McGregor Memorial Conference Center

01 / The story of this place

Make time for these

The McGregor Memorial Conference Center was the first of four buildings Minoru Yamasaki designed for Wayne State University, and many see it as his early masterpiece. The McGregor Fund, set up by Detroit philanthropists Tracy W. and Katherine McGregor, gave about $1.28 million for it, and it opened on May 18, 1958. Yamasaki, the Detroit-based architect who later designed New York's World Trade Center, set two white pavilions of travertine and marble on either side of a central atrium lit by pyramid-shaped skylights, and repeated a triangle motif throughout the building. Behind it he laid out an L-shaped sunken garden with a reflecting pool, first dotted with sculptures by Giacomo Manzù. The building won the American Institute of Architects' First Honor Award, and critics praised how it seemed to float on the water. The pool had decayed by the late 1980s, but Wayne State restored it and reopened it in 2013. McGregor joined the National Register in 2011 and became a National Historic Landmark in 2015.

1. Opened on May 18, 1958, Yamasaki's first Wayne State building
2. Skylit atrium between two white marble and travertine pavilions
3. Sunken garden and reflecting pool, restored in 2013
4. Won the American Institute of Architects' First Honor Award
5. National Historic Landmark since 2015