The onset of the Great Depression slowed the pace of growth, and the last two architecturally significant structures, the Burton Memorial Tower and the Rackham building, were added in the late 1930s.

[2] The University of Michigan Central Campus Historic District contains nearly thirty significant buildings.

Fully ten of the buildings were designed by Albert Kahn, who was University Supervising Architect from 1920 to 1925.

Other architectural firms such as Smith, Hinchman and Grylls, Spier and Rohns, and Donaldson and Meier also designed buildings on campus.

The center of the campus is defined by The Diag, a central open space about which many of the buildings are arranged.