Wardell, The

The Wardell was built in 1926 as a luxury apartment hotel at a cost of $3,000,000.00 by the Wardell Realty Company whose president, Fred Wardell, made his fortune through real estate and as founder and president of the Eureka Vacuum Cleaner Company. The Wardell reflects the development of apartment hotel living, a phenomenon of the 1920s in then burgeoning Detroit, and it remains one of a not very large number of buildings in the city today that exemplify the city's 1920s luxury apartment hotels, many of which have been demolished in the city's decline since the 1950s. After eighty years, The Wardell, now called the Park Shelton, remains in operation as a luxury apartment building.

The Wardell (now the Park Shelton) is a twelve-story, reinforced concrete, E-shaped apartment building with Italian Renaissance details. The front of the building, with the main entrance facing south on East Kirby Avenue, has three massive wings with two open courts. The wings are connected at the ground floor with a one-story lobby space. The entrance door is in the middle wing in the center of the building. The west facade borders Woodward Avenue. The building stands in the heart of the Cultural Center, sitting just north of the Detroit Institute of Arts, east of the Detroit Historical Museum, and northeast of the Detroit Public Library. It is located immediately adjacent to the Cultural Center Historic District on the south and the East Ferry Avenue Historic District on the north. The overall footprint of the building measures two hundred and eight feet along Kirby Avenue and one hundred and fifty-nine feet along Woodward Avenue. It is twelve stories (lobby and eleven floors) and one hundred thirty-seven feet in height. The building stands on a full service basement and a partial sub-basement that houses some of the mechanical systems. A one and two story penthouse that houses the elevator machinery and a solarium sits on the roof. Attached to the rear of the building on the north is a five-level concrete parking deck constructed in 2006. The exterior facade material on the primary west and south elevations facing Woodward and the Cultural Center and a portion of the east elevation is stone colored terra cotta from the third to the twelfth floor with polychrome ornamental bands between the tenth and eleventh and above the twelfth floors. The base is of granite with rusticated limestone on the first story and smooth limestone on the second. The north elevation and the back portion of the east elevation are clad in yellow face brick.