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Outlier Media
One good checklist: Detroit crosses last building off its notorious ‘dirty dozen’
By Aaron Mondry,
30 days ago
Downtown Detroit was certainly a lot different 20 years ago. Along with a Lululemon store and $80 cocktails , there’s no better example of the change than what is colloquially referred to as the “dirty dozen.”
A February 2004 issue of the Detroit Free Press identified 12 abandoned skyscrapers in and around downtown, noted for their historical significance and dismal state. The Free Press dubbed them “Towers of Neglect.”
A little more than two decades later, the dirty dozen is no more. Transit advocate David Gifford recently posted a write-up detailing what happened to all those buildings. Let’s briefly recap.
Book-Cadillac Hotel : The opulent hotel closed in 1984. It reopened in 2008 after the Cleveland-based Ferchill Group poured about $190 million into a renovation that in many ways signaled downtown’s turnaround. Its newest owner, Oxford Capital Group, completed a $23 million renovation in December.
David Broderick Tower : The 34-floor skyscraper’s last tenant left in 1993, though most of the other tenants had been gone years before that. The building reopened in 2012 after a $50 million renovation. A group of investors that included local developer Michael Higgins , until his death last year, have owned the Broderick since 1976. They put the building up for sale in February. Its most popular feature, the “Whale Tower” mural, was painted by Robert Wyland in 1997.
David Whitney Building : The building has one of the most spectacular atria in the city. But the Whitney closed in 2000. The Roxbury Group turned it into a hotel that opened in 2014 following a more than $90 million redevelopment. The firm recently completed a more than $20 million renovation in March.
The latest renovation to the David Whitney Building involved extensive work on its atrium and the opening of several retail businesses. Photo credit: Alanna St. Laurent for HistoricDetroit.org
Fort Shelby Hotel : The hotel sat mostly empty for more than 30 years from the 1970s until its reopening in 2008 as a DoubleTree hotel, following an approximately $82 million renovation by local developer Emmet Moten.
Madison-Lenox Hotel : The three buildings that made up this hotel complex were the oldest buildings on this list, built between 1900 and 1905 . The city seized the hotel for tax delinquency in 1993 and intended to tear it down, despite developers’ hopes for a restoration . Then the Ilitch family bought the building in 1997 and leveled it in 2005. The Madison-Lenox was one of only two structures at the time on the National Trust for Historic Preservation that were demolished. The site today is a surface parking lot.
Michigan Central Station : The station is the last building to get removed from the dirty dozen list. It closed in 1988, then Matty Moroun bought it in 1995 and did almost nothing with it until he sold the station to Ford Motor Co. in 2018. Michigan Central Station reopened this month following a six-year renovation of multiple buildings in the area that cost around $950 million.
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