American Center
Office/retail in Southfield-Detroit, United States
The American Center is a high-rise tower in the Metro Detroit suburb of Southfield, Michigan, built in 1975 as the corporate headquarters for the automaker American Motors Corporation (AMC), which was subsequently acquired by Chrysler Corporation in 1987. The building is located adjacent to Interstate 696, M-10, and US 24 interchange.
Upgraded in 2001, the office tower has 27 floors, including a basement, and has been owned and managed since 2017 by Redico, a Southfield-based real estate developer.
01Architecture
The structural system consists of s trussed steel frame. Designed as a modern architecture tower, the curtain wall facade was originally golden glass. The tower is square in plan, with chamfered corners. The elevator core is unusual in that it is rotated 45 degrees relative to the tower's axis. The building also includes a parking garage and retail spaces. It has a Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) "Certified Silver" designation.
02Development
American Motors was planning in the late 1960s to move out of the Plymouth Road complex (14250 Plymouth Road) in Detroit, a facility built in the 1910s for Kelvinator. The company announced in 1973 that it would move to a new building in Southfield, the American Motors Corporation Office Building. In 1975, AMC moved its corporate offices to the glass-and-steel skyscraper in Southfield, joining the exodus of companies from Detroit.
American Motors began selling off its non-automotive holdings to focus its resources on an expensive future vehicle planning program. Thus, in October 1973, AMC became a tenant in its own headquarters. It occupied 35% of the building, but sold the building and the 94 acres (38 ha) of land for $51 million to Hall Real Estate Group in Texas and two Michigan partners: developer Martin Ross and Detroit attorney Erwin Ziegelman.
The AMC logo remained on the building, which housed AMC's executive offices and its administrative, marketing, sales, financial, and legal departments. Pictures of the office tower appeared in corporate press releases, stockholders' reports, and marketing materials, including on the cover of the 1980 sales brochure for its cars. The company continued its automotive design and engineering operations at the Plymouth Road complex in Detroit, as Chrysler did for a time after acquiring AMC.
After the acquisition, Chrysler Financial occupied ten floors of the building, 175,000 square feet (16,300 m2), and the Michigan Court of Appeals occupied approximately 33,500 square feet (3,110 m2).
The building was owned by Charter One Bank (which, as of 2004, was owned by Citizens Financial Group).
Sources and credits
This article is adapted from the Wikipedia article “American Center”, written by its contributors and licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Fathomly has changed the layout, removed citation markers, navigation and maintenance notices, and adjusted punctuation. This adapted version is shared under the same license. For references, see the original article.
Images, from Wikimedia Commons:
- AmericanCenter2.jpg by Dave Parker, CC BY 3.0
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