Front façade Composition:
Neo-Classical Revival Features

Hill Auditorium is, arguably, Albert Kahn's most technically innovative and stylistically successful building on the University of Michigan campus. (See Illustration 1) Its form consists of a broad, rectangular block composed of dark brick laid in English bond. (As architectural historian, Grant Hildebrand, has suggested, the choice of this color brick may have been influenced by buildings Kahn saw during his 1912 travels in northern Italy near Bologna.) [1] The grand, main entrance composed of four colossal limestone columns set in antis and a broad limestone trim band, contrasts boldly with the wall fabric's dark brick. (This entrance, set within the contours of the building's rectangular form, had a bold, minimal quality unusual for most monumental buildings of the era, which often displayed traditional, projecting Classical porticos and pedimented roofs, as at Smith College's Green Hall Auditorium, [Northampton, MA, ca. 1912].) (See Illustration 2.)

The solidity and massiveness of the brick block and its limestone entrance is counterpointed by the delicate brick tracery edging the main entry. This touch of polychromy, reflective of mid-nineteenth century ideals of John Ruskin, is the building's most memorable detail. It is present in a number of other buildings by Kahn at the UM campus, usually trimming cornice lines. [2]

In elevation, the main block has been segmented into clear sections, according with the classical paradigm of base, shaft, and cornice. A limestone plinth serves as a solid visual foundation. An intermediary (shaft) section exists between a limestone belt course and a terra cotta band just above the column capitals. A classically-inspired cornice tops the building, its prominence enriched by limestone detailing and molded, terra cotta antefixae. This main block has two rectangular wings appended symmetrically on each side, each housing an entryway. Originally, two steel and glass marquees projected out from the building, but these have been removed. Another appendage, housing the stage, projects to the rear. Heavy clay tiles, perhaps another touch that Kahn observed in Italy, cover the building's hipped roof.

1. Grant Hildebrand, Designing for Industry: The Architecture of Albert Kahn, (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1974), p. 90.

2. As Hildebrand has noted, the Science Building (1917) and the General Library (now Hatcher, 1919), as well as several other buildings designed as airfields for the military, share this use of colorful brick trim to contrast with a predominant, dark brick fabric. See Hildebrand, Designing for Industry, p. 79-80.