Adaptive Reuse in Detroit: How These Historic Buildings Got a New Lease on Life

After nearly 40 years of abandonment, Michigan Central Station reopened this summer, marking Detroit’s most recent and perhaps most impressive adaptive reuse project to date.

The former train station in Corktown was first built back in 1913 and in its heyday it transported over 4,000 passengers per day. At the time, it was the tallest train station in the country and connected Detroit to locations like Chicago, New York, Buffalo, and Syracuse.

It served this purposed for 75 years, until it sadly closed in 1988. More and more people were driving vehicles on highways, or taking domestic flights, and demand for trains had declined.

Over the following years, efforts to revive the once-grand building into a casino or nightclub or police station all failed. And so, it spent the next 40 years falling prey to looting, vandalism, and good old fashioned flooding and decay.

In 2018, saving it from imminent demolition, Ford Motor Company purchased Michigan Central Station for a reported $90 million. Compare that to the $2.5 million it took to build the station back in the early 1900s, and the $950 million over the following six years of development.

Throughout development, Ford removed over 3.5 million gallons of floodwater from the station’s basement, and restored original features like the marble flooring, original Guastavino tiles and bricks, and decorative plaster.

Today, Michigan Central still stands. However, its function is quite different – although there are still connections to its transportation roots. No longer do trains chug in and out. Instead, the station is now a “mobility innovation campus”. At 30 acres, Michigan Central Station is now home to over 600 employees across 100 startups, ranging from self-driving and electric vehicles to plant-based food production, and more.

In June 2024, Michigan Central Station reopened to the public with an 11-day celebration including an epic concert, attended by Governor Gretchen Whitmer and Mayor Mike Duggan, as well as an all-star lineup of Michigan artists like Eminem and Diana Ross.

Back in 1988, when Michigan Central Station closed its doors and the final train passed through its tracks, the Detroit Free Press wrote: “the shutdown of the Michigan Central Depot should be the occasion of serious reflection about what we once were, what we have lost – and what, given sufficient will, we could regain.”

Today, it’s clear that Detroiters had the will and the city is regaining what it once was. This astonishing adaptive reuse project is just one example of the resilience of Detroiters.

Detroit’s iconic Book Tower was originally completed back in 1926, nearly a century ago. It was designed by architect Louis Kamper in an Italian Renaissance style, for the purpose of supplying office space to Detroit businesses. At 38-stories, it was the tallest building in Detroit when it was first built.

While Book Tower thrived for decades, it did slowly begin to struggle in the late 1980s, as many Detroit businesses did. Building owners declared bankruptcy, and in 2009 the final tenant left, leaving the once-bustling building in downtown Detroit empty.

Today, though, Book Tower has been restored to its former glory. This is thanks to Bedrock, a Detroit real estate firm, who purchased the building in 2015 for $30 million. Then ensued a complex, seven-year, $400 million redevelopment with the goal to save the building’s original features while simultaneously modernizing it for the future.

Instead of office space, which is in less demand since the pandemic, Book Tower is now home to ROOST, Detroit’s first long-stay hotel. The design-forward hotel features studio, one-, and two-bedroom apartments spread across 28 floors. Other tenants include trendy restaurants and bars like Hiroki San and Le Supreme.

On the ground floor, visitors can stroll through the Rotunda, which is the building’s entryway that was painstakingly restored to its original beauty. It includes 6,000 glass panels and over 7,000 jewels with a stunning glass-domed ceiling.

It’s no wonder that in 2023, the year Book Tower reopened to the public, Architectural Digest named it as one of the world’s 11 most beautiful repurposed buildings – a crown jewel for downtown Detroit.

Everyone who knows Detroit knows the sound of Motown music. But what you might not know is that Motown has its own adaptive reuse story.

Back in 1959, Berry Gordy was just an average Detroiter with a dream who took out an $800 loan from his family to start a recording studio in his home. Said home was a humble house at 2648 West Grand Boulevard, and where Gordy founded Motown Records. Artists like The Supremes, The Miracles, The Temptations, Smokey Robinson, Diana Ross, The Jackson 5, Marvin Gaye, and more all spent time creating music in this small blue-and-white home. Gordy painted a sign outside the home that read “Hitsville USA,” which the house has since been dubbed as.

