Wayne State University’s McGregor Memorial Conference Center, along with four other sites, has been designated a national historic landmark. Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell and National Park Service Director Jonathan B. Jarvis made the announcement earlier this week. 

The National Historic Landmarks Program, administered by the National Park Service on behalf of the Secretary of the Interior, recognizes places that possess exceptional value and quality in illustrating or interpreting the heritage of the United States. 

“These sites join more than 2,500 other landmarks that help tell America’s story,” Jewell said in a U.S. Department of the Interior press release. “From the remarkable strides made in engineering during the 19th century to the vision of our great architects, they are an important part of the tapestry of our nation’s heritage.”

The other designated landmarks include:

• Samara (John E. and Catherine E. Christian House), West Lafayette, Indiana
• Lake Hotel, Yellowstone National Park, Teton County, Wyoming
• California Powder Works Bridge, Santa Cruz County, California
• Brookline Reservoir of the Cochituate Aqueduct, Brookline, Massachusetts

Completed in 1958, the McGregor Memorial Conference Center is a benchmark work in the career of Japanese American Minoru Yamasaki, one of the 20th century’s most important modern architects. The building’s design represents a key turning point in Yamasaki’s career as he moved away from international style orthodoxy into his own distinct vision of modernism, later considered part of the stylistic trend new formalism.