Campus Tour Preview

Location: Tamarack Way & Woodward Avenue

Dan Hoffman, Ted Gallante, and Juhani Pallasmaa, 1994-1995

Also known as The Gateway to the Campus, this structure serves as the main entrance point for Cranbrook. Designed by former Cranbrook Academy of Art architect-in-residence Dan Hoffman along with Ted Gallante and Juhani Pallasmaa, the Entrance Feature is illuminated at night becoming a subtle beacon along Woodward Avenue. This entrance to Cranbrook opened in 1992.

Location: Northeast end of Institute Way

George Booth, 1930
Eliel Saarinen, 1936-1937 (alterations)
Steven Holl, 1998 (addition and renovation)
Dan Hoffman, Designer, Smith Group, Architects, 2006 (West Entrance and ParkingDeck)

Light Pylon (Light Tower)
Eliel Saarinen and George Booth, 1938

Mermaids and Tritons
Carl Milles, 1925-1934

Designed by Eliel Saarinen and opened in 1936, Cranbrook Institute of Science was expanded to a design by Steven Holl in 1998. The Institute features exhibitions, a planetarium, observatory, exploreLab, and native plant garden.

Location: Corner of Institute Way and Tamarack Way

Built in 1995, this sculpture by Juhani Pallasmaa plays tribute to the geographical heritage of the glacial-born rocks on campus. The melding of stars and stone signify the intersection of science and art at Cranbrook.

Location: South of Institute Way, east of Academy Way

Eliel Saarinen, 1942

SmithGroupJJR, 2009 (renovation and addition)

Built in 1942, Cranbrook Art Museum is one of America’s first contemporary art museums. Today, the Museum presents exhibitions and programming on modern and contemporary architecture, art, crafts, and design.

Location: Cranbrook Art Museum

Cranbrook Archives, part of Cranbrook Center for Collections and Research, is the primary research center for the documentation and study of Cranbrook’s history. The Archives is located in Cranbrook Art Museum.

Venue: Cranbrook Academy of Art & Art Museum
Location: South of Cranbrook Art Museum

Carl Milles
Cast Circa 1926, Bronze

These stunning pools were designed by Eliel Saarinen before he built the Cranbrook Art Museum and Cranbrook Academy of Art Library. Carl Milles sculpted the pool’s tritons, dolphins, and other water creatures, as well as Europa and the Bull.

Photograph by James Haefner.

Venue: Cranbrook Academy of Art & Art Museum
Location: North of Cranbrook Art Museum

Carl Milles
Cast 1937, Bronze

Unveiled in 1938, the Cranbrook version of this fountain by Carl Milles replaced the figure of Orpheus with the sound of the fountain’s water. The male figure with his hands raised to the heavens is Beethoven.

Venue: Cranbrook Academy of Art & Art Museum
Location: Southeast of the intersection of Institute Way and Academy Way

Mark Di Suvero
1998, Steel and Stainless Steel

Di Suvero has created a number of sculptures honoring culturally significant people. Others made monumental by di Suvero include poet Marianne Moore, composer Beethoven, and ancient Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu. Each sculpture expresses qualities of the individual to whom the piece is dedicated. For Mother Teresa was originally installed in Chicago at Navy Pier, 1998-2000.

Venue: Cranbrook Academy of Art & Art Museum
Location: Corner of Institute Way and Academy Way

Carl Milles
1932, 1929; Bronze

This whimsical depiction of the biblical tale of Jonah and the Whale was the first work completed by Carl Milles at Cranbrook and part of a collection of over 60 pieces of the artists’ work purchased by George Booth.

Location: South of Institute Way, east of Academy Way

Eliel Saarinen, 1942

SmithGroupJJR, 2009 (renovation and addition)

Cranbrook Academy of Art is the country’s top ranked, graduate-only program in architecture, design, and fine art. Academy of Art alumni and faculty continually shape the world of art and design.

Designed by Rafael Moneo, the New Studios Building opened in 2002 and provides studio space for the Academy of Art’s Fiber, Ceramics, and Metalsmithing departments, plus exhibition space.

Designed by Eliel Saarinen, Milles House was the home of Swedish master sculptor Carl Milles and his wife Olga from 1931 to 1951. It is now the private residence of the Director of Cranbrook Academy of Art.

Designed by Eliel Saarinen in 1930, the Art Deco-style house served as Eliel and Loja Saarinen’s home and studio through 1950. Saarinen House features works by Eliel, Loja, and their son, Eero. Tours are offered from spring through fall.

Location: Off-campus

School teachers Sara Stein Smith and Melvyn Maxwell Smith, undeterred by their modest salaries and guided by a shared love of architecture, met Frank Lloyd Wright at Taliesin in 1941 and commissioned a custom home. The Smith House in Bloomfield Township is an excellent example of Wright’s Usonian ideal, which aimed to build quality houses for the American middle class. Tours are offered from spring through fall by Cranbrook Center for Collections and Research.

