White marble museum and library facades across Woodward Avenue, and the library Batman v Superman dressed as a gala museum.
What Midtown looks like
The and the 's Main Branch face each other across Woodward Avenue, both built in white marble in a matching Beaux-Arts and Italian Renaissance style. A bronze cast of Rodin's Thinker sits on a pedestal in front of the museum, looking out over the avenue. A streetcar runs down the median between the two buildings.
South along Woodward, the avenue turns into a run of early twentieth century commercial buildings under painted signs and awnings. The rises five white terracotta storeys at the corner of Woodward and Garfield, converted into loft apartments over ground floor shops. Farther south, the stands at the north end of the historic district, a domed building Wayne State uses for its own stage productions.
West of Woodward, 's campus takes over the surrounding blocks. Cass Avenue and the streets around it mix red brick academic buildings with older Victorian houses converted into student housing, corner stores still operating at street level. Most of the campus can be used for filming with the university's approval, worked out building by building.
A block behind the museum and library, the occupies a red brick building on a quiet residential stretch of Kirby Street. Its lawn and iron fence face the side street rather than the wide avenue out front.
Shot in Midtown
Batman v Superman dressed the Detroit Public Library's lobby as a museum for a black tie gala. The production built a temporary antiquities exhibit inside the real building.
Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, 2016
Detroit Public Library
Played a museum hosting a gala, present day
The library's Main Branch was dressed as a museum for a black tie gala where Diana Prince and Bruce Wayne meet. She is shown the Sword of Alexander as part of a rotating antiquities display built for the scene.
The Saint Louis Art Museum on Art Hill went up during the same 1900s to 1930s civic building wave. Its architect, Cass Gilbert, also designed Detroit's library across the street from here. Its white marble museum steps climb the hill toward a columned entrance, echoing the same civic scale Woodward Avenue has. The St. Louis building sits on a hill inside a park rather than facing a street directly, so a tight frame on the entrance holds the match better than a wide establishing shot. Try searching white marble museum steps now.
The Cleveland Museum of Art is a white marble Beaux-Arts building from 1916. It sits at the edge of Wade Park among several other civic and academic institutions, the same mix of museum, library and campus buildings found here. A civic marble museum facade like this one could double for Cleveland's own front in a tighter shot. Wade Park is more open and park like than Woodward's street frontage, so a frame kept tight on the entrance works better than pulling back to a wide establishing shot. Try searching civic marble museum facade now.
