History
The hotel was developed by the Book Brothers—J. Burgess, Frank, and Herbert. The brothers 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 Detroit Statler Hotel three blocks to the north. They commissioned architect Louis Kamper, who designed their Book Building in 1917, to design the building. In 1917, the brothers bought the old Cadillac Hotel at the northeast corner of Michigan and Washington Blvd., but World War I material shortages delayed the start of work on their new hotel. Construction finally began in 1923, and the building, which bore part of the name of the old structure, was the tallest in the city and the tallest hotel in the world when it opened in December 1924.
The hotel cost $14 million to build and contained 1,136 guest rooms. Public spaces on the first five floors included three dining rooms, three ballrooms, a spacious lobby, and a ground floor retail arcade. On the hotel's top floor was radio station WCX, the predecessor to WJR. The hotel operated successfully until the Great Depression, when banks foreclosed and the Book brothers lost control in 1931. For much of the period after the Books lost ownership, the hotel was run by hotel industry pioneer Ralph Hitz's National Hotel Management Company.
On May 2, 1939, a meeting took place in the hotel lobby between New York Yankees first baseman Lou Gehrig and team manager Joe McCarthy in which Gehrig told McCarthy to leave him out of the starting line-up from that day's game, ending his 2,130 consecutive games streak.
In 1951, Sheraton bought the hotel, renamed it the Sheraton-Cadillac, and undertook massive renovations. All public spaces except the ballrooms and Italian Garden were redone and escalators replaced the grand staircase. In 1975, with business declining and the hotel in need of another renovation, Sheraton sold the building to Herbert R. Weissberg and it became the Detroit-Cadillac. Ownership changed again in 1976, and it became the Radisson-Cadillac. In 1979 the Radisson chain sold the property, and it became the Book-Cadillac once again. Though it was considered the city's top hotel for many years the owners announced that the hotel would close due to declining occupancy. The city of Detroit, scheduled to host the 1980 Republican National Convention, did not want to face the prospect of losing more downtown hotel space, so in late 1979 the city entered into a partnership through the Detroit Economic Growth Corporation with the owners to keep the hotel open.
By 1983, it was decided that the only way to bring the hotel back to profitability was to convert it into a mixed-use property. The hotel's 1100 rooms were deemed too numerous to fill and were too small by modern standards. The plan would turn the building into the Book-Cadillac Plaza, a 12 floor, 550-room hotel and 11 floors of office space. The hotel closed its doors in October 1984 for the renovation, but those plans were quickly dashed as proposed construction cost soared, and Detroit's economic situation continued to deteriorate. For the next two years developers came and went. But with no one able to take on the increasingly complex renovation, in 1986 the contents were liquidated. After the sale, the hotel's retail tenants who had planned to stay through the renovation moved out and the building was shuttered, a state in which it would remain for the next 20 years. Time passed and the unmaintained property fell victim to time, the elements, vandalism, and urban scavengers.
In July 2003, after years of legal battles to fully acquire the building and to find a developer, the city of Detroit announced a $150 million renovation deal with Historic Hospitality Investments a subsidiary of Kimberly-Clark to turn the building into a Renaissance Hotel. Work started shortly after the announcement but came to a halt in November when construction crews discovered more damage than anticipated. The associated cost overrun caused Kimberly-Clark to back out of the deal. A new renovation plan through the Cleveland-based Ferchill Group was announced in June 2006, with the Book-Cadillac to become a Westin Hotel and Residences. Kaczmar Architects Inc. of Cleveland completed design and historic renovation work on the project from August 2006 through to completion in the fall of 2008, with a grand opening celebration held on October 25, 2008.
Read more about this topic: Westin Book Cadillac Hotel
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