Budget & hostels / Detroit
Russell House Hotel (East Adams)
Closed – archive entry
A hotel for Black travelers in Paradise Valley, on East Adams Avenue; it appeared in Black travel guides from 1930 to 1967.
03 / The story of this place
What was here?
Don't mix it up with the 19th-century Russell House on Campus Martius: this Russell House Hotel stood on East Adams and was one of the longest-listed hotels for Black travelers in Detroit. It appeared in the 1930–31 Hackley & Harrison guide and in the Negro Motorist Green Book from the Detroit section's first year, 1938, through the final 1966–67 edition. It stood in Paradise Valley, where Black-owned hotels, clubs and shops served people shut out of white establishments, and where touring Black entertainers stayed. Urban renewal and freeway building from the 1940s on erased the district, and Michigan's State Historic Preservation Office lists the building as no longer standing.
- In the Green Book, 1938–1967
- In the heart of Paradise Valley
- Hosted Black travelers from 1930
- Green Book
- Listed in The Negro Motorist Green Book, the travel guide that showed Black travelers where they could stay safely during segregation.
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