Fort Shelby Hotel

03 / The story of this place

What was here?

The Fort Shelby opened on June 6, 1918, as a 10-story hotel at Lafayette and First, the only Detroit work of Chicago architects Schmidt, Garden & Martin. Albert Kahn added a 21-story, 450-room tower in 1927. Pick Hotels bought it in 1951 and ran it as the Pick-Fort Shelby until December 1973. Three young heirs reopened it as The Shelby Hotel on February 25, 1974, with John Sinclair booking acts like Sun Ra into its Rainbow Room club, but it closed again within months. It then sat empty and vandalized for more than three decades, even after joining the National Register of Historic Places in 1983, until a $90 million rebuild led by developer Emmett Moten Jr.

• Opened 1918; Kahn tower added 1927
• 1974 revival with Sun Ra
• Empty from 1974 to 2008

Former names

Fort Shelby Hotel (1918–1951) · Pick-Fort Shelby (1951–1973) · The Shelby Hotel (1974)

Architect

Schmidt, Garden & Martin (1918); Albert Kahn (1927 tower)

Historic building

Listed on the National Register of Historic Places since 1983

What’s there now?

DoubleTree Guest Suites Fort Shelby/Detroit Downtown (204 suites) with 56 apartments in the tower; Crain's reported on May 12, 2026, that a new owner plans to convert it to an Embassy Suites.