Location: 380 Lone Pine Road, Bloomfield Hills, MI 48304

Albert Kahn, 1908, 1918 (additions - Library/west wing),1919 (additions - Oak Room)

Cranbrook House & Gardens served as the family estate of Cranbrook’s founders, George and Ellen Booth, from 1908 to 1949. The Arts & Crafts-style manor features work by the finest artists and craftsmen of the period. The home is surrounded by 40 acres of gardens with extensive plantings, water features, sculptures, and trails.

Each spring, Cranbrook House & Gardens Auxiliary volunteers create a work of botanical art in this garden through distinctive patterns and color combinations. The four center rows in the center are planted in a new design every year using more than 2,000 annuals. The beds along the fieldstone walls are planted in a traditional English long border style with a variety of perennials that provide color and interest all season long.

Location: North of Cranbrook House

By the time George and Ellen Booth purchased the Cranbrook property in 1904, the small lake that once existed on this site had all but dried up. Under the Booth’s direction, the lake was restored by damming a branch of the River Rouge - or the “Crane”, as the Booths called it - and named Kingswood, after George’s great, great grandmother, Elizabeth Kingswood.

Venue: Cranbrook House & Gardens

Location: East of Kingswood Lake

This secluded garden was converted by the Booths from a Rock Garden to a Japanese Garden in 1915. Although not originally painted red, the bridge was in place at least a year prior. Today, with the support of outside funding, Cranbrook Center for Collections and Research is working to rehabilitate and revitalize the Japanese Garden.

Location: North of the Japanese Garden

George Booth, Designer
Marcus Burrowes, Architect
Pewabic Pottery, Tiles
1916

Designed by George Gough Booth in collaboration with architect Marcus Burrowes, Rainbow Fountain was constructed in 1916, and soon became a favorite spot for Booth family picnics, outings and other activities. The fountain gained its name upon its first use, when the rays of the setting sun caught the spray of the water and enveloped the entire structure in a radiant rainbow.

Incorporated into the boundary wall on the west side of Cranbrook Road, the masonry structure was accented by carved limestone, Pewabic tiles (laid out by Merry Chase Perry Stratton, co-founder of Pewabic Pottery), and a reflecting pool that was added a few years after the original structure was completed. Pairs of corbels, benches, and urns all carved of limestone, completed the decorative elements.

Venue: Cranbrook House & Gardens

Location: West of the main parking lot

Marcus Burrowes, 1915

Cranbrook has one of the few outdoor Greek-style theatres in the country. The semicircle of stone seats 400 people for performances.George Booth designed the general layout of the theater and had the architect Marcus Burrowes finalize the plan. The reflecting pool was originally the family swimming pool. The bronze sculpture at the end of the pool is Persephone, goddess of fertility, by Michigan sculptor Marshall Fredericks.

Today, the theatre is used for performances by St. Dunstan’s Theater Guild of Cranbrook, Cranbrook Academy of Art graduation ceremonies, and the Cranbrook Theater School during the summer.

Venue: Cranbrook House & Gardens
Location: West of the main parking lot

Formerly known as the Cranbrook Pavilion, this 206-seat theatre houses St. Dunstan’s Theatre Guild. Built in 1924, Albert Kahn designed the Playhouse as an open-air pavilion, which was later enclosed by Eliel Saarinen.

Completed in 1928, the English Gothic-style church was built by the Booths to serve as a place of worship for the Bloomfield Hills area. The church is no longer officially connected with the Cranbrook Educational Community. The church became a freestanding congregation in 1973.

George and Ellen Booth’s youngest son, Henry Scripps Booth, designed Thornlea himself for his family in a style reminiscent of Cranbrook House. Thornlea now serves as a popular venue for weddings and other events.

Designed by Eliel Saarinen shortly after he arrived at Cranbrook in 1925 and mirroring traditional English boarding schools, the campus is now half of the Cranbrook Kingswood Upper School.

Opened in 1931 as Kingswood School for Girls, the Prairie-style designed school is considered by many to be Eliel Saarinen’s masterpiece. The three-acre copper roof is one of the largest of its kind in the U.S.

Cranbrook Kingswood Middle School for Boys is a living history lesson in the evolution of architecture at Cranbrook, with multiple generations of design building on a school originally designed by J. Robert F. Swanson.

Designed by Lake/Flato in collaboration with the program’s educators, Cranbrook Kingswood Middle School for Girls – Kingswood is the newest Schools building, and the first all-new campus to be built since the Booths.

Founded in 1922, the buildings were designed by George Booth and his son Henry. The Peter Rose-designed Vlasic Family Early Childhood Center opened in 1996. Brookside serves pre-K through grade 5 students.

Dedicated in 1999, Williams Natatorium merges nature and architecture into a competition-sized swimming pool. The Tod Williams and Billie Tsien-designed Natatorium hosts public and private events.