Federal Mogul Staff Office Building

People: Louis A. Rossetti

Date: 1966

City: Southfield

Michigan State Historic Preservation Office, photo by Rob Yallop.

The Federal Mogul Staff Offices are located on a gently sloping, eighteen-acre site adjacent to Highway M10 near its intersection with Interstate 696. The facility comprises approximately 148,000 square feet of office space housed in two interconnected buildings, the Division Building and the Staff Building. The Division Building is a three-story, steel frame and concrete structure with a strong horizontal emphasis created by dark bands of recessed curtain wall separated by white concrete fascias at each floor. The second floor of the Division Building is extended out to form a three-acre paved podium on which the sixty-nine thousand-square foot Staff Building is set. The Staff Building rises three stories above the podium. The first floor of the Staff Building is an all glass lobby above which are two more glazed curtain wall floors enclosed in a modular pre-cast concrete frame. The glazed curtain wall of the lowest level extends to grade further emphasizing the building’s lightness and giving the impression that the structure is floating above the landscape.

Growing sales and expansion and diversification of its operations prompted Detroit’s Federal-Mogul Corporation to relocate its headquarters to Southfield in the mid-1960s. Construction of the new facility was the final project of a five-year, $68 million capital improvements campaign by the company that produced bearings for the automotive industry. Several alternate sites were studied before the final selection was made of an eighteen-acre parcel near the intersection of the John C. Lodge Freeway and Interstate 696. Factors that contributed to locating the new facility included convenient accessibility for employees and visitors, room for expansion, environmental quality and visibility. Additionally studies indicated at the time that the Southfield area was poised to become the population center for southeastern Michigan.

Design of the new facility, completed by Giffels and Rossetti Inc. consolidated corporate and divisional operations into a single complex. The idea was that “decision-making could be reduced to walking down the hall instead of requiring a long-distance phone call.” Also, staff that were brought from facilities in Pennsylvania and California could be closer to their major customers in the Midwest. Construction of the new headquarters took place between March 1965 and May 1966 and cost approximately $5 million.

General Contractor: Barton Malow Company