Cranbrook Educational Community

Cranbrook Educational Community
The Cranbrook Educational Community is an education, research, and public museum complex in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. This National Historic Landmark was founded in the early 20th century by newspaper mogul George Gough Booth. It consists of Cranbrook Schools, Cranbrook Academy of Art, Cranbrook Art Museum, Cranbrook Institute of Science, and Cranbrook House and Gardens. The founders also built Christ Church Cranbrook as a focal point in order to serve the educational complex. However, the church is a separate entity under the Episcopal Diocese of Michigan. The sprawling campus began as a farm, purchased in 1904. The organization takes its name from Cranbrook, England, the birthplace of the founder's father.
Cranbrook is renowned for its architecture in the Arts and Crafts and Art Deco styles. The chief architect was Eliel Saarinen while Albert Kahn was responsible for the Booth mansion. Sculptors Carl Milles and Marshall Fredericks also spent many years in residence at Cranbrook.
Schools at Cranbrook
Cranbrook Schools comprise a co-educational day and boarding college preparatory "upper" school, a middle school, and Brookside Lower School.
In 1922, the Bloomfield Hills School was the first school to open on the Cranbrook grounds. Founded by George Booth, the Bloomfield Hills School was intended as the community school for local area children. The Bloomfield Hills School ultimately evolved into Brookside School. Following completion of the Bloomfield Hills School, Booth looked forward to building Cranbrook School for Boys, an all-boys College-Preparatory school at which students from the Detroit area and abroad would come to reside. Booth wanted the Cranbrook School to possess an architecture reminiscent of the finest British boarding schools; he hired Finnish architect Eliel Saarinen to design the campus. Cranbrook's initial phase of building was completed in 1928.
Over the years, the Cranbrook School for Boys campus grew to include Stevens Hall, Page Hall, and Coulter Hall. While primarily functioning as only residential spaces, Page Hall featured a smoking lounge as well as a shooting range. Lerchen Gymnasium, Keppel Gymnasium, and Thompson Oval were also constructed on the campus. In the 1960s, Cranbrook School for Boys also constructed a state-of-the-art Science Building named the Gordon Science Center.
Realizing that young women would also need a place of their own to learn, Ellen Scripps Booth, Booth's wife, pressured Booth into building a school for girls. Scripps Booth supervised the project, which she named the Kingswood School Cranbrook. Unlike her husband, Scripps Booth encouraged Eliel Saarinen to come up with a unique interior design for the campus completely on his own. Instead of the several buildings that housed the Cranbrook School for Boys, the Kingswood School Cranbrook was contained within one building that included all necessary features, including dormitories, a dining hall, an auditorium, classrooms, a bowling alley, a ballroom, and lounges and common areas. The education at Kingswood School Cranbrook was initially viewed as a "finishing school", though that changed over time.
In 1986, the Cranbrook School for Boys and Kingswood School Cranbrook entered a joint agreement, renaming the new institution the Cranbrook Kingswood Upper School.
Cranbrook Academy of Art
The Cranbrook Academy of Art, a graduate school for architecture, art, and design, was founded by George Booth and Ellen Scripps Booth in 1932. In 1984, The New York Times wrote that "the effect of Cranbrook and its graduates and faculty on the physical environment of this country has been profound ... Cranbrook, surely more than any other institution, has a right to think of itself as synonymous with contemporary American design."
The buildings were designed and the school first headed by Eliel Saarinen, who integrated design practices and theories from the Arts and Crafts movement through the international style. The school continues to be known for its apprenticeship method of teaching, in which a small group of students—usually only 10 to 16 per class, or 150 students in total for the ten departments—study under a single artist-in-residence for the duration of their curriculum. There are no traditional courses; all learning is self-directed under the guidance and supervision of the respective artist-in-residence.
Academics
The school currently confers two degrees: Master of Fine Arts and Master of Architecture. The Master of Architecture degree is a post-professional degree and is not accredited by the National Architectural Accrediting Board. Cranbrook Art Academy currently has 11 departments — 2D Design, 3D Design, 4D Design, Architecture, Ceramics, Fiber, Metalsmithing, Painting, Photography, Print Media and Sculpture. The latest department (4D Design) began taking students in the fall of 2019, under the leadership of Carla Diana, a Cranbrook Art Academy alumna. In 2022, Paul Sacaridiz was appointed the Director of the Cranbrook Academy of Art.
Cranbrook Art Museum
The Cranbrook Art Museum is a museum of contemporary art with a permanent collection, including works by Charles and Ray Eames, Harry Bertoia, Maija Grotell, Carl Milles, Robert Motherwell, Andy Warhol, and Roy Lichtenstein. Completed in 1942 under the direction of architect Eliel Saarinen, the museum is housed in the same building as the Cranbrook Academy of Art.
The museum also offers tours of Saarinen House, which has undergone painstaking restoration beginning in 1977. The remaining areas of the house were completed between 1988 and 1994. The museum is accredited by the American Alliance of Museums.
