Luca Carlevarijs was the first of many Venetian scene painters, a documentarian of historical events and a painter of city views for sale to tourists. In 1926, the year before the dedication of Cranbrook School for Boys, Cranbrook founder George G. Booth purchased Cranbrook’s majestic painting by Carlevarijs, The Piazzetta, Venice, for the new Academic Building. The painting’s recent restoration, completed in 2013 thanks to Cranbrook Kingswood School’s Classes of 2000 to 2012, not only returns the painting to active duty—enhanced with a new lamp and its own plaque—but also allows us to more clearly see the special meaning it had for George Booth and it provides a key to his original aspirations for Cranbrook School for Boys. 

St Mark’s Square played a significant role in creating the bond between George Booth and Finnish architect Eliel Saarinen. At the time he began teaching at the University of Michigan in 1923, Eliel Saarinen was asked by the Michigan Chapter of the American Institute of Architects to design a much-desired memorial building for Detroit. George Booth and architect Albert Kahn put up half of the money for this commission. Eliel Saarinen devised a plan based on St. Mark’s Square, complete with a monumental building like St. Mark’s Cathedral, a tall building like the Campanile, and twin columns on the riverside, a motif familiar to many whether travelers or not. Unveiled in late June 1924 in The Detroit News, Eliel Saarinen’s sensational drawings and plan also addressed issues of traffic congestion, parking, and access to the river. In spite of its beauty and practicality, Eliel Saarinen’s idea was not taken up by the City.

George Booth’s purchase of The Piazzetta, Venice for the main reception room of the South Lobby area was accompanied by an additional reference to St. Mark’s Square. By placing a copy of the porphyry stone carving of two (of four) Tetrarchs above and to the left of the main doorway to the South Lobby, he was making a reference to the original porphyry carving long embedded in the fabric of St. Mark’s Cathedral in Venice. In a final flourish late in November 1927, George Booth released white pigeons like those in St. Mark’s Square into the Quadrangle. The dovecote was replaced by Stevens Hall in 1928.