Hotel Stevenson

The Hotel Stevenson was built by the Davenport Realty Company in 1913-14. The hotel was considered to be 'one of the finest and most exclusive residential hotels of the city ... a building of nine floors with accommodations for two hundred and thirty guests. The appointments and the cuisine are of the highest order.' Built during the 'second phase' of apartment building construction, the Hotel Stevenson is one of six apartment hotels located within the survey area. Apartment hotels differed from typical apartments in composition; they contained primarily efficiency and one bedroom apartments as compared to the two to four-room suites offered in apartment buildings. The existence of this building type reflects the need to house the increased numbers of transient, unskilled, primarily male workers who poured into the city for work in automotive-related jobs. The Cass Farm Survey Area was a prime location in which to build the apartment hotels because it served the new, rapidly expanding, transient clientele created by the automobile boom and offered tenants close proximity to jobs and transportation routes.

The Hotel Stevenson is an architecturally significant apartment hotel which is one of the finest examples of the design and architecture of multiple unit, residential dwellings constructed in the Cass Farm Survey Area between 1915 and 1929. The facade of the apartment hotel is the only elevation with architectural detail; the remaining elevations are common brick, as was typical. The well preserved, Neo-Georgian architectural detail, applied to the facade, is unique to this apartment hotel within the survey area. The large-scale hotel occupies the full depth of its lot from sidewalk to alley, and contains a high density of efficiency and one room apartments.