1932 **BOOK-CADILLAC HOTEL** DETROIT, MICH. (SPECIAL DELIVERY) COVER+POSTMARKS!

Description

JANUARY 24, 1932  ~BOOK CADILLAC HOTEL~ DETROIT, MICHIGAN  ADVERTISING "SPECIAL DELIVERY" POSTAL COVER {{{LOADED}}} WITH POSTMARK PLUS 10 CENT (VIOLET) SCOTTS# E15 "SPECIAL DELIVERY" (NOTE: TORN) AND 2 CENT (CARMINE) PERFORATED 11 X 10 1/2 SCOTTS# 634 "GEORGE WASHINGTON" STAMP!
"88" year old business and postal survivor!
_______________________________________________________________________________
Westin Book Cadillac Hotel
Jump to navigation
Jump to search
This article is about the Book-Cadillac Hotel. For the "Book Tower" in
Detroit
,
Michigan
, see
Book Tower
.
The Westin Book Cadillac Detroit
Wikimedia
| ©
OpenStreetMap
General information
Type
hotel,
residential
,
high-rise
Architectural style
Neo-Renaissance
Location
1114 Washington Boulevard
Detroit
,
Michigan
Coordinates
42°19′55.02″N
83°3′1.89″W
Coordinates
:
42°19′55.02″N
83°3′1.89″W
Completed
1924
Renovated
2008
Height
Roof
106.4 m (349 ft)
Top floor
103.6 m (340 ft)
Technical details
Floor count
29
Floor area
455 hotel rooms, 65 condominium units
Design and construction
Architect
Louis Kamper
Renovating team
Architect
Kaczmar
Main contractor
Ferchill Group
Book Cadillac Hotel
U.S. Historic district
Contributing property
Part of
Washington Boulevard Historic District
(
ID82002914
)
Designated CP
July 15, 1982
References
[1]
The Westin Book Cadillac Detroit
is a historic
skyscraper
hotel located at 1114 Washington Boulevard in
Downtown
Detroit
,
Michigan
, within the
Washington Boulevard Historic District
. Designed in the
Neo-Renaissance
style, and constructed as the
Book-Cadillac
, it is part of
Westin Hotels
and embodies
Neo-Classical
elements and building sculpture, incorporating
brick
and
limestone
. 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.
[2]
The flagship hotel is 349 ft (106 m) tall with 31 floors, and includes 65 exclusive luxury
condominiums
and
penthouses
on the top eight floors. It reopened in October 2008 after completing a 0-million reconstruction project and contains the Roast restaurant and 24 Grille.
History
[
edit
]
Old Cadillac Hotel, c. 1915
The Book Cadillac Hotel in an old postcard
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.
[3]
The hotel cost 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.
[4]
In 1951,
Sheraton
bought the hotel, renamed it the
Sheraton-Cadillac Hotel
, 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 Hotel
. Ownership changed again in 1976, and it became the
Radisson-Cadillac Hotel
. In 1979 the
Radisson
chain sold the property, and it became the
Book-Cadillac
once again. Though it had been 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.
[5]
Restored interior
In July 2003, after years of legal battles to fully acquire the building and to find a developer, the city of Detroit announced a 0 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 and interior design firm ForrestPerkins of Dallas 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.
Architecture
[
edit
]
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.
Detail of the Michigan Avenue façade
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.
[6]
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 (5.5 m) shorter to make the zigurrats 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 0,000. ForrestPerkins completed interior designs for the project which cost 6 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 11,000-square-foot (1,000 m
2
) 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.
[7]
In popular culture
[
edit
]
The Book-Cadillac was Detroit's tallest building, and the tallest hotel in the world, when it opened in 1924. The bar and coffee shop played court to Detroit's notorious
Purple Gang
, whose leader Abe Bernstein maintained a residence on the top floor until his death in 1968. On May 2, 1939,
New York Yankee
first baseman
Lou Gehrig
collapsed on the hotel's grand staircase. Gehrig, who would later be diagnosed with
amyotrophic lateral sclerosis
, decided to sit-out that afternoon's game against the Detroit Tigers, ending his
consecutive games played streak
. The 1947
Frank Capra
movie
State of the Union
featured scenes that were filmed at the hotel. Scenes in the 1973 cult movie
Detroit 9000
were shot at the hotel. The
HGTV
show
House Hunters
aired an episode entitled "Settling Down in Detroit" in which a couple searches for a historic home in Detroit. They end up choosing one of the newly restored condos in the hotel.
Michael Symon
, who has appeared on four
Food Network
/
Cooking Channel
shows as a host and a judge, owns and operates the Roast restaurant at the Westin Book Cadillac Hotel in Detroit. He has hosted the shows
Food Feuds
and
Cook Like an Iron Chef
.
[8]
The hotel, or rather, its 28th penthouse suite was mentioned in restaurant critic
Gael Greene
's biography, entitled "Insatiable" as the place where she, inter-alia, interviewed the then 22 year old
Elvis Presley
after the second of his two shows at the Olympia Stadium on March 31, 1957.
_______________________________________________________________________________
We strive to find rare and unusual vintage pieces to match up with your special collection.
Returns are readily accepted if the item(s) is the same as described. Item(s) must be in the exact condition as delivered. Buyer pays return shipping.
Items .00 or more will be shipped with tracking.
Items 0.00 or more will be shipped with insurance.
Combined shipping discount for multiple purchases (Please wait for us to send invoice for 2 or more items).
Please feel free to contact us with any questions or concerns.
Be sure to check out our "ever changing" inventory of vintage postage stamps, postal covers, postal cards, billheads, letterheads, stock certificates, stock coupons, bank checks, railroad and steamship ephemera, Civil War ephemera, World War I ephemera, World War II ephemera, promissory notes plus many other special items we can pass onto our customers.
Empire Stamp Company
INTERNATIONAL SHIPPING:
USPS FIRST CLASS MAIL INTERNATIONAL/FIRST CLASS PACKAGE INTERNATIONAL SERVICE.
DELIVERY TIMES WILL VARY BY LOCATION FOR INTERNATIONAL BUYERS.