Albert Kahn

Albert Kahn (March 21, 1869 – December 8, 1942) was an American industrial architect. He was accredited as being an architect of Detroit and also designed industrial plant complexes such as the Ford River Rouge automobile complex. He designed the construction of Detroit skyscrapers and office buildings as well as mansions in the city suburbs. He led an organization of hundreds of architect associates and in 1937, designed 19% of all architect-designed industrial factories in the United States. Under a unique contract in 1929, Kahn established a design and training office in Moscow, sending twenty-five staff there to train Soviet architects and engineers, and to design hundreds of industrial buildings under their first five-year plan. They trained more than 4,000 architects and engineers using Kahn's concepts. In 1943, the Franklin Institute posthumously awarded Kahn the Frank P. Brown Medal. Biography Kahn was born on March 21, 1869, to a Jewish family in Rhaunen, in the Kingdom of Prussia. He received his early education in the school of Luxembourg. At age twelve in 1881, Kahn immigrated with his family to Detroit, Michigan. His father Joseph was trained as a rabbi; his mother Rosalie had a talent for the visual arts and music. Kahn had four brothers, including Moritz, who became an engineer, and Julius Kahn, an engineer and inventor, who later collaborated with him in his architectural firm. They also had two sisters. Kahn quickly learned English and went to Detroit public schools. In 1883, he got a job at the architectural business of Mason and Rice where he got his initial architectural training. While working there he primarily designed residences and bank buildings. In 1891, at age 22, he won a Rotch Traveling Fellowship to study in Europe, where he toured Germany, France, Italy, and Belgium with Henry Bacon, another young architecture student. Bacon later designed the Lincoln Memorial that is located in Washington, D.C. After leaving Mason & Rice in 1895, Kahn joined in a partnership with Alexander B. Trowbridge and George W. Nettleton known as Nettleton, Kahn & Trowbridge. He married Ernestine Krolik in 1896 and they had four children. Kahn, in 1902, formed a partnership with his brother Julius, a civil engineer. Later that year, Julius developed a novel and scientific method of reinforcing concrete with steel, making reinforced concrete construction practical and economical.