Future Friday: The Detroit That Never Was, Part IV

Aviation Town and Country Club Building

 

With all the changes Washington Boulevard has gone through, of course there were plenty more ideas which were abandoned. Postcards, seemingly from another universe, show both the non-existent Aviation Town and Country Club Building, and the Book Tower we know dwarfed behind an even larger Book Tower on the southern end of the Book Building. The back of the Book Tower card boasts that the structure is 873 feet tall, 81 floors, and the tallest building in the world with no hint that the structure did not yet exist, and due to the Great Depression, would never. Had it, it would tower over a hundred feet above the Renaissance Center. Below at street level, Washington Boulevard, prior to the red tube-lined pedestrian mall, was proposed as an entrance to an underground parking structure in a 1946 photo composite. And as the city continues to change, we will continue to see plans for Detroit which will get left by the wayside for better or worse. Will future Detroiters view the animation of the Woodward Avenue Light Rail Project or concept art of the Cadillac Centre the same we see the 873 foot tall Book Tower, or will they simply see an early incarnation of a piece of their world?

Book Tower

 

Retouched photo of Washington Boulevard includes entrances to underground parking.