The Majestic Building was a high-rise building located at 1001 Woodward Avenue in

Downtown ''Downtown'' is a term primarily used in North America by English speakers to refer to a city's sometimes commercial, cultural and often the historical, political and geographic heart. It is often synonymous with its central business distric ...

Detroit, Michigan. The building was constructed in 1896 for the Mabley and Company department store chain and was the city's second

skyscraper A skyscraper is a tall continuously habitable building having multiple floors. Modern sources currently define skyscrapers as being at least or in height, though there is no universally accepted definition. Skyscrapers are very tall high-ris ...

, following the completion of the

Hammond Building The Hammond Building was a high-rise building completed in 1889 at the southeast corner of Griswold Street and M-85 (Michigan highway), West Fort Street in the Detroit Financial District, financial district of downtown Detroit, downtown Detroit, M ...

.Majestic Building
''Historic Detroit''. Retrieved on December 7, 2013. It contained 14 stories and stood at in height. This building was designed in the Beaux-Arts style by

Daniel H. Burnham Daniel Hudson Burnham (September 4, 1846 – June 1, 1912) was an American architect and urban designer. A proponent of the '' Beaux-Arts'' movement, he may have been, "the most successful power broker the American architectural profession has ...

& Company, and faced with terra cotta. The final construction cost of the building was $1,000,000. This was Detroit's tallest building, from its completion in 1896 until 1909, when it was overtaken by the Ford Building. Unfortunately, C. R. Mabley died before the building's completion and new owners used it solely as an office block. It was purportedly renamed the Majestic building to conform with the letter "M" (for Mabley) carved in numerous places in its façade. The Majestic Building was hailed as a "fireproof skyscraper" and this claim was proven in 1915 when a fire broke out on the top floor and burned for two hours. The fire never spread to other floors and never endangered the building's supporting structure. Beginning in 1907, the Majestic Building housed offices and a roof-top observation deck for the United States Weather Bureau for science and meteorologists performing weather observations. This observation deck offered unobstructed views for up to 12 miles in any direction, and was open to the public for a dime admission. '' The Detroit News'' engaged "The Human Fly" Harry H. Gardiner to scale the building's exterior in 1916 as a promotional stunt. The event was scheduled for the noon lunch hour and attracted such a large crowd, that traffic and streetcars on Woodward Avenue came to a halt. The building was demolished in 1962, to make way for the

First Federal Building 1001 Woodward is a 25-floor office building in Downtown Detroit, Michigan. It replaced the Majestic Building, a 14-story high rise on the same site. The building is located just south of the neighboring David Stott Building, at the corner of Wo ...

, which was finished in 1965.

Notes

References

External links

Google Maps location of 1001 Woodward avenue, which occupies the site of the Majestic BuildingMajestic Building at Emporis.comSkyscraperPage.com's profile on Majestic Building
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List of Early Skyscrapers This list of early skyscrapers details a range of tall, commercial buildings built between 1880 and the 1930s, predominantly in the United States cities of New York and Chicago, but also across the rest of the U.S. and in many other parts of the wo ...

{{Buildings in Michigan timeline Skyscraper office buildings in Detroit Demolished buildings and structures in Detroit Office buildings completed in 1896 Buildings and structures demolished in 1962