JACKSON, MI -- Fresh information poured in last week after my column about those stone faces gazing at downtown Jackson.
The ancient-looking faces, carved five times on the Jackson County Tower Building, evidently intrigue many people.
Who are those guys on Jackson’s tallest building, originally a bank? Plenty of theories were submitted.
Many theorists pointed out, with varying degrees of politeness, that one face, the one with the beard, does not look even slightly Egyptian. This undermines my guess that they were part of an Egypt craze in the 1920s.
Architect Mike McCleer, a former Jackson resident known for renovation of buildings in Detroit, pointed to a 1930 booklet published by Union and Peoples National Bank to celebrate its completion of "Jackson's most metropolitan banking and office structure."
"Now I'll get the answer!" I gushed. Sadly, it was not to be.
Not a word in the booklet described or explained stone faces on a building designed by famed Detroit architect Albert Kahn. Not one word.
Scant attention to such things was apparently not rare in that era.
The Citizen Patriot published a special edition when its building, also designed by Kahn, opened in 1927. It gave no explanation for two Egyptian-looking figures carved on the building near quotes from the Bible and Abraham Lincoln.
McCleer suspects the Tower Building faces were carved by Corrado Parducci, who worked on more than 50 Kahn buildings and is famous, as fame goes for architectural sculptors.
Several web sites say Parducci’s work can be seen in Jackson, but I find no sources that specify any building.
Albert Kahn’s company is still in business in Detroit, and it was kind enough to search its archives for the Tower Building, or Kahn job number 1425.
A crude sketch survives that notes the location of the faces “but we don’t have any further information about their significance,” said Melissa McCown, manager of public relations for Albert Kahn Associates.
My conclusion: If a boastful book and the architect's files contain no explanation, the stone faces almost certainly were not meant to represent real people from history.
Jackson architect Robert Cole believes the clearest symbolism is wings on head dresses worn by the stone faces.
The winged figures “are symbolic of supporting the commerce of the building, or supporting the building itself,” he said.
Carving such faces on a new bank building demonstrates a deeper, if somewhat vague, respect for the past than we typically display today.
Other Kahn buildings in Jackson have uncertain futures, but Jackson County government has tried to preserve and restore the splendor of the city's "most metropolitan" structure.
The stone faces should be thankful for that as changing times unfold before their eyes.