By 1920, 40 million Americans were going to the movies each week, and the advent of sound in 1927 would send that number soaring even higher. Detroit, rolling in cash and packing theater seats in the Roarin’ Twenties, needed a way to improve and consolidate the booking, distribution, and storage of motion pictures for the many theaters popping up all over town.
Famed theater architect C. Howard Crane designed the Film Exchange Building for Mr. and Mrs. Walter Stebbins, young Detroit financiers at the time. The cost to build it was $1.5 million, the equivalent of $28.3 million in 2026 valuation, when adjusted for inflation.
Detroit’s Film Exchange Building would open Jan. 30, 1927, on the edge of Detroit’s burgeoning theater district. It was the first multiple-floor structure of its kind in the country.
Studios that maintained offices in the building included Metro-Goldwyn Mayer, Warner Bros., Columbia Pictures, Republic Pictures, Buena Vista/Disney, RKO Radio Pictures, and, in later years American International Pictures, Avco Embassy Pictures, and several independent studios. Paramount Pictures and 20th Century Fox had previously constructed their own building nearby on Cass Avenue.
Other tenants in the building included the Metropolitan Motion Picture Co. Camera Shop, the Theater Equipment Co., Theatrical Advertising Co., the Film Exchange Cafe and the Central Shipping Bureau. National Screen Service and National Film Service companies also operated nearby, creating the need for posters, still photographs, banners, and press books; all of which could be purchased in the Film Exchange Building.
A crest and figures over the Cass Avenue entrance symbolized the movie industry services held within the building. The 84,000-square-foot building featured a lobby done up in Travertine marble and brass elevator doors.
Another reason for the construction of the Film Exchange Building was for fire-prevention at the time of highly flammable film. In the 1920s through the 1950s, highly combustible nitrate stock film was used. Nitrate prints gave off poisonous fumes when they burned, and they were responsible for a number of deaths of theater projectionists. Various floors of the Film Exchange Building featured refrigerated, fireproof vaults. Inspection of films and shipping was also conducted in the vaults.
Pre-opening publicity for the Film Exchange Building proclaimed: “This structure will embody many mechanical features essential only to the motion picture industry such as film vaults, special wiring, and a complete sprinkler system of extraordinary large capacity. Scarcely a stick of wood will be used throughout.”
Trade screenings and special screenings for local newspaper reviewers were held in the seventh-floor screening room. Occasionally, these screenings attracted police and religious censors who objected to exploitation films of the day. Julius Pavella, a former Paramount Pictures employee, operated the screening room as “Julie’s Screening Room” for clients into the 1970s, even as the Film Exchange was losing tenants.
By 1972, the continued decline of downtown Detroit saw MGM vacate its offices in the building; MGM was the last vestige of the local film industry in Detroit. Beginning in the 1960s, many of the studio branches, distributors, and bookers moved their offices to the Fox Theatre Building on Woodward Avenue. By the mid-1970s, the industry had moved to Detroit’s suburbs, and the Film Exchange Building was vacant.
It has remained vacant since that time, although it has changed ownership several times.
Around 2000, the roof was replaced, and the building received new windows. During March and April 2005, the facade of the building was painted, and broken windows boarded up with black-painted plywood. In late summer 2009, the building was painted a bright white.
The owner, however, had no plans for the building other than maintaining his investment and waiting for the right time to sell. He did an adequate job of keeping the building sealed from the elements and vandals.
In 2014, the building was sold for $1.92 million to Detroit-based real estate company The Sterling Group through an affiliated entity called 2310 Associates LLC. The move seemed to try to capitalized on the Ilitch family's plans for a neighborhood called The District Detroit, which was to feature residential, office space and retail. It was auctioned in 2017, but found no takers. Seven years later, in 2021, that vision for the District had failed to become a reality, however, The Sterling Group's investment would still pay off handsomely.
That's when a mystery buyer forked over $8.75 million for it and its accompanying parking lot.
The reason? In July 2021, billionaires Stephen Ross and Dan Gilbert announced that they were pulling the plug on building a $300 million Innovation Center on Gratiot Avenue near I-375. Attention immediately shifted to the surplus of vacant land in Olympia Development's slow-to-develop District Detroit.
The Film Exchange was sold just ahead of that announcement, in May 2021, to an entity named 2310 Cass LLC, which listed a UPS Store in Sterling Heights as its address. A month later, a nearby building that was home to Bookie's bar and restaurant, was sold to a 2208 Cass LLC. That LLC's address was also at a UPS Store, this one in the Downriver suburb of Brownstown Township.
"Registering LLCs at P.O. boxes in random Detroit suburbs has been used by the Ilitches before," Crain's Detroit Business reported. "The District Detroit area ... has not materialized as promised when it was unveiled seven years ago. If the Ilitches are, in fact, the buyers of Bookie's and the Film Exchange Building, it would add to their massive portfolio of real estate north of downtown — but also put the buildings' futures in limbo."
Meaning, whether the building will be redeveloped or demolished for parking or a potential Ross-U-M development remains unknown.
The Film Exchange Building is not included in the National Register of Historic Places or a City of Detroit local historic district.
HistoricDetroit.org's Dan Austin contributed to this report.