Sculptor Carl Milles' numerous works in Metro Detroit include those at Cranbrook Educational Community, such as Mermaids & Tritons Fountain (1930), Sven Hedin on a Camel (1932), Jonah and the Whale Fountain (1932), Orpheus Fountain (1936), and Spirit of Transportation (1952), currently in Cobo Center.
In 2009, the museum closed for renovation and expansion, reopening in November 2011. The project restored aspects of the original building designed by Saarinen, made necessary structural repairs, replaced windows, and upgraded mechanical systems. The renovated museum features year-round, changing exhibitions and a new Collections and Education Wing—an additional of storage and classroom space open to visitors by guided tour. Based on an open storage plan, the new wing allows the museum's entire collection to be seen.
Cranbrook Institute of Science
The Cranbrook Institute of Science includes a permanent collection of scientific artifacts, as well as displays of annual temporary exhibits. It also features a planetarium and a powerful telescope through which visitors may peer on selected nights.
The museum grounds feature a life-sized statue of a Stegosaurus.
From 1946 to 1970, the institute awarded the Mary Soper Pope Medal for notable achievement in plant sciences.
Cranbrook House and Gardens
Cranbrook House and Gardens are the centerpiece of the Cranbrook Educational Community campus. The 1908 English Arts and Crafts-style house was designed by Albert Kahn for Cranbrook founders George Booth and Ellen Scripps Booth. Ten first-floor rooms can be seen on guided tours; the rooms contain tapestries, hand-carved woodworking, and English antiques in the Arts and Crafts style. The upper floors are used for the executive offices of the Cranbrook Educational Community.
Originally designed by George Booth, the gardens include a sunken garden, formal gardens, a bog garden, a herb garden, a wildflower garden, a Japanese garden, sculpture, fountains, specimen trees, and a lake.
Leonard Bernstein recalled composing portions of his Symphony No. 2, The Age of Anxiety, on the Cranbrook House Steinway concert grand piano while residing there in April 1946. Bernstein had come to Detroit at the request of Zoltan Sepeshy to conduct the Detroit Symphony Orchestra at Music Hall. While visiting, he requested studio space where he could compose, and Sepeshy had the piano moved from Cranbrook House into St. Dunstan's Playhouse.
The house and gardens are open to the public from May through October.
St. Dunstan's Playhouse
St. Dunstan's Playhouse, while not formally a part of the Cranbrook Educational Community, is located on the Cranbrook grounds near the Cranbrook House. The Playhouse, a 206-seat theater, houses the St. Dunstan's Theatre Guild of Cranbrook. The guild was founded in 1932 by Henry Scripps Booth, the son of Cranbrook's founders George and Ellen Booth.
In the summer months, the St. Dunstan's Theatre Guild performs in the outdoor Greek Theatre adjacent to the Cranbrook House. The theater was restored in 1990–1991.
Historic landmark
Fourteen buildings making up the Cranbrook complex were added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1973 and were further designated a National Historic Landmark in 1989, cited as being "one of the most important groups of educational and architectural structures in America".
The contributing buildings are:
Brookside School Cranbrook
Buildings & Grounds Offices
Christ Church, Cranbrook
Cranbrook Academy of Art
Cranbrook Foundation Office
Cranbrook House & Gardens
Cranbrook Institute of Science
Cranbrook School
Cranbrook School Auditorium
Edison House
Faculty Housing
Greek Theater at St. Dunstan's
Kingswood School Cranbrook
Visitors Entrance
See also
Architecture of metropolitan Detroit
List of Eye magazine issues – (No.3, Vol 1. Spring 1991)
Tourism in metropolitan Detroit
List of National Historic Landmarks in Michigan
National Register of Historic Places listings in Oakland County, Michigan
References
Further reading
A&E with Richard Guy Wilson, Ph.D.,(2000). America's Castles: Newspaper Moguls, Pittock Mansion, Cranbrook House & Gardens, The American Swedish Institute. A&E Television Network.
External links
Official website
Historical Context Timeline of the Cranbrook Educational Community
Design in America : the Cranbrook vision, 1925-1950 from The Metropolitan Museum of Art
1922 establishments in Michigan
Architecture schools in Michigan
Art schools in Michigan
Bloomfield Hills, Michigan
Botanical gardens in Michigan
Buildings and structures in Oakland County, Michigan
Buildings designed by Eliel Saarinen
Education in Oakland County, Michigan
Educational institutions established in 1922
Graphic design schools in the United States
Historic districts on the National Register of Historic Places in Michigan
Houses in Oakland County, Michigan
Institutions accredited by the American Alliance of Museums
National Historic Landmarks in Metro Detroit
National Register of Historic Places in Oakland County, Michigan
Tourist attractions in Metro Detroit
Tourist attractions in Oakland County, Michigan
Anthropology museums in the United States
Art museums and galleries in Michigan
Dinosaur museums in the United States
Geology museums in the United States
Paleontology in Michigan
Planetaria in the United States