Kales Building (Detroit, Michigan)

 high-rise, NRHP - National Register of Historic Places, 1914_construction, Renaissance Revival (architecture)

The Kales Building is a highrise building in Downtown Detroit, Michigan. It is located across Adams Street from Grand Circus Park in the Foxtown neighbourhood. It was designed by Albert Kahn and has a height of 258 ft (79 m) and 18 floors with one basement level. Kahn went beyond the typical Chicago school style and styled the building with a clean-lined detail facade with Neo-Classical and Renaissance Revival elements such as a hipped roof and arched upper windows. It was built in 1914 as the Kresge Building and housed the headquarters of the S.S. Kresge Corporation which occupied 9 of the 18 floors. The rest of the floors were lesed out to doctors and dentists and the storefronts included a pharmacy. The Kresge Company moved out of the building in 1930 for anew headquarters in Cass Park and the Kales Building remained a prime location for medical offices. Eventually, the Kales Building began to lose tenants in the 1970s and the building became completely vacant when last tenant moved out in 1986. In the 1990s, plans were brought up for two sports stadiums on the west side of Woodward Avenue and demolition of the Kales Building was considered to make space for parking. The building's future was put in limbo when the proposed stadiums were shifted to the opposite side of Woodward. In 1999, an announcement was made to convert the building into loft apartments. The Kales Building was renovated in 2003-2004 and now contains 117 residential units with ground-level retail space.