Renaissance

Gallery: Giant Ads Add Snap to Downtown

October 06, 2015, 6:59 AM by  Allan Lengel

For years, downtown Detroit has been a collection of mostly dull, old looking office buildings adorned with little art, giving it the look of a 3-D black and white photo.

More recently, we've seen a little splash of color with the collection of murals and art pieces at the Z Parking Garage that opened in 2014, and the Shepard Fairey mural on the exterior of the Compuware Building that was completed in May.  There's also a few other colorful displays of art like the murals/graffiti in Capitol Park.

Still, there's plenty of blank, dull, earth-tone colored office buildings. 

So, I think it's fair to say that the gradual increase in the number of Times-Square size ad on buildings has spiced up the downtown visual. There's a mix of national ads like T-Mobile (two of them), iPhone (two) and Pepsi, and local ones such as the Pistons (two), Shinola and MGM.

The MGM Casino ad with a giant Lion occupies a spot that has long displayed advertisements downtown on the Cadillac Tower building. From 1994-2000, there was a 14-story high Nike ad with a mural of Lions running back Barry Sanders.  Sanders was replaced by Red Wings star Steve Yzerman.

Here's a look at some of those ads. 

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Cadillac Square
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Shelby and Michigan Avenue

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Shelby and Larned

Featured_pepsi_18773
Cadillac Square

 

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Cadillac Square
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Cadillac Square
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Cass and Lafayette Blvd.
Featured_iphone_bagley_18780
Bagley and Clifford

Cass and Bagley



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