Clements Library Style and Organization

The Clements Library stands out as architect Albert Kahn's favorite work, an impressive essay in the Italian Renaissance Revival Style. [1] Trustee William Lawrence Clements (1861-1934) of Bay City, MI., apparently suggested this style to the architect for the building, although Kahn, a well-established designer by this point, probably influenced his decision. [2] Kahn produced a small rectangular design, grandly set back from South University Ave. and elevated slightly on a terrace that is ringed by a balustrade. (See Illustration 1) To increase the building's stateliness and to emphasize the visitor's process of approaching the library, two levels of steps ceremoniously lead to the front door. To sheath the Clements' steel and concrete skeleton, Kahn specified the use of smooth Indiana limestone, a durable, relatively costly material that further signified the building's institutional importance.

Kahn organized the Clements on two stories, with the Main Hall, a central reading room, and the Treasure Room, a storage space for rare materials, occupying most of the first floor. Offices and storage were located in a basement . The main reading room had a domestic appearance, resembling a personal library in a grand, turn-of-the-century residence or a men's club smoking room. Heavy, revival-styled furniture filled the Main Hall. Elaborate wood paneling covered the walls, and the high ceiling bore a rich, coffered design. In proportion, this space echoed the library at Garra-Tigh, Clements' Bay City residence designed by Kahn in 1908. As at Garra-Tigh, book stacks on a mezzanine floor overlooked the reading room. The appearance of the space-its rich materials, correct period revival styling and substantial furniture, and ornamental detailing--suggested the institution's generous endowment and exclusivity.

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Illustration 3. Corinthian Capital

Typical of the Italian Renaissance Revival Style, the design features a simple, tripartite front elevation, with a prominent central loggia, flanked by two trabeated windows on either side. (See Illustration 2) The three arches of the main entryway spring from two delicately detailed Corinthian capitals. (See Illustration 3).

Three doors line the interior of the loggia, each protected by bronze grillework, and two aediculae, sculpture niches topped by carved clamshells found frequently in Italian Renaissance architecture, are set perpindicularly on side walls to them. The main doors are alternately trabeated, pedimented , and trabeated again, an ornamental scheme again typical of the style. The groin vaults of the loggia have been painted in a celestial pattern by Thomas di Lorenzo, a New York painter who collaborated with Kahn on Angell Hall and with many other Beaux-Arts architects of the 1920s. (See Illustration 4) Three carved medallions hang over the three doors, depicting the coats of arms of the University of Michigan, Christopher Columbus, and George Washington. [3]

The Clements is an amalgam of Renaissance Revival details that Kahn could have sketched on his several trips to Italy before 1920 and reassembled. By 1922-1923, the educational methods of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts had been in place for twenty to thirty years in American schools of education; as a result of this shared methodology, American architects frequently developed consistent plan typologies and elevation designs for specific functions. While the plans and façades of Beaux-Arts buildings were often organized in similar ways, Beaux-Arts architects employed various styles to differentiate their efforts. New York architect Richard Morris Hunt's Fogg Art Museum at Harvard University (Cambridge, MA, 1895), displayed a similar modest scale and tripartite façade arrangement to the Clements, but was executed in a more severe Greek Revival Style. By 1915, architects had turned away from this rather generic and austere style and had begun to utilize correct Italian Renaissance ornamental motifs in designs for art museums and libraries.

1. See Grant Hildebrand, Designing for Industry: The Architcture of Albert Kahn, (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1974), p. 135. Hildebrand wrrote of the Clements Library: "Kahn sensed its fineness and was proud of it; he stated on several occasions that of all the buildings he had done this was his favorite."

2. Buildings and Lands, v. 4, p. 1609-1610, "The new building [the Clements] was planned by Albert Kahn, of Detroit, under the direction of Regent Clements. The latter specified a style of architecture in vogue in northern Italy when Columbus left Genoa to plan his epoch-making voyage. As a result, the building is Italian Renaissance in general style, executed in Indiana limestone." See also J. Franklin Jameson, The American Historian's Raw Materials, (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan, 1923), p. 3: "The Library was planned out by Albert Kahn of Detroit, carrying out detailed specifications drawn up by Mr. Clements. Mr. Kahn personally drew the basic designs for the structure, and has overseen the furnishings and fittings. His keen interest in the building and its peculiar problems has been most fortunate in its results. "

3. Jameson, p. 3.