twentieth century. The company bought the Renaissance Center in 1996, and the last employees left the boulevard in 2001. The State of Michigan leased the building, renovated it between 2000 and 2002, renamed it after Detroit's founder, and bought it in 2011. Durant, who had started so much of it, ended his career running a bowling alley in Flint.
Getting there
42.3686, -83.0756
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