Madison-Lenox Hotel

03 / The story of this place

What was here?

It was really two eight-story residential hotels: F.C. Pollmar's red-brick Madison of 1900, with load-bearing masonry walls, and A.C. Varney's Beaux Arts Lenox of 1902, built with steel and concrete, joined by a shared cafe. Businessmen and professionals lived here on landscaped Madison Avenue by Harmonie Park and the Detroit Athletic Club; a stripped-down modern makeover came in 1954, and by the 1980s most residents were low-income seniors. It closed on November 25, 1992, and the Ilitch family bought it in 1997 hoping to raze it for parking. Despite repeated refusals from the Historic District Commission and a 2004 spot on America's 11 Most Endangered Historic Places list, wreckers showed up unannounced on May 18, 2005, and it was gone in about a week. Its loss helped spark the Greater Detroit Preservation Coalition.

• The Madison (1900) and the Lenox (1902)
• On the 2004 Most Endangered list
• Demolished May 2005 amid a court fight

Former names

Madison Apartment Hotel (1900–1914 (several variants)) · Madison-Lenox Apartment Hotel (1914–1947) · Hotel Madison-Lenox (1947–1992)

Architect

F. Carl Pollmar (Madison, 1900); Almon C. Varney (Lenox, 1902)

What’s there now?

A surface parking lot owned by the Ilitch family's companies, per Historic Detroit.