Carlton Plaza Hotel

03 / The story of this place

What was here?

Louis Kamper's first documented hotel opened on May 31, 1924, as the eight-story Carlton Plaza, with 200 rooms and 200 baths in a U-shaped plan that gave every room an outside view, an idea he reused at the Book-Cadillac. In the 1920s and 1930s affluent Black Detroiters came here for top jazz acts, and by 1960 it was the most popular hotel for upper-middle-class Black travelers still shut out of downtown hotels; Jet magazine praised it in May 1960, and The Negro Motorist Green Book listed it from 1959 to 1967. Singer Della Reese was working the switchboard when a Berry Gordy associate staying at the hotel heard her voice. It declined from the 1970s, became a drug haven in the 1980s and fell to the city in the early 1990s, then was restored as 55 loft condos in 2005.

• 200 rooms, each with its own bath
• Green Book listing, 1959–1967
• Where Della Reese was discovered

Former names

Carlton Plaza Hotel (1924–) · Hotel Grant (1930s)

Architect

Louis Kamper

Green Book

Listed in The Negro Motorist Green Book, the travel guide that showed Black travelers where they could stay safely during segregation.

What’s there now?

The Carlton Lofts condominiums (55 units since 2005); Bar Pigalle, a French-inspired restaurant, opened in the building in 2023.