The Lee Plaza Hotel Ballroom, 2011

Philip Jarmain grew up near London, Ontario, with part of his childhood spent in Switzerland and Ireland. There were also many family trips to Mexico. His mother is a textile artist and fathers an entrepreneur. A childhood love of storytelling led to early fascination with film, photography and cameras. dShort dramas shot with an 8 mm wind-up camera were a passion. Later, his training was in film (Vancouver Film School), and for some years he worked in lighting for feature films and episodic television, and after that as stills photographer for film.

While establishing himself as a full time artist in photography, Jarmain supports himself as a commercial photographer specializing in conceptual advertising, based in Vancouver, where he lives, and Toronto. In this area he is a recipient of multiple Lürzers Archive and Communication Arts awards as well as other international honors.

Detroit’s Lee Plaza Apartments went from being one of Detroit’s poshest residences to being a lonely and isolated home for seniors. Ground was broken on the $2.5 million residential hotel in May 1927, with the 200 rooms that were spread across 15 floors finished just seven months later. Charles Noble designed the rising tower with bright orange brick, capped with a red tile roof. High up in the sky, griffons stood watch high above the city, perched on corners thirteen stories in the air. Upon entering the arched entry, no expense was spared, from wood paneled rooms, to poly-chrome plaster ceilings sculpted by Corrado Parducci. The long public hallway was aglow with a barrel vaulted ceiling bursting with colored plaster trim and rosettes with the walls lined with mirrors, earning the name “Peacock Alley,” for its saturated and bold appearance. The first floor contained the walnut paneled dining room, while opposite the room across peacock alley was a ballroom, with multiple arched ceilings of stylized plaster and a small elevated stage.

The elaborate building came with a high price, literally, as the Great Depression forced the developer, Ralph T. Lee, who built over 30 other apartments and hotels in the city, to sell the building by 1930, though he would remain as building manager. By 1935, the building was bankrupt, and so was Lee himself, who was forced out of the building the same year after admitting in court that he had ran a ponzi scheme, setting up a company for the purpose of selling supplies to the building at retail instead of wholesale. After barely making it as a post residence, the City of Detroit Housing Commission took control of the skyscraper in 1969, converting it to senior housing. The doors closed permanently in 1997, and the largely intact and preserved building was cinderblocked and vacated.

As with the rest of the city, it is a loosing battle to keep the buildings sealed from metal and decorative thieves, and by 2000, dozens of decorative terra cotta lions that lined the upper floors of the building were ripped out with many reappearing on a new condominium development in Chicago, Illinois. The FBI got involved and recovered 24 of the lions in 2002, but they have since gone missing in storage once again. By the end or 2005, the copper roof, which later replaced the clay tile roof, was completed stripped off the structure, despite being visible for miles in all directions. Paired with the architectural and aluminum window theft, the Lee Plaza now resembles a half-constructed building, standing in a residential area miles away from another skyscraper.