On the first morning of my second trip to Detroit, I opened the curtains of my 29th-floor hotel suite to a wide-screen view of skyscrapers and parking structures glowing under a rising sun. The funny thing about second trips to new places is you are sort of familiar, but still a stranger; I could name many of the skyscrapers: Ally, Penobscot, and the shiniest of them all, the 49-story, glass-sided Hudson’s Detroit, topped off last spring. But much was still a mystery at street level — so much to discover.
This visit, I wanted to see what I missed the first time and revisit some favorites — the Guardian Building, the Detroit Institute of Arts’ Rivera Court. I wanted to experience the entertainment district, to see a concert or even go to a Lions game.
I wanted to sample the diverse and ever-growing collection of hotels. Most of all, I wanted to go off the beaten path — or at least to the last stop on the QLine — to see parts of the city that were less shiny but no less compelling and themselves on the cusp of change.
A lot had happened in the year between my autumn visits in 2023 and 2024, from the NFL Draft to Michigan Central Station’s grand reopening to the Tigers’ and the Lions’ playoff runs. Even Isamu Noguchi’s futuristic Dodge Fountain in Hart Plaza was gushing again after almost 10 years’ dormancy, this time with LED lights that change color. The restaurants and bars that had been barely open a year ago were now packed. The streets were busier, too, with shoppers and tourists checking the sights off their lists, carrying shopping bags that read “Lululemon” and “Nike.” Was that Gucci store there last year? And where was my favorite mural? Save the whales!
Against all odds, Detroit has become a tourist destination. Just recently, The New York Times named it one of its “52 places to go in 2025.” (It’s No. 39, after Osaka, Japan.) Last October, Michelin released a Detroit edition of its coveted Green Guide, originally in French — appropriate, given the city’s French colonial origins — followed by an English version two months later.
You can see pretty much all the main sights from the QLine, the free light-rail streetcar that travels up Woodward Avenue, and it lets you brag that you visited the city that birthed the automobile without actually driving.
I can’t explain my affinity for a city I previously knew only through music; my family lived in France when I was a child, a perk of my father’s military service, so perhaps the Gallic perfume that wafts over everything strikes an emotional chord in me. Whatever the case, this is the only version of Detroit I know, and I love getting to know it better.
Greektown to Me
Downtown Detroit has three casinos, green-lighted in 1996 to boost tax revenue to the city. One of them sits on the northeastern edge of downtown, yards from Ford Field, in a historic district called Greektown. I read somewhere that “Detroit was founded so King Louis XIV of France could wear a beaver hat.” I can’t prove that this is true, but I do know that this area was the center of the local fur trade in the early 18th century, during his reign. Next came the Germans, who built the beautiful Victorian brick buildings that still exist today, followed in the late 19th century by Greek immigrants who lived, worked, played, and prayed in the neighborhood. The Greektown Casino (now Hollywood Casino at Greektown) arrived in 2000, the 30-story hotel seven years later. It shimmers iridescent green and hot pink on the skyline, making it a handy landmark to navigate by.
For nongamblers, the nice thing about staying at the Hollywood is that it doesn’t feel (or sound) like a casino hotel. All the gaming rooms lie across the street in historic brick buildings that include a former Catholic girls’ school and a 19th-century tannery. A skyway across Monroe connects the casino to the hotel, which means the lobby itself — which was part of the hotel’s $30 million renovation in 2022 — is calm, quiet, and urban-chic, with no casino jangling and hubbub. It’s close to all the fun, and the rooms are a relative bargain.
Today, the casino and old Greektown compete for attention. Several blocks of Monroe Street feature street-strung lights and piped-in Greek music, a handful of authentic Greek restaurants with retro neon signs, a few bars, a delectable-looking bakery, and a liquor store called Athens, with a mural to match. French street names are painted in Greek on the buildings. It’s a district in transition, about to undergo a $20 million makeover to make it safer and more pedestrian-friendly and create a more “Athens-like experience in downtown Detroit.”
I got my Athens experience at the Golden Fleece, a Greektown mainstay for more than 50 years. There, I enjoyed the best Greek meal of my life: dolmathakia in lemon sauce and moussaka with beef and tomato and a glass of rosé, which I raised to my maternal grandfather, who emigrated from Greece in the 1930s.
Bronze is Beautiful
I missed something big on my first visit, and I had to make up for it. My plan was to jump on the People Mover at the Greektown station and take it to the Renaissance Center stop, but the system was closed for track repairs, so I ended up hoofing it for much of my stay. Which was a blessing in a way, for the city reveals more of itself at sidewalk level. How did I miss this the first time?
I hoofed it a mile up Beaubien Street to Jefferson and Woodward to the Monument to Joe Louis, nicknamed “The Fist.” You have to stand under this 24-foot-long bronze forearm, painted black and hung from cables, thrusting a clenched fist toward the Detroit River, to feel its full power. Pictures do not do it justice.