When Gordy eventually moved Motown Records headquarters out to Los Angeles, his family was faced with carrying on the Motown legacy in Detroit. Gordy’s sister, Esther Gordy Edwards, founded the Motown Museum in 1985.

For years, the Motown Museum existed solely within the exact same space as Gordy’s original home, Hitsville USA, and welcomed visitors to Detroit from all over the world.

In 2016, though, the Motown Museum took a further step toward the future: they embarked on fundraising for an expansion project, helmed by CEO Robin Terry, granddaughter of Edwards.

The expansion, which is currently entering phase its third and final phase, ended up becoming a $65-million project transforming the Motown Museum from one residential house to a 50,000 square foot campus.

From budding recording studio to world-class museum, this adaptive reuse project tells a deeply special and uniquely Detroit story.

The David Whitney Building is a gorgeous Romanesque Revival mansion in Midtown, and one of the better known architectural landmarks in the city. Notably, it is one of only three remaining buildings designed by Daniel H. Burnham & Co., a famed American architect.

The mansion was originally built back in the 1890s as the home of David Whitney Jr., a lumber baron and one of the wealthiest people in all of Michigan. Some of its rare original features include 218 extremely valuable Tiffany glass windows, a pink jasper stone exterior, a grand staircase, a detailed stained glass window, and 52 rooms.

Whitney himself only lived here for six years, until his death in 1900, and his family stayed on until 1920. In the 1940s, they transferred the mansion to the Wayne County Medical Society and Visiting Nurses Association.

When the Visiting Nurses Association planned to leave the house in 1979, it was set to be demolished. Richard Kughn purchased the property before that could happen, saving this Detroit icon.

He redeveloped the house and in 1986 it reopened as a high-class, luxury restaurant (The Whitney). In 2007, Bud Liebler purchased the home and carried on further renovations to maintain the restaurant, restore the gardens and open a third-floor craft cocktail bar (The Ghostbar).

Today, The Whitney looks from the outside much as it did over 130 years ago. It has stood the test of time and is a nod to both Detroit’s past and present.

A couple blocks off Woodward Avenue in downtown Detroit stands the Wurlitzer Building, an unusual adaptive reuse project with the story arc from musical instrument shop to boutique hotel.

This narrow, 14-story building was designed in the Renaissance Revival style and originally opened in 1926. Back then, it was home to the famed Wurlitzer Co., which was known across the world for its musical instruments and in particular its powerful organs that were supplied to cinemas.

Throughout the mid 1900s you could come here for musical instrument repair, to attend live concerts in a 400-seat auditorium, or buy radios and records.

Like the story goes for many of downtown Detroit’s other historical buildings, the Wurlitzer Building became vacant in the 1980s thanks to the money woes of its owner. Unfortunately, throughout the following decades the Wurlitzer Building sat vacant and eventually began to fall apart – literally – with chunks of debris endangering Detroiters who walked on the sidewalk below it, once even landing on and punching a hole through the roof of a next door building.

Thankfully, in 2015 the Wurlitzer Building was saved from certain demolition by ASH NYC, a New York-based real estate development firm. Over the following three years, the crumbling Wurlitzer Building was transformed into the boutique Siren Hotel and resident craft cocktail bar (the ever-popular all-pink Candy Bar).

Many of the building’s original opulent features were retained in the 106-room hotel which opened in 2018. That opening marked the beginning of what people call Detroit’s “boutique hotel boom” – of which many other hotels have also given new life to historic Detroit buildings.

This has been only a glimpse into the ever-expanding adaptive reuse scene in Detroit.

Other notable projects include The David Whitney, a 1915 skyscraper originally filled with medical offices that now is home to the luxurious Hotel David Whitney, and Cambria Hotel Downtown Detroit, a recently-opened boutique hotel redeveloped from the remains of the art deco WWJ building (the city’s original radio station).

And of course, Detroit being Detroit, there is even more to come.

The Fisher Body Plant is one exciting project in the pipeline. The 1908 factory building was abandoned for years, but is now in the process of being transformed into residential apartments (by 2027).

One thing that all of these projects share? They are breathing new life into the city of Detroit, all while preserving its story for future generations.