Belcrest Apartments

Built in 1926 as a luxury class apartment hotel, the Belcrest is significant as an early work of Detroit architect Charles N. Agree and a work which helped establish his reputation locally as a first class designer. It is also significant as a prime early Detroit example of the apartment hotel development concept. Though by 1926 this development idea was successful in other major cities such as New York and Chicago, the Belcrest was one of the first buildings in Detroit to be designed to provide the services of a hotel coupled with long term residential features of an apartment building.

The Belcrest Hotel is located on the east side of Cass Avenue, across from the Wayne State University Campus and one block north of the main branch of the Detroit Public Library, in an area of Detroit known as the Cultural Center. The Belcrest Hotel is a twelve-story steel and concrete building sheathed in brown brick and trimmed with terra cotta, built in 1926 according to the designs of Detroit architect Charles N. Agree. The building is T-shaped in plan, with the base of the T abutting the sidewalk along Cass Avenue.

The building has a strong vertical character emphasized by three projecting bays, one facing Cass Avenue and one on each side of the leg of the T, which rise from the third floor through the twelfth and end above the cornice line in an ornamented gable. The one-story entry foyer, projecting from the north elevation, is graced with an identical gable. Elaborate terra-cotta cornice lines located above the second-floor level, the eleventh-floor level and the twelfth floor define horizontal sections of the building. With the exception of window replacements, the building is unaltered.