On an overcast, gloomy mid-October morning, William Kessler paces the floor of his sixth-story suite over the DuMouchelle Galleries on Jefferson Avenue in downtown Detroit.

Two days earlier, he relocated his 40-year-old architectural firm from a historic building on St. Antoine in Greektown to this new space in the shadow of the Renaissance Center and in view of the Detroit riverfront.

Boxes are everywhere. The tearing down and rebuilding of walls is still under way.

“We’re trying to lighten it up in here,” said Kessler, pointing to the freshly painted walls, coated in the whitest of white to cover the dark tones favored by the previous tenants.

“There was a lot of brown everywhere,” he said, gesturing around the offices that housed a law firm. “Everything was brown. The ceilings. The floors. It was very conservative. We tore out the walls to open everything up. We want to build in light and color.”

Kessler’s plan — although far from finished — already coaxes more light into the space.

On this dark morning, the undressed windows, the white walls, and the splashes of bright color — exposed ductwork and pipes coated in shades of lime green, lemon yellow Pepto-Bismol pink and orange-sherbet orange — make the room seem as if it is awash in sunlight.

“Generally the colors I use are pure rather than muted,” he explained. “I’d rather use a little bit of color and make it bright rather than use a  lot of muted, washed-out color in a room.”

Pure bright colors. Modern designs. Mixing architecture, colors, paintings and sculpture to create environments. This is Kessler’s philosophy. He’s been using it for four decades with much success and  it’s not likely to change.

“This is what I believe in,” he said. “Color enriches our lives.”

Kessler was born in Reading, Pa. His father ran a lumber company and that, apparently, sparked his interest in building and design.

“What I really wanted to be was a photographer,” he admitted. “I went to school in Chicago to become a photographer. Then I got interested in industrial design, painting and sculpture.  I realized if I became an architect, I could do these things.”

Kessler graduated from the Chicago Institute of Design with a bachelor’s degree in architecture. He went on to earn a master’s degree in architecture from the Harvard Graduate School of Design.

He began teaching, but his brief career as an educator was interrupted in the 1950s when world-renowned architect Minoru Yamasaki asked him to come to Detroit to work on a project — the Detroit University School (now University Liggett School) in Grosse Pointe Woods. Kessler accepted the offer with the idea that he and his wife, Margot, would only stay in Detroit  for two years.

“After living in Boston, (Detroit) was a great change in culture,” he said. “Detroit is a very industrial town.”

What convinced Kessler to say was his wish to see the school project through to its completion. That project led to another and then another one. Forty years later, Kessler still lives in the Grosse Pointe Park home he designed — a modest, modern-styled ranch with vast windows overlooking a walled garden and a courtyard.

“I’m not interested in classical architecture,” he said of the area’s prevailing housing designs. “Shouldn’t people live for themselves and in the century that exists now rather than emulate what their parents and grandparents lived?”

The first two offices of William Kessler and Associates Inc. were in Grosse Pointe. The third move was to the previous site near Greektown.

“This building is closer to the core of what interests us, Kessler said of his new offices. “We didn’t think for a second about moving out of  (Detroit).”

He moved his firm to Detroit in the 1970s with the belief that Detroit was experiencing a rebirth. That didn’t happen, but he maintained a commitment to the city.

“Detroit has the greatest promise of any city in America,” he said. “That probably sounds overstated, but it can only get better. Given the right leadership —  and I think we have that with Mayor Dennis Archer — Detroit can be transformed. And if it’s done right, Detroit could become one of the most significant and beautiful cities.”

Kessler’s firm has won more than 140 awards for architectural design. Among the buildings and projects his firm has designed are Detroit Receiving Hospital-University Clinics; the Center for Creative Studies; The Detroit Science Center; the revision to the Detroit Institute of Arts; restoration of the Fox Theatre and offices; the Michigan Library and Historical Center, Lansing; and the Industrial Technology Institute, Ann Arbor.

Projects in development include an arts and science center in Salt Lake City, Utah; a jobs corps center in Flint; an opera house restoration in Lancaster, Pa.; and the new Wayne County Medical Examiner building in Detroit.

His daughter, Tamara, runs her own interior design business and also works at his firm.

Kessler will speak about architecture to the Grosse Pointe Artist’s Association at 7:30 p.m. Monday, Nov. 7, at the Grosse Pointe war Memorial.

This article originally appeared in the Oct. 27, 1994, edition of The Grosse Pointe News.