Cemented Legacy

Albert Kahn has been called “the father of industrial architecture” and “the architect of Detroit.” His firm was certainly prolific: it was responsible for the Ford Motor Company of Canada factory in Toronto, near a laneway that bears his name, and the General Motors assembly plant in Regina, along with nearly 900 buildings in Motor City alone. Kahn’s oeuvre encompassed offices, grand homes for his industrialist clients, and libraries and fraternity houses at the University of Michigan, in Ann Arbor, not to mention a post office, a synagogue, and multiple hospitals and skyscrapers. Many of Kahn’s buildings reflect a pastiche of styles that might be considered a precursor of a postmodern eclectic. Yet this prolific architect is relatively unknown today, especially outside of Michigan.

In the preface to Albert Kahn Inc.: Architecture, Labor, and Industry, 1905–1961, the University of Toronto professor Claire Zimmerman notes that in the 1980s, “my generation...