Ear Hustle

Soooo…Who’s Excited About Detroit’s Historic Park Hotel Implosion…We’re Not!! [Video]

EarHustle411 and the writing staff gets a disturbance in our spirit when historical parts of our existence are just blown to bits as if they never existed.  We came across a video of an implosion demolition of one Detroit, Michigan’s historical buildings.  The Park Avenue Hotel (now previously) located at 2643 Park Ave in downtown Detroit officially opened in 1924.

park avenue hotel

According to HistoricDetroit.org:

“The Park Avenue Hotel featured 252 rooms and the latest in hotel glitz and glamor: fancy furniture, hide-away wall beds and built-in dressers. Kamper outfitted the building’s lobby in the Tudor style and gave it imitation stone walls (ritzy at the time). In the back of the lobby was a lounge room with wooden paneling, English-style furniture and impressive chandeliers. If you kept on walking past the lounge, you’d come across the hotel’s main dining room and two private dining rooms. The hotel also featured many of the mainstays in hotels of the time, including a barbershop, drug store, cleaners and tobacconist.”

Owner Lew Tuller, a prominent business man whom had owned several hotels including the Park Avenue Hotel apparently had bit off more than he could chew.  The Park Hotel had been removed from his possession by the Security Trust Company in 1928 and although it remained in business, the hotel never offered the same luxurious amenities and in years past.

Throughout Detroit’s troublesome economic times, the Park Avenue Hotel has been made useful by the Salvation Army in 1957.  Where the property had been turned in to a place where the elderly could have affordable housing and be in an ares where shopping and entertainment were accessible.  Even through the many name changes as well the rising costs to keep the place up and running and the Salvation Army closed its doors in 2003.

Of course, with this building being a historical landmark, the abandoned building met its fate with vandals, pilfers stole the copper wiring, windows were removed, and architectural detaining was taken not to mention the building had graffiti scribbled all about.  Unfortunately the building although still historic but an eyesore.

park avenue hotel

photo credit (historic Detroit Website)

On July 11, 2015 @ 8:00am Detroit time the abandoned hotel was imploded in a demolition effort and the physical Park Ave Hotel as Detroit knows it will be no more.  Thankfully through archives and historical documents the Park Avenue Hotel will still have memories to live on.  It’s always a sad day when history is physically removed from the public eye.  This is why it is imperative that we save our history and do so at all costs because once it’s gone…IT’S GONE FOREVER!!

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