One good building: David Whitney’s owners pour $20M into renovating historic skyscraper

David Whitney Building

• David Whitney Building

Address: 1 Park Ave., Detroit
Architecture: Beaux Arts
History: Opened in 1915 as one of only a handful of buildings in Detroit designed by Daniel H. Burnham and Co. Architects. Listed as part of the Grand Circus Park Historic District in the National Register of Historic Places in 1983. It closed in 2000 due to low occupancy. Roxbury Group completed a more than $90 million renovation and hotel conversion in 2014.

One of Detroit’s oldest and most significant skyscrapers got a refresh just a decade after its redevelopment. The owners of the David Whitney Building just completed a more than $20 million overhaul that left almost no feature of the downtown building untouched.

Its owner, The Roxbury Group, rebranded the hotel as the Hotel David Whitney after upgrading the rooms to become part of Marriott International’s Autograph Collection, considered a level up from the hotel’s previous affiliation with the Marriott’s Aloft brand. The firm also renovated common areas and the iconic four-story atrium. Several new businesses opened as well, including an Art Deco-themed restaurant and coffee shop.

“We’re looking at this as an opportunity to finish what we started a decade ago,” Roxbury Group co-founder David Di Rita told the Detroit Free Press . “While the Aloft was a wonderful conversion and an enormously successful project, we felt like we owed it to the city and to this building to give it its final conversion, if you will.”

The Roxbury Group reopened the David Whitney Building in 2014 following a more than $90 million renovation .

Dan Austin of HistoricDetroit.org calls the Whitney building “one of the most important structures in Detroit” due to its architectural and historical significance. The 18-story building is named for lumber baron and real estate developer David Whitney, “one of Detroit’s wealthiest men at the turn of the century,” according to the National Register of Historic Places nomination for the surrounding Grand Circus Park Historic District. When the skyscraper opened in 1915, it joined three other stately buildings overlooking Grand Circus Park: the Kales Building, Tuller Hotel and the Statler Hotel. Today, only the Kales and the David Whitney survive.

It’s one of only a handful in Detroit designed by the architectural firm Daniel H. Burnham and Co. Architects. The Beaux Arts-style building is notable for its spectacular atrium covered in terra cotta and marble.

Like many buildings downtown, occupancy dwindled in the latter half of the 20th century. It had been vacant for more than a decade when the Roxbury Group bought the building in 2011.

One good building: David Whitney’s owners pour $20M into renovating historic skyscraper · by Aaron Mondry · Outlier Media