Detroit’s J.L. Hudson Building: From historic landmark to modern skyscraper
Explore the transformation of Detroit’s iconic J.L. Hudson building from its origins in 1911 as the world’s tallest department store to its dramatic implosion in 1998, and finally to the rise of a new skyscraper in 2024 that revitalizes the city’s skyline.
- A long-lost sculpture by artist Harry Bertoia was rediscovered in a mall basement in 2017.
- The piece was originally commissioned in 1970 for Flint’s Genesee Valley Center.
- After being restored, the sculpture is now on public display in Detroit’s new Hudson’s/General Motors headquarters.
- Bertoia was an internationally known artist with deep ties to the Detroit area.
A striking mid-century sculpture by renowned artist Harry Bertoia, once thought lost for decades, now graces the atrium of Detroit’s new Hudson’s/General Motors headquarters.
Originally commissioned for Flint’s Genesee Valley Center in 1970, the piece featured two large “clouds” of brazed metal rods – dubbed “sunlit straw” – that hung in the mall’s multi-story court. After the mall’s sale and renovation in 1980, the sculptures vanished from public view.
In 2017, Terri Stearn of Detroit Fine Arts Appraisal and Jeffrey Lygon, owner of Fantoni – both former members of the Southfield Arts Commission – were called to the basement of Southfield’s Northland Mall. Beneath layers of dirt, they unearthed the long-lost sculpture and immediately recognized the work as a Bertoia.
“They said, ‘If it’s just good metal, we can scrap it and get some money for it,’” Stearn recalled. “We had hard hats on, it was dirty, there was no electricity down there; we had flashlights, and I’m looking at this thing with Jeff, and it’s corroded in dust. You can’t even knock the dust off; it’s been there for decades. And I look at Jeff, and we both go, ‘Bertoia!’ at the same time. It was so exciting. We screamed, we were so excited – like kids in a candy store. I said, ‘Jeff, this is something that has been missing, I bet you.’
“Back in that day, it was really normal to spend a lot of money on nice sculptures for malls. They were really expensive for the time, like maybe $30,000 or $40,000, but are worth hundreds of thousands now. Malls were really starting to pop up and be really important, and they were making them luxury malls.”
Born in Italy in 1915, Bertoia moved to America at age 15, attending Cass Technical School and, later, the College for Creative Studies, then Cranbrook Academy of Art. He grew to become one of the mid-century art movement’s internationally praised masters. In 1943, he married another Cranbrook student, Brigitta Valentiner; Valentiner’s father, Wilhelm, was the director of the Detroit Institute of Arts at the time.
Harry Bertoia died of lung cancer in 1978. The artist’s daughter, Celia Bertoia, now runs a Utah-based foundation to protect and advance his artistic legacy. She called the sculpture “very important.”
“This was a collaboration with Victor Gruen Associates and Louis Redstone Associates back in 1970, and the director of the Hudson art gallery,” Celia said of the sculpture that now hangs at Hudson’s. “He was a go-between of various artists and these architects, and they pulled in my father for this project. They wanted something that was going to be hanging in their open court, so he came up with this piece. It was originally hung from a single point, which in itself is kind of miraculous, because I’m sure it weighs literally about a ton.
“It’s basically just steel wire that is melt-coated with brass, bronze and various other alloys to create a great texture on these wires. We affectionately refer to this type of sculpture as ‘straw.’ It’s a wonderful piece.”
Celia has been involved in the sculpture’s journey since that 2017 discovery.
“I got a call several years ago,” she said, “that they had discovered this piece in a basement, and they sent me some photos where I couldn’t even fully tell what the heck it was. But, after researching it and trying to decipher what these photos were, we came to the conclusion that this was indeed a Bertoia sculpture – the original one that had been at the Genesee mall. It was a wonderful surprise, and there it was in a dark, dingy basement, all bent up.
“I know they had to go through a major process of having it conserved and cleaned and repaired. They got the right people to do the conservation on it. Now, it’s in a glorious spot there. It’s fabulous. The Harry Bertoia Foundation is really happy to see it out in the public eye again, where everyone can enjoy it, and we hope that happens with a few other monumental sculptures that are hiding out there.”