Gotham Hotel
- Title (Dublin Core)
- Gotham Hotel
- Description (Dublin Core)
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City: Detroit
Address: 111 Orchstra Place
Appears in the 1950-1955 Green Books
Closed in 1963 -
"The building stood at 111 Orchestra Place at John R, about a block north of Mack, and saw a who's-who list of visitors over its two decades as one of the country's leading Black hotels: Jackie Robinson, Langston Hughes, Ella Fitzgerald, Sammy Davis Jr. and Billie Holiday.
The building started its life as just another simple structure catering to the city's white majority, the Hotel Martinique. It was built for Albert B. Hartz by A.W. Kutsche & Co. and designed in the Italian Renaissance style by architect Percival R. Pereira. The building permit was approved March 28, 1923, and construction started a few days later, on April 1. The total investment was about $800,000 (about $11 million today, when adjusted for inflation).
But this was segregated Detroit, and African-Americans were unfairly not allowed to stay in downtown hotels. With more and more African-Americans moving to the city for the good-paying factory jobs, Detroit was in need of not just more hotels, but fancier ones. Indeed, as the city entered the 1940s, there were only seven or eight hotels serving Black people in Detroit -- if you could even call them that. Some were nothing more than a flophouse.
Black Detroiters were deserving of something better, and the Gotham would soon embark on its most glorious years." (historicdetroit.org) - More information about the Gotham Hotel
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Part of Gotham Hotel