As he set about to build a school on his estate, George Booth, along with his son Henry Scripps Booth and J. Robert F. Swanson (both recent graduates from the University of Michigan’s architecture program), initially studied how to simply remodel his 1911 dairy farm buildings into classrooms. Eliel Saarinen, who had been a professor of the younger architects at Michigan, was hired as a consultant to the project and after the contractor, Charles R. Wermuth of Fort Wayne, Indiana, found it would be cheaper to build a completely new structure instead of remodeling, plans were developed for a cohesive new quadrangle. The plan of the school developed by Saarinen in close consultation with both Booths and Swanson follows the contours of the old farm buildings: an observatory tower replaced the grain silo, the hay barn became the Assembly Hall, and the wagon shed, implement shop, and blacksmith studio became the Study Hall, library workroom, and Library Reading Room.

The School complex consists of brick buildings with carved stone details and red tile roofs arranged around a central quadrangle and connected to ancillary courtyards and terraces. Recalling in form the popular Collegiate Gothic of the 1920s, in detail Saarinen weaves together elements of medieval, Arts and Crafts, and contemporary Scandinavian and Art Deco design. Along with the extraordinarily high quality of craftsmanship, it is Saarinen’s ability to evoke the past without directly copying historic forms that remains one of the School for Boys’ most memorable achievements.

Hoey Hall (the main academic building) is marked by a large octagonal tower, originally home to a telescope, at the base of which is the entrance to the South Lobby. Featuring a Pewabic Pottery fireplace with decorative tiles by Eliel Saarinen’s seventeen-year-old son Eero opposite a seventeenth-century Italian painting by Luca Carlevarijs of Venice. The room is defined by its concrete rib slab ceiling with painted decoration designed by daughter Pipsan Saarinen Swanson. Nearby, the North Lobby  is marked by the two-story Map Depicting the Principal Expeditions of Discovery and Exploration, showing a history of colonization in North America in muted earth-tone egg tempera by John Hession, Jr. Off the North Lobby , the former Junior Study Hall features exposed timber beams with painted decoration and leads into the historic Library Reading Room, where the monumental overmantel by the Hungarian architect and sculptor Géza Maróti depicts The Gift of Knowledge.

At one end of the Dining Hall hangs the Clock of the Handicrafts by Oscar Bach, marking the hour with aluminum hands over a clockface of iron, bronze, copper, and brass figures of artisans at work: a weaver, bookbinder, potter, sculptor, and other crafts surround two blacksmiths at the center, hammering away. Established by George Booth, an ironworker himself, and his wife Ellen Scripps Booth, Cranbrook School for Boys stands as a testament to the best craftsmanship of the era from a talented team of international architects and designers.

Kevin Adkisson
Associate Curator
Cranbrook Center for Collections and Research
June 2020