Over on Detroit’s east side, tucked away in Jefferson Chalmers, is a delightfully unique Modernist house, designed by influential Black Modernist architect Roger Margerum as his personal home.
The 3,000-square-foot house at 430 Kitchener St. faces the street at a 45-degree angle and overlooks the Grayhaven Marina. It looks like nothing else in the neighborhood - or in the city, for that matter. The house is an ode to the 45-degree angle - even sitting on the lot at 45 degrees.
Margerum was known for his light-filled geometric designs, and for being an early trailblazer in a predominately white-dominated industry.
He was born May 14, 1930, in Chicago, and at age 10, signed up for Saturday classes at the Art Institute of Chicago. He attended DePaul University and received an architecture degree from the University of Illinois in 1955. After graduating, he was hired at the firm Skidmore, Owings and Merrill. He later worked at the Chicago firm Holabird & Root, but moved to Detroit in the late 1960s, taking a job at the legendary firm Smith, Hinchman & Grylls (today known as the Smith Group). There, he brought in Japanese designer Isamu Noguchi to design Hart Plaza’s iconic Dodge Fountain, and also led an effort to work with minority architects on projects in Detroit.
In 1973, he started his own firm, opening offices in Detroit and Chicago - one of the first independent minority-owned firms in the country. He would design churches, businesses and schools, including an addition to Kettering High School and Detroit People Mover stations.
In 1984, Margerum was selected as president of the Michigan Society of Architects. He also was a founding member of the National Organization of Minority Architects, and received the Detroit Lifetime Achievement Award in 2008 and the AIA Detroit, Gold Medal in 2011.
He cited Ludwig Mies van der Rohe as an influence (and proudly had a Mies-designed chair in his living room, from which he’d watch the boats at the marina). But his favorite design of his, he said, was a picnic shelter at Riverside Park near the Ambassador Bridge, which he called beautiful in its simplicity.
Margerum closed his practice in 2000, and his wife, Fran, asked him to design her a house. The result, the house on Kitchener, is one of the most unique houses in the city - and far more of an architectural exclamation point than the Riverside picnic shelter.
“I had to satisfy her, but also myself,” Margerum told Detroit Design Magazine in 2009. “And the only way to satisfy myself was to design something architecturally significant. I believe I’ve done that. To my knowledge, no one before has used the 45-degree polygon as a rigid module. …
“I’ve proven that you can go beyond the square-modular design we’ve used for 100 years.”
Fran passed away in 2009, and in August 2013, with his health failing, Margerum sold the house for a paltry $35,000, and moved into an assisted living facility in suburban Dearborn, Michigan.
Margerum died June 21, 2016, at age 85 after complications from a stroke. He left an incredible legacy on the city’s skyline, blazed new trails for other architects of color - and one delightfully unique house on the city’s east side.