Where Today Meets Tomorrow: Eero Saarinen and the General Motors Technical Center by Susan Skarsgard (review)

Book Reviews 207 answers questions the board tackled in their efforts to explain what had happened. Was the ship seaworthy? Were inspections up to date? Was the crew properly trained? Again, this is told through excerpts of the witness testimony, with each speaker and his role in the investigation identified. The cast of characters here is large, but a witness list at the end of the book provides a useful reference to help the reader keep track. This section ends with a postscript from Schumacher, explaining the eventual underwater efforts that positively identified the wreckage and its history since, ending with legislation that limited access to the wreck and recognized it as the gravesite of the Fitzgerald’s twenty-nine lost crewmembers. The third section consists of three documents: the report from the Coast Guard board of inquiry—detailing both their theory as to how the loss happened and recommendations to prevent like disasters in future— a response from the shipping industry body vehemently opposing the board’s conclusions, and the National Transportation and Safety Board’s marine accident report. These documents provide some closure to the earlier questions surrounding the loss while also explaining why controversy continues over what exactly happened. On the whole, the book provides a well-curated narrative. It will be of particular interest as an entrée to the primary sources for the enthusiast of Great Lakes shipping or shipwrecks broadly, and of course the Edmund Fitzgerald specifically. But Schumacher has also succeeded in making it quite approachable for someone whose only previous knowledge of the Fitzgerald comes from Lightfoot. Penelope K. Hardy University of Wisconsin-La Crosse Susan Skarsgard. Where Today Meets Tomorrow: Eero Saarinen and the General Motors Technical Center. Hudson, New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2019. Pp. 256. Bibliography. Illustrations. Index. Hardcover: $60.00. In 1944, as the Second World War drew to a close, General Motors’ corporate luminaries Alfred Sloan and Charles Kettering anticipated that there would be a robust growth in the automobile industry in peacetime America. Answering the need for a new headquarters that could consolidate all of GM’s departments onto a single location, the General Motors Technical Center was constructed, opening its doors in 1956. Susan Skarsgard, founder of the GM Design Archives and Special Collections, offers a vivid and energetic account of the creation of the 208 The Michigan Historical Review Center from conception to completion. Replete with numerous photographs of the Technical Center in its 1950s prime, this book is both authoritative and beautiful. The GM Technical Center was conceived under the leadership of Alfred Sloan, company president from 1920-1947. When the company outgrew its Detroit headquarters in 1944, it purchased 88 acres in Warren. From its conception, every element of the new campus was conceived to inspire creativity and reflect the company’s focus on style and advanced engineering. To this end, the design of the campus was given to the architectural firm of Eliel and Eero Saarinen: Finnish-born architects whose design philosophy reflected the influence of the Bauhaus school. No expense was spared in making every element of the campus beautiful, from the styling of the buildings (designed to reference their intended purposes) down to the silverware in the executive dining room. In 1956, just six years after ground was broken, the Center opened with much fanfare and media acclaim. Walter Cronkite was Master of Ceremonies at the grand opening; this included a live telecast from President Eisenhower, who delivered an address from the White House. With unsparing attention to detail, the Technical Center anticipated by half a century the palatial campuses of the likes of Google, Facebook, and Apple. Its buildings were arranged into five groupings: engineering, research, styling, process development, and service organization. Their rectilinear, flat-roofed forms echoed the geometry of the site’s large, manmade lake; accented with a fountain designed by Alexander Calder. To establish a visual personality for each department, each had a distinctive, cavernous lobby replete with sleek, space-age furniture and visually arresting staircases that seemed to defy the laws of gravity. The ethos of the campus exuded the company’s optimistic vision of a technology-driven future. Skarsgard emphasizes the significance of...