One Detroit CenterThis past weekend, we headed to The D for the first Pure Detroit Skyscraper Tour of the season. The tour starts at the Guardian Building (a view of the interior of the building can be seen below) which is an Art Deco marvel unlike anything I had ever seen before. From there the tour guide, who is a historic preservationist and urban planner, takes you around several blocks and tells you about the history of skyscrapers and architecture in Detroit. It was interesting learning about the history of the city from original 1701 Detroit settlement to the Renaissance Center, or as our tour guide like to call it, GM’s Galactic World Headquarters,. The building pictured to the left is one of the newest buildings featured on the tour, One Detroit Center, which was completed in 1993 and is the second tallest building in Michigan (second only to the Renaissance Center). The best thing about this tour? Its free! Pure Detroit offers this tour as well as tours of the Guardian Building and Fischer Building that are free and open to the public every Saturday and Sunday. Visit PureDetroit.com for times and for more information. I’m making it a goal to go back and do a tour of the Fischer Building this summer.

Guardian Promenade

The downside to doing a skyscraper tour is that is was hard to get a good shot because everything around us was so, well, tall. And, the few shots I got inside the Guardian Building didn’t really turn out because I had my aperture too wide so one point is in focus while the rest of is fuzzy and while that is great for portraiture, it doesn’t look right in architecture photography. The photo above was actually taken with my iPhone. I will have to go back to the Guardian Building and try it again with different settings.

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