Many of the University’s well-known and stately buildings built prior to this one were by Albert Kahn - The Hill Auditorium (1913), The Clements Library (1923), and one of our beautiful neighbors, The University Museum (1928.) Also known as the Ruthven, it is now an administrative building since the 2022 demolition of the Fleming Building.
Yet Lewis J Sarvis of Battle Creek was the architect for the Kellogg Institute Building. He was also the architect for the Health Service Building (1940) and the Public Health Building (1942). Most of these buildings listed above can be clicked to link to the Bentley Historical Library's Chronology of University of Michigan Buildings, 1840-1999.
These were not Sarvis’ only higher education buildings built with Works Progress Administration funding! The Library of Congress has digitzed drawings that you can see here of the Speech and Hearing Building (1939) built in Kalamazoo for Western State Teachers College, now known as Western University. Then he came back to ann Arbor one more time that we know of, to design the Maternity Hospital, also called "Women's Hospital," in 1950.
Do you see any similarities between his designs for the two universities? We'll put a wintery old photo of the Kellog Building's entrance up to compare and contrast agaisnt one of those Library of Congress elevation drawings for Western.
