The Horace H. Rackham Education Memorial Building is one of three buildings that comprise Detroit’s Cultural Center Historic District. The three buildings are the Detroit Institute of Arts (1921-1927), the Detroit Public Library (1915-1921), and the Rackham Building (1940-1941).
The cultural center remained unchanged until the construction of the Horace H. Rackham Education Memorial Building in 1940-41. The Rackham Building was planned to provide quarters for the Engineering Society of Detroit, the world’s largest regional society of engineers, scientists, and architects; and the University of Michigan extension service.
Horace Hatcher Rackham was born in Harrison Township, Macomb County, Michigan on June 27, 1858. Rackham graduated from Leslie High School in Leslie, Michigan, in 1878. He moved to Detroit the following year to work at various jobs and study law at night. In 1884 he was admitted to the bar in Wayne County, and he immediately started a law practice.
Rackham’s skill and reputation as a lawyer grew. In 1903, he and his partner John W. Anderson drew up the incorporation papers for the projected Ford Motor Company. The partners had a chance to invest in the new company. Though advised against it, Rackham believed that an investment in the Ford Motor Company might be profitable. He borrowed money on his four-acre farm and subscribed for fifty shares of stock at one hundred dollars per share. This was all he ever invested in the Ford Motor Company, but it was the foundation of a great fortune. In 1913 Rackham retired from his active practice of law.
When Horace Rackham died on June 13, 1933 the value of his estate was more than $25 million. His will stipulated that 84 percent of his estate, or $14 million, was to create the Horace H. Rackham and Mary A. Rackham Fund. The fund’s purpose is to:
“Promote the health, welfare, happiness, education, training and development of men, women, and children, particularly the sick, aged, young, erring, poor, crippled, helpless, handicapped, unfortunate and under-privileged, regardless of race, color, religion or station, primarily in the state of Michigan and elsewhere in the world.”
Construction began in July of 1940 and the building was ready for occupancy in the fall of 1941. Designed by Detroit architects Harley, Ellington, and Day, the Rackham Building was a gift to the University of Michigan and the engineering and scientific community of Michigan by the Horace H. Rackham and Mary A. Rackham fund. The building is an outstanding example of stripped classical design popular in the 1940s, and it completed the trio of Detroit’s most impressive monumental buildings.
Cultural Center Historic District National Register of Historic Places Nomination Form
Engineering Society of Detroit. The Horace H. Rackham Educational Memorial. Dedication issue of the Foundation, the Engineering Society of Detroit. Detroit, 1942.
Brazer, Marjorie Cahn. Biography of an endowment: the Horace H. Rackham and Mary A. Rackham Fund at the University of Michigan. Ann Arbor, 1985.
