Architecture & design
Paul Philippe Cret
1876–1945 · architect
French-born Philadelphia architect who designed the Detroit Institute of Arts' Beaux-Arts museum building on Woodward Avenue (1927).
- Born
Lyon, France- Died
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
aged 68- Also known as
- Paul Cret
- Detroit years
- 1923–1927
01 / The Detroit story
The Detroit story
Cret trained at the École des Beaux-Arts in Lyon and Paris and taught for more than thirty years at the University of Pennsylvania. In the early 1920s the Detroit Institute of Arts, backed by the booming auto economy, chose him as design architect for a new museum across Woodward Avenue from Cass Gilbert's library. Working with the Philadelphia firm Zantzinger, Borie and Medary, he produced a restrained Italian Renaissance palace of white Vermont marble, built between 1923 and 1927. Inside, galleries were arranged so that visitors could walk through art history period by period, an idea championed by DIA director William Valentiner. The building's central Garden Court was soon transformed by Diego Rivera's Detroit Industry frescoes. Cret's building, expanded several times since, is still the heart of the DIA and of Detroit's Cultural Center.
Highlights
- Design architect of the Detroit Institute of Arts building (1923–1927)
- Its Garden Court became Rivera Court, home of the Detroit Industry Murals
- Also designed the Barnes Foundation and Rodin Museum in Pennsylvania
- Taught architecture at the University of Pennsylvania for over 30 years
02 / Their Detroit places
Their Detroit places 1
Where they lived, worked, performed and liked to hang out. Closed and demolished places stay here too, because they are part of the city's history.
Worked here · 1923–1927
Detroit Institute of Arts (Friday Night Live!)
The marble museum building he designed with Zantzinger, Borie and Medary; later wings wrap around his original core.