Joe Louis Barrow won his first fights as a Detroit teenager and famously defeated Hitler’s favorite boxer, Max Schmeling, in 1938. Louis was world heavyweight champion for the next 12 years and was the first Black athlete of the 20th century to win mainstream adulation.
For its 100th anniversary in 1986, the Detroit Institute of Arts teamed up with magazine publisher Time Inc. to sponsor events round the city; Sports Illustrated, then a Time Inc. magazine, paid $350,000 for the new monument honoring Louis. An island in the middle of a busy eight-lane avenue may seem like an odd location, but when the acclaimed
Mexican-born artist Robert Graham received the commission in 1983, he chose this spot in the shadow of the Renaissance Center because “this kind of movement, … that kind of life is important to the image.”
“The Fist” has been vandalized and scandalized, yet it remains a provocative symbol of “Detroit vs. Everybody” energy. It’s also a gritty counterpoint to “The Spirit of Detroit” across the street at the foot of the Coleman A. Young Municipal Center. Detroit sculptor Marshall Fredericks created this midcentury-modern man in the late 1950s to symbolize hope and progress. At 26 feet tall, it has a lightness to it despite being the largest bronze sculpture cast since the Italian Renaissance. Like Michelangelo’s “David,” this benevolent green giant with the “Mona Lisa” smile is mostly unclothed, except when wearing his custom-made XXXXXL Lions jersey. Football fever had the city in its grip, and I had a ticket to that Sunday’s game.
Rooms with a View
The Westin Book Cadillac Detroit at the corner of Washington and Michigan is another comeback story. It was completed in 1924, replacing an older hotel called the Cadillac. This Book brothers-owned and Louis Kamper-designed 33-story skyscraper was the tallest hotel in the world (briefly) and had all the latest amenities, like a telephone and a bathroom in each of its 1,500 rooms. No one wanted to share a sink with strangers anymore.
Before closing in 1984, the Book-Cadillac was the hotel of choice for Presidents Hoover and Taft, Babe Ruth, and Elvis Presley. The hotel reopened in 2008 under Marriott’s Westin brand. The landmark exterior, featuring Kamper’s trademark Italianate frills and statuary, is original to 1924, but the interior is all new, with soothing neutrals and clean lines. With 17 meeting rooms, three ballrooms, and a serene heated indoor pool, the Westin Book Cadillac has a big-hotel feel with a vibe that’s more Canyon Ranch than postindustrial Detroit. And just as in the olden days, the bathrooms are special — with bathtubs, a rarity it seems in new hotels these days.
The Shinola Hotel at Woodward and Grand River avenues has only been around since 2019, but it helped make downtown Detroit a leader in clever and creative boutique hotels. Known for its luxe leather goods and timepieces, Detroit-based Shinola carved a 129-room hotel and its matching store out of two blighted 19th-century buildings, one a former Singer sewing machine store and the other an eight-story terra-cotta beauty that once housed a hardware company and that shares an architect with the Guardian Building.
Last year, Michelin gave the Shinola a coveted Michelin key, the hotel equivalent of its Michelin star for restaurants. Indeed, the hotel runs like a fine watch, all the parts ticking off an experience that feels swanky yet not showy. Guests are offered a glass of Champagne, which I recommend sipping in the high-ceilinged lobby, hung to the ceiling with eclectic artwork. Guest rooms are stocked with luxe items — like an alpaca blanket — you can buy at the adjoining Shinola boutique. The vibe is cheeky and hip, and some corner rooms look out over Woodward’s shopping district and the Hudson’s Detroit project, the future home of General Motors Co. — and yet another new hotel.
Toward the river, the Courtyard Detroit Downtown is the place to stay if you have kids — or are anyone who likes a hotel with a massive fitness room and a pool. Recently renovated, the 260-room hotel also has its own People Mover station in the Millender Center, and the world’s first IHOP-Applebee’s “joint concept.” The rooms are spacious, and some have views of the Renaissance Center across Jefferson Avenue.
Hitting the Town
In her classic 1961 book The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Jane Jacobs called downtown Detroit “dispirited and dull, and almost deserted by seven o’clock.” She should see it now.
Detroit is the only city in the U.S. with four professional sports teams playing within its city limits, which brings people from all over — not only to the games and concerts but to the social hot spots that surround them. The Red Wings were hosting a Star Wars Night, and I found myself in a herd of fans dressed as Obi-Wan Kenobi and Luke Skywalker. Detroit Opera is here, as are classic concert venues like The Fillmore and the Fox Theatre. The Fox is the grandest of the Detroit movie palaces designed by C. Howard Crane in the early 1910s and ’20s, a survivor from a time when these escapist pleasure domes lined the streets of Grand Circus Park. The biggest acts in the world play the Fox, and luckily, Cyndi Lauper and I were in town at the same time.
I had a preconcert dinner at San Morello, the Shinola