Excerpts from the article:
The Bavarian-born Kamper once ranked among Detroit's most prolific architects. Working with the Book family of real estate developers in the 1920s, Kamper virtually created the Washington Boulevard we know today, with commissions including the Book-Cadillac Hotel and the Book Tower office structure.
At his peak, Kamper rivaled even the great Albert Kahn for shaping Detroit's skyline. Yet if Kahn is remembered, admired and studied today, Kamper, who died in 1953, has long since been consigned to the dustbin of architectural history.
Kamper had trained in the New York offices of McKim, Mead and White before he moved to Detroit in 1888. Ignoring the modernism that was springing up all around him, he continued to turn out one building after the next that relied on late medieval or Renaissance imagery.
But there are signs that buildings like Kamper's are winning new admirers. The rise of postmodernism in the 1980s and '90s, a movement that consciously used historical decoration, if only in a cartoonish way, made history popular again in architecture.
Put more simply, fun is back in architecture, and Kamper's buildings, at their best, are fun. If his smaller buildings work better than his tall ones, if he sometimes overdid the decoration, if his handling of very tall compositions could be a little clumsy, his best work created a series of striking Detroit landmarks.
To read full length article click here
Enjoy this story?
Sign up for free solutions-based reporting in your inbox each week.