Today’s Scan of the Week is in acknowledgment of the demolition of the Donovan/Sanders buildings, otherwise known as the Motown Building or the Motown Complex. In memoriam, as it were. This time it’s a two-fer, a couple of documents among many found in a desk in an upper-floor office of the Donovan Building, an office that turns out to have belonged to Marvin Gaye.

I could post a scan every day of stuff found in the Donovan Building and continue well into February without running out of material. It’s astonishing that so much Motown memorabilia, stuff for which collectors would bid furiously on Ebay, sat weathering and forgotten in an abandoned building for nearly 40 years, as scavengers, exploreres, drug addicts and derelicts passed through by the dozens.

The first scan is a note jotted in late-1966 by Marvin to his wife Anna, who happened to be Berry Gordy’s sister and who also happened to be a whopping 17 years older than Marvin. It reads simply “Honey, Be Back Soon, Love XXX.”

Aww! Pass the syrup, please! How sweet, and how Marvin! Not surprising if you listen to his albums, particularly the early stuff. He had little difficulty expressing himself to women, nor was he shy about being sentimental. The note is scrawled on a pamphlet included in Gaye’s General Electric shareholders’ meeting informational envelope. I’m reasonably certain it’s his writing because I also have Mrs. Gaye’s checkbook, and the handwriting recording her purchases is substantially different, the kind of frenetic scrawl of someone spending someone else’s money with gleeful abandon.

Which brings me to the second item, a receipt for the insurance coverage and cold storage of Anna Gaye’s recently purchased fur. Not just any old fur, but a “Yellow Coat with Lynx Tuxedo Collar and Cuffs.” Clearly, Mrs. Gaye liked being noticed on the street.

This is not just an isolated and alarming fashion incident. In the handful of documents I grabbed from Marvin Gaye’s overturned desk were receipts for his wife’s purchase and/or storage of an autumn haze mink coat, a Russian sable coat, a chinchilla coat, a chinchilla hat, a tiger coat, a morning light mink coat, a dark brown dyed baum marten shrug, and a tip-dyed sable coat, in addition to business cards from various furriers around the country. The woman obviously had expensive tastes.

And this receipt is from an incomplete collection. Friends of mine who explored the Donovan afterwards also scored all sorts of Marvin Gaye memorabilia, along with tons of other Motown goodies and even more evidence of fur extravagance. Makes me kick myself wondering why I didn’t scour the place more diligently when I was there, though perhaps it was the sound of stinky junkies stirring on various floors, or the police lurking outside, or the nerves rattled by pigeons appearing out of nowhere and maniacally banging loudly into windows, or the inadequacy of my dust mask in the face of kicked-up pollutants, that made me want to keep each of my visits brief.

More Donovan Building stuff to come this week, including some interior shots of a building nobody will ever see the inside of again.