Fort Shelby Hotel

The DoubleTree Suites by Hilton Hotel Detroit Downtown - Fort Shelby is a restored historic high-rise hotel, located at 525 West Lafayette Boulevard (at First Street) in Downtown Detroit, Michigan.HistoryIn 1917, a group of investors sought to build an affordable hotel near Fort Street Union Depot. They hired Schmidt, Garden & Martin of Chicago to design the 10-story, 450-room hotel which opened that year as the Fort Shelby Hotel. The hotel was so successful that in 1926 they broke ground for the first of two planned 450-room expansions, the 27-story Albert Kahn–designed addition opened in 1927. However, the Great Depression halted plans for the second addition. In 1951, the Albert Pick Hotels Company purchased the property and renamed it The Pick-Fort Shelby.An original mural by Louis Grell of Chicago was commissioned for the hotel lobby during the Albert Pick years. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, more business opted for newer suburban accommodations and the Pick-Fort Shelby struggled with low occupancy. Pick closed the hotel in 1973 and sold the building to three twenty-something investors who reopened it as The Shelby Hotel, a hotel/apartment complex geared toward youth in 1974, however, this was short-lived and it soon closed again. For many years, the Anchor Bar, a popular watering hole for workers at the nearby Detroit News and Detroit Free Press remained the only tenant until it relocated in 1994. The hotel was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1983.