Book Cadillac Hotel

The Washington Boulevard Historic District is significant as an intact streetscape of architecturally distinguished commercial buildings dating from 1901-1930 with a majority built in the 1920s. The buildings individually represent some of the finest early Twentieth Century architecture in Detroit and as a group illustrate the evolution of the commercial style in Detroit as it was practiced by some of Michigan's master architects. The district is also significant as a product of a planned real estate development inspired by the City Beautiful movement and carried out as the private artistic endeavor of one family and their architect, Louis Kamper.

In 1924 Kamper designed the mammoth and elaborate Book-Cadillac Hotel at 1114 Washington Boulevard on the block between Michigan Avenue and State Street. This is an extraordinary Beaux Arts style, 27-story, luxury hotel originally containing 1,200 rooms. The building consists of four limestone-sheathed stories enriched with colossal fluted Corinthian pilasters between the fenestration surmounted by sixteen brick stories of unarticulated symmetrically arranged fenestration divided by limestone belt courses at several levels and bordered by massive oversized quoining at the corners. The upper four stories are unified into an elaborately ornamented limestone composition with extensive classical detailing. Two more floors are incorporated into the colossal bracketed cornice treatment, above which four, two-story pavilions with pyramidal, stepped roofs rise from each side of the building.