Detroit is known worldwide as the home of the American automobile and Motown music. But it is much more than that.

Present-day Detroit is one of eight locations in the United States where peoples called "Mound Builders" lived and worked. They predated the Native America tribes--among them the Iroquois, Ojibwe (Chippewa), Odawa (Ottawa), and Bodewadimi (Potawatomi)--whose land extended across this peninsula surrounded by the large bodies of water we call the Great Lakes.

After several visits by French explorers and Jesuit missionaries in the 1600s, French officer Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac petitioned Louis XIV to make le Detroit (the strait) the main trading post in the area. In 1701 he and his party landed on the shore beside the Renaissance Building (now General Motors World Headquarters) seen in many of my photographs. Cadillac named the settlement Fort Ponchartrain du Detroit.

Today, Detroit's buildings tell the story of what has gone before and what is to come. As with its people, the architecture of Detroit is incredibly diverse.