The Madison-Lenox Hotel is now gone forever, with no remnant of its existence other than lingering clouds of dust borne on asbestos fibers and a giant pile of historic rubble. And as has become a habit here on detroitblog lately, here is an obituary for yet another piece of our history that’s gone:

The Madison Hotel was built in 1900 on the edge of beautiful Harmonie Park, on the swank corner of Madison and Grand River. It was designed by architect F. C. Pollmar in French Late Gothic style and made of pressed brick, cut stone and terra cotta, at a cost of $100,000. It originally opened as the Madison Apartment Hotel. A two-story restaurant opened adjacent to it the same year.

It was followed three years later by the Lenox Hotel, designed by architect A. C. Varney with a similar height and architectural design as the neighboring Madison. The restaurant wall next to the new hotel was taken out so all three structures could be connected, with both sharing access to the restaurant, later known as the Madison-Lenox Cafe.

The combined luxury hotels sat adjacent to Harmonie Park, across from the Detroit Athletic Club and just down the street from the Capitol Theater, at the time the fifth-largest in the world, now known as the Detroit Opera House.

Billed as a “high class home for business and professional people,” the hotel offered daily, weekly, and monthly rates. For years the hotels were listed separately as the Madison Hotel and the Lenox Hotel, until being consolidated as the Hotels Madison-Lenox. The hotel had the rather sweet telephone number Cherry 3900.

The Madison-Lenox underwent a total renovation in the mid-1950s, updating the turn-of-the-century decor with sleek 50s interiors, replacing the light from the crystal chandeliers in the lounge with table lamps, and converting the lounge into the TV room. Air conditioning was added, as was a music room.

As the 70s and 80s wore on the hotel lost any pretense of being a luxury hotel. By the 1990s it had become a haven for transients, indigents, and fixed-income elderly. Half its tenants had no job and were receiving general assistance until the state ended that program in the early 90s and nearly all those tenants moved out.

In 1994 the hotel was purchased by architect David Schervish, who had plans to give it a $6 million to $8 million transformation into a luxury hotel and residence under a federal grant, as part of an overall Harmonie Park renovation. This led to the closure of the hotel and the eviction of all its residents. The city gave modest relocation expenses to the residents of the hotel, but a few tenants refused to leave, even after the city shut off utilities, and had to be forcibly evicted by the police.
But like so many proposed projects in the city, it was gradually delayed over and over until the idea just disappeared. In May 1998 it was sold to Mike Ilitch, who somehow convinced the city to grant him a $700,000 interest-free loan to tear down the buildings, despite being one of the city’s wealthiest businessmen. Ilitch promised an mere 89-car parking lot on the site. Preservationists continued to fight the demolition plans.

Meanwhile, the hotel deteriorated further, exposed by broken windows to the elements and to idiots who thought a 100-year-old endangered historic hotel was the proper place for large-scale graffiti, the presence of which was specifically cited Sunday by Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick as one of the excuses he used for its demolition. Good work, guys.

Several times over the past two years, the Detroit Historic District Council refused to grant a demolition permit to Ilitch, at one point even ordering Olympia (his company) to shore the building up and either renovate or sell it, moves which delayed demolition until last week, when the head of the City’s Buildings and Safety Engineering Department suddenly declared that it was in danger of “eminent” collapse, as his department’s original, illiterate press release stated, though nothing in reality indicated any collapse was actually imminent.

Finally, with the Major League Baseball All-Star Game coming to town in less than two months and the Superbowl coming to town in less than a year, Kwame simply declared the Historic District Council’s decision “wrong” and proceeded to order his crews to tear the hotel down, leaving Detroit with one less reminder that it once was, despite all current appearances to the contrary, a magnificent city.