Historic Hotels & Inns in Michigan

Ways in

Themes in Michigan

Mackinac Island’s car-free resort hotels

Two railroads and a steamship line opened the Grand Hotel on its bluff in 1887, and Mark Twain lectured there in 1895. Downtown, Charles O’Malley’s 1852 Island House is the oldest building on the island built as a hotel, and the Lake View dates from about 1858. In the 1950s the Moral Re-Armament movement built a conference center at Mission Point, now Mission Point Resort, and The Inn at Stonecliffe fills a 1904 Tudor Revival estate house in the island’s interior. There are no cars: guests come by ferry from Mackinaw City or St. Ignace, and most island hotels close for the winter.

Detroit’s 1910s and 1920s towers turned hotels

Detroit’s historic hotels fill its early-20th-century towers: Louis Kamper’s Book-Cadillac, the tallest hotel in the world when it opened in 1924, and his 1926 Book Tower, now ROOST; the 1915 David Whitney Building, the 1925 Metropolitan and the 1926 Wurlitzer Building around Grand Circus Park; and the 1929 fire department headquarters, now Detroit Foundation Hotel. Outside downtown, the Inn on Ferry Street fills four Victorian houses near the Detroit Institute of Arts, Henry Ford had Albert Kahn design The Dearborn Inn in 1931 for travelers at his airport, and The St. Clair Inn opened on the St. Clair River in 1926.

Summer resorts of Petoskey, Bay View and Harbor Springs

Petoskey’s Hotel Perry went up above Little Traverse Bay in 1899, during the railway resort boom. In Bay View, a Methodist summer community and National Historic Landmark district, John Wesley Howard built the Woodland Avenue House in 1886, now Stafford’s Bay View Inn, and William DeVol opened the Terrace Inn in 1911, advertising electric lights and hot and cold baths on each floor. The Colonial Inn opened in 1894 in the Wequetonsing resort community of Harbor Springs, and in Traverse City the 10-story Park Place tower of 1930 is still the tallest structure in town.

Copper country and lighthouse stays in the Upper Peninsula

After the copper companies suspended mining in 1932, county officials put the unemployed to work on a log lodge and golf course near Copper Harbor; Keweenaw Mountain Lodge now rents 24 log cabins year-round. In Laurium, two copper-boom mansions are B&Bs: Thomas Hoatson Jr.’s 1908 Laurium Manor Inn and, across the street, Norman MacDonald’s 1906 house, Victorian Hall. On Lake Superior north of Marquette, the 1896 Big Bay Point light station’s keepers’ house is a seven-room B&B, open from May into November.

Road trip

Detroit to Mackinac Island, inn to inn

Detroit

Start with two nights downtown at The Westin Book Cadillac, the 1924 Book-Cadillac on Washington Boulevard, or the Siren in the 1926 Wurlitzer Building near Grand Circus Park. Pick one from our Detroit guide.

Grand Rapids

Stay at the Amway Grand Plaza, the 1913 Pantlind Hotel on the Grand River, and ask for a Pantlind Wing room to sleep in the historic building.

Petoskey and Bay View

Stay in Bay View at the 1911 Terrace Inn or Stafford’s Bay View Inn, both open year-round, or downtown at the 1899 Hotel Perry above Little Traverse Bay.

Mackinac Island

Leave the car in a ferry lot at Mackinaw City and cross for two nights on the island between May and October. Choose the Grand Hotel, the 1852 Island House or Cloghaun’s 11 rooms from our Mackinac Island guide.

Context

History and architecture

Michigan’s historic hotels follow its lakes and its money. The British began building Fort Mackinac in 1780, Michigan became a state in 1837, and Mackinac Island turned to visitors: Charles O’Malley built the Island House in 1852, and in 1887 two railroads and a steamship line opened the Grand Hotel. Little Traverse Bay grew in the railway resort boom, from Bay View’s Woodland Avenue House of 1886 to Petoskey’s Hotel Perry of 1899. In copper country, mining executive Thomas Hoatson Jr. built Laurium Manor in 1908, and in Detroit the 1915 David Whitney Building took the name of lumber baron David Whitney Jr. Detroit’s skyline rose in the 1920s with the Book-Cadillac in 1924, then the tallest hotel in the world, and the Book Tower in 1926, and Henry Ford had Albert Kahn design The Dearborn Inn in 1931. After the copper companies suspended mining in 1932, county officials put the unemployed to work building Keweenaw Mountain Lodge. Since the Book-Cadillac reopened as a Westin in 2008, more of Detroit’s old towers have become hotels, from the Hotel David Whitney in 2014 to Element at the Metropolitan in 2018.