Westin Book Cadillac Hotel

The Westin Book Cadillac Detroit is a historic hotel in downtown Detroit, Michigan, within the Washington Boulevard Historic District. Designed in the Neo-Renaissance style, and opened as the Book-Cadillac Hotel in 1924, the 349 ft, 31-story, 453-room hotel includes 65 exclusive luxury condominiums and penthouses on the top eight floors. It reopened in October 2008, managed by Westin Hotels, after a $200-million restoration.

History

The Book-Cadillac Hotel was developed by the Book Brothers—J. Burgess, Frank, and Herbert. They sought to turn Detroit's Washington Boulevard into the "Fifth Avenue of the West." Part of that vision was the creation of a flagship luxury hotel to compete against the Hotel Statler, three blocks to the north. On May 1, 1918, the brothers bought the Cadillac Hotel, at the northeast corner of Michigan and Washington Boulevard, which had been built in 1888. They intended to demolish it and replace it with a modern hotel, but World War I material shortages delayed the work. The Cadillac finally closed on June 26, 1923, and was quickly demolished.[2] The Books commissioned architect Louis Kamper, who had designed the Book Building for them in 1917, to design their hotel. The Book-Cadillac Hotel was the tallest building in the city and the tallest hotel in the world when it opened on December 8, 1924.[3]

Architecture

Architect Louis Kamper designed the hotel in the Renaissance Revival style at the corner of Washington Boulevard and Michigan Avenue. Abutting the hotel on the north was the headquarters of the Detroit Edison Company. The structure is a steel skeleton faced with beige brick and limestone accents. It has Neo-Classical elements and building sculpture. Among its notable features are the sculptures of notable figures from Detroit's history—General Anthony Wayne, Antoine Laumet de La Mothe, sieur de Cadillac, Chief Pontiac, and Robert Navarre along the ornate Michigan Avenue façade and copper-covered roof elements.[9]

The lower six floors are clad in limestone. On the ground floor it is carved into wide horizontal bands while floors two through five are smooth. Corinthian pilasters and columns separate the windows of the public rooms from the second to fifth floors with windows for the second and third floors contained in large arches. Windows on the fourth floor are framed by small balconies. Above the sixth floor, the exterior is beige brick with cornices at floors 7, 16 and 21. Ionic columns frame windows on floors 23 through 25. A large cornice encircled the 27th floor and was removed during an earlier renovation.[10]

Limestone quoins accent three corners of the building which are capped with copper-clad ziggurats. The north and south sides have penthouse towers that extend to the 31st floor. When the north penthouse was reconstructed, it was built 18 ft shorter to make the ziggurats the highest points of the building.[3] The building sits atop three basements, which contain some inoperable mechanical equipment too large to remove during renovation.

On June 27, 2006, the Ferchill Group agreed to renovate the structure into a mixed-use hotel and condominium building including a 453-room Westin Hotel, and 65 condominium units priced above $280,000. ForrestPerkins completed interior designs for the project which cost $176 million and was completed in fall 2008. As part of the renovation some of the original decor of the Grand Ballroom (renamed the Venetian Ballroom) and Italian Garden was recreated. A three-story addition containing a new 11000 sqft ballroom, pool, hot-tub, fitness center, spa, and additional conference space was built north of the hotel on the site previously occupied by the Detroit Edison Headquarters.

Across Shelby Street from the hotel, the Peoples' Outfitting building, also known as the Detroit Commerce Building, was demolished and replaced with a 10-story parking garage for hotel guests and residents. In 2017, apartments were built above the parking garage.[11]

completion date	1924
renovation date	2008
architectural style	Neo-Renaissance
building type	hotel, residential, high-rise
location	1114 Washington Boulevard Detroit, Michigan
coordinates	42.33195°N, -83.05052°W
roof	106.4 m
top floor	103.6 m
floor count	29
floor area	455 hotel rooms, 65 condominium units
architect	Louis Kamper
ren architect	Kaczmar
ren contractor	Ferchill Group
references	‡R1R‡

Westin Book Cadillac Hotel

History

Architecture

In popular culture

Gallery

See also

Further reading

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References