When Washington Dulles International Airport opened in Northern Virginia in 1962, the soaring design of its main terminal, a minimalist structure with a suspended catenary roof, was seen as a bold reflection of American aviation. That same year, the Jet Age-inflected Trans World Airlines Flight Center, with its concrete shells and curvy interior, opened at New York’s Idlewild Airport, which later became John F. Kennedy International Airport. In St. Louis, the Gateway Arch, a towering welcome to the Midwest, was completed in 1965.

The common denominator of these masterpieces is the architect Eero Saarinen, one of the most prolific designers of futuristic style in the 20th century.

I have had a longtime affinity for Saarinen’s work, beginning in my teenage years when his brand of modernism seemed unreal to me. The vaulted T.W.A. flight center and its Jetsons-like flight departures board seemed as if they would be more at home in my drawing pad than in real life.

Image Eero Saarinen. Credit... Oscar White/Corbis/VCG, via Getty Images

While Saarinen’s groundbreaking works gave him international prominence, many people don’t realize that his earliest architectural and design laboratory was in Michigan. From the General Motors Technical Center in Warren to the Saarinen House on the grounds of the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills to the University of Michigan School of Music, Theater and Dance in Ann Arbor, among other buildings in the region, Saarinen’s imprint was largely cultivated in the upper Midwest.