The Westin Book Cadillac will be sold.

[casscorridor]

The original renovation should be celebrated, but the interiors ended up quite generic and lacking a unique sense of space - it feels like it could be any Westin hotel anywhere in the world. I'd be excited to see a modern reinterpretation of the original baroque-inspired interiors. Something more compatible with the palatial Neo-Renaissance structure.

[Richard]

^ agreed there is nothing that sets it apart,pays homage to the history or has anything to offer that is not available everywhere else.

I think the experience of a hotel being a destination within itself goes a long way In bringing repeat business.

They are taking a massive hit in Germany,a manager refused to rent a room to a well known rocker unless he covered up his Star of David necklace,the pendant itself was tiny,as one can imagine it’s not going over very well.

Westin in itself has been selling off for a few years now,so it would not surprise me if it became another marquee.

[401don]

I agree with the above comments. It feels like sacrilege to complain since it was a miracle it got renovated but it was the historic hotel with grandeur and it's a shame some of that couldn't be saved. When the plans were annouced they spoke of several restaurants and bars, etc. and most of these either were eliminated or scaled down. When I had breakfast there I felt like I was in a meeting room.

[Burnsie]

What's really crazy is that a lot of marble was painstakingly restored when Radisson took over. Free Press, 4/18/78:

[[Benny) "Capp is the retired president of Detroit's Wolverine Marble Co., the firm that refinished and repolished the hotel's marble from its 1924 opening until Sheraton bought it in 1951...'They called me in Arizona and they wanted to know what kinds of marble were under the Vitrolite [[glasslike synthetic) and what was under the vinyl...Everyday they give us an order for something else...We're refinishing the floors...and in places extending the marble. We'll refinish all wall panels plasters and niches.' Two of the grandest niches, purple in color, flanking the elevators and two stories high, are badly broken in places. Wolverine will provide new panels.
The marble is of all kinds: Breche Violette from France, yellow Sienna from Italy, white Alabama and pink and gray Tennessee. Much of it is rare now; luckily, Wolverine has retained old supplies.
For the past two and a half weeks, Wolverine work crews...have been tearing through paint, wallpaper and fabric coverings--all the changing tastes of three decades--to the earlier remodelers."

You can see a lot of the restored/replaced marble survived in this early 2000's lobby photo. I suppose it was all tossed in the dumpster during the last renovation.

http://wacots.org/nailhed/BookCadd/images/bc001_jpg.jpg

[Gistok]

With the 2005 rehab [definitely not a restoration] in the lobby they did replace the Corinthian capitals, but only in plain white plaster. The marble surfaces are just plain white plaster today. And as I've mentioned before, the ornate golden plaster ceiling [with patterns of Antoine Cadillac's coat-of-arms] was ripped out from above the florescent light drop ceiling with the 2005 work.

Here is how the lobby looked in 1925 with marble and ornate ceiling, and today, with drywall...

As was said... it now looks like any other Westin Hotel.

[Burnsie]

Yes, I've sat in the lobby bar, gazed around and pondered things. I wonder if fire regulations mandated the lobby mezzanine balconies be filled in, or if it was just remodeling decisions. I've walked around the BC with David Kohrman's book so I could compare floor layouts from old to new.

I wonder if anyone on the Ferchill construction team thought to at least take close up quality photographs of examples of the surviving ornament, and file them for potential future reference. Probably not. I myself didn't think of that until just now, after some 15 years!

One low cost thing that would class up the BC would be to put some color decals on the doors and elevators with the old style Cadillac shield, as used throughout originally. I suppose not, since that would detract from the "corporate wide branding standard" of the Westin or whoever takes over next.

Whatever critiques we make of the Book Cadillac are due to love of the building, and a wish to make it better.