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Valerie Gray
HON 1000
Section 503
Dr. Ewing
November 6th, 2016

Westin Book Cadillac Hotel

Detroit is home to many magnificent buildings, including the Guardian Building,
Renaissance Center, and Fisher Building. Each structure serves a purpose to our city. I was part
of critically analyzing the Westin Book Cadillac Hotel on Washington Boulevard. While the
hotel has an enriching history, magnificent beauty, and serves an important role for Detroits
economy; I believe its overall purpose is being a preservation of our past, where we have been,
not an accurate representation of where we are going.
Detroit experienced turmoil over the past 100 years. What was once a prosperous city,
now is known nationwide for its demise as a great economic power. Although we are attempting
an upswing, we are not there yet. Even if Detroit does return to opulence, it will not be the same
as it was in the past, for the people shape the city. We are designer people; we chose to leave
behind our past in hope for a better future. Our way of seeing is different from the people who
lived in the city before us, and therefore it will reflect onto the city of Detroit differently,
hopefully in a better way. We will succeed in doing this by constantly pushing modernity. What
is considered modern today, will not be modern tomorrow (Boehm 183). Progression in

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technology, legislation, and social customs are examples of pushing modernity. There is no way
to tell exactly where we are going, we are just constantly attempting to better our society.
The Westin Book Cadillac Hotel started out as promising as the city it resides in. When it
opened in 1924 it was the tallest hotel in the world (Barista). The hotel was visited by
presidents, celebrity guests, and even played a role in the 1948 film State of the Union. The
success was short lived when competition, shifts in ownership, and economic struggles lead the
hotel to its decline. It eventually closed in 1984, and sat vacant for 22 years before reopening in
2008. Since then it has been nothing, but successful (Kohrman).
Although the main storyline of the hotel may seem in sync with Detroit, the
similarities in progression end there. The Westin Book Cadillac Hotel doesnt agree with where
we are going because it preserves our past, celebrates other cultures, conflicts with Democratic
Social Space, and falls into the category of City Beautiful over City Profitable.
There are several ballrooms inside the hotel, each themed after a different culture
(Kohrman). The Venetian Ballroom can be seen in Figure 1. One of the key characteristics of
our society is our shared abandonment of other cultures. As immigrants came here they left
behind the cultures of their old country. The creation of the American culture occurred and
continues to grow, moving us towards stronger unity as a country.
Figure 1. Venetian Ballroom. 2009. The Westin Book Cadillac, Detroit.

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Detroit is its own Democratic Social Space; an area that fulfills the characteristics of
being atomistic, unbounded, transparent, and unopposed (Fischer 51). The hotel within the city
contradicts this in two ways; location and purpose. One of the prime distinctions to Democratic
Social Space was Jeffersons map for rebuilding Detroit after the fire. His exact replication of
identical, rectangular spaces was one of the first example of standardizing a more self-sufficient
society that continues to this day. The hotel, however, is located in the one concentration of the
city that was not part of Jeffersons map. The structural design in this area is a cosmetic style of
designing cities that was more popular in our past, where equality and simplicity were not as
important factors as they are in Democratic Social Space. The hotel is also contradictory
because its purpose breaks down the characteristic of unopposed. In a successful Social Space,
there are no outsiders, everyone is an active member of the city simply by living there (Fischer
42-50). With the hotel, however, its main purpose is to bring tourists into our city, our Social
Space. Since these people are temporary, and they serve a strictly economical purpose, they are
outsiders.
Some members within my group believe the hotel represents City Profitable; a type of
urban city characterized by the invention of the elevator, and the skyscraper. Skyscrapers

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offered to shape both the individual building and the city plan, they perceived a means not only
to restrict further urban growth, but to rationalize the city of the future, (Willis 50). However,
the luxurious 1920s style interior of the hotel places it more into the category of City Beautiful,
in my opinion. With further advances in technology and transportation, Detroit will only
continue to move farther into the City Profitable category making the hotel an inaccurate
representation of where we are going.
There were different ways of seeing the building within my group. I viewed it through a
sociological perspective; how it affects the city around it, the people, and how it contributes to
society as a whole. Viewing it this way lead me to the conclusions previously stated. The other
disciplinary that was taken is economical. This way focuses on how the hotel relates to Detroits
economy, by attracting tourism and providing jobs. Sociologist are not concerned with one
persons actions, such as one person becoming employed thanks to the hotel, but instead how
things impact society as a whole (Thinking 52). To see where we are going, we must turn our
attention away from individuals, and focus on the bigger picture.
Detroit is an exaggerated example of the typical American city (Boehm 221). We had an
increased population growth that declined with the creation of the suburbs. Although other cities
may not have crashed as hard as we did, they too experienced a form of economic downturn,
varying in levels of severity. The role that the hotel plays in our city is mimicked by other
famous, luxurious hotels in cities across the nation. They are there for the enjoyment of people
not from the city, and they often times tell a story about our past through design.
For a wedding, a business conference, or a peek into the glamorous roaring 20s, turn to
the beautiful Westin Book Cadillac Hotel. For a physical representation of the future growth of
Detroit, however, this is not the best building. Through its architecture, location, and purpose

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the hotel serves as a representation of our past as we advance into a more modern, standardized,
and constantly evolving future.

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Works Cited
Barista, Dave. "Gold Award: Westin Book Cadillac Hotel & Condominiums Detroit,
Mich." ProQuest. N.p., 22 Sept. 2009. Web. 6 Nov. 2016.
Boehm, Lisa Krissoff, and Steven H. Corey. America's Urban History. New York: Routledge,
Taylor & Francis Group, 2015. Print. 221.
Fisher, Philip. Democratic Social Space: Whitman, Melville, and the Promise of American
Transparency. Representations, no. 24, 1988, pp. 33-35.
Kohrman, David. Detroit's Statler and Book-Cadillac Hotels: The Anchors of Washington
Boulevard. Chicago, IL: Arcadia Pub., 2002. Print.
"Thinking About Cities." An Invitation to the City. N.p.: n.p., n.d. 36-68. Print.
Venetian Ballroom. 2009. The Westin Book Cadillac, Detroit.
Willis, Carol. "Zoning and "Zeitgeist": The Skyscraper City in the 1920s." Journal of the Society
of Architectural Historians 45.1 (1986): 47-59. JSTOR. Web. 7 Nov. 2016.

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Notes/Pictures

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Right: Study and

Lounge Area for
Guests

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Notes/Pictures

Left: My Group Outside

Main Entrance
Left: Shadowbox
Contain Historical
Relics from the
Hotel

Right: Shoe
Shinning Station
in Main Lobby

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Right: View of
Westin Book
Cadillac Hotel from
Side Entrance