Baird Carillon
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Burton Memorial Tower (Baird Carillon)
1935–1936, Albert Kahn; 2000 restoration, Quinn Evans. 230 S. Ingalls St.
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(Photograph by Balthazar Korab)
The Art Deco carillon tower rises 212 feet over the campus in tribute to Marion Leroy Burton, president of the University of Michigan from 1920 to 1925. An unexecuted design for the tower, with stepped setbacks, submitted at the request of the student body by Eliel Saarinen, who was visiting professor in the university's school of architecture in 1923–1924, inspired the eventual form planned by Kahn, with its streamlined verticality and setbacks. The fund-raising was completed with a gift from Charles M. Baird, a former University of Michigan student who became the university athletic director. A reinforced-concrete shell faced with limestone, nearly forty-two feet square at the base, carries the large floor area and rigid structural frame necessary to support the one-hundred-ton, sixty-seven-bell Baird Carillon. The fountain sculpture by Carl Milles in the mall, Sunday Morning in Deep Waters (1940), depicts Triton, Greek god of the sea, frolicking in the waves with his piscine children.
Writing Credits
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Data
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Location: Ann Arbor, MichiganRegional Overviews:Architect:Types:Styles:Parent Entry: University of Michigan Central Campus
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Citation
Kathryn Bishop Eckert, "Burton Memorial Tower (Baird Carillon)", [Ann Arbor, Michigan], SAH Archipedia, eds. Gabrielle Esperdy and Karen Kingsley, Charlottesville: UVaP, 2012—, http://sah-archipedia.org/buildings/MI-01-WA7.2.
Print Source
Buildings of Michigan, Kathryn Bishop Eckert. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2012, 144-144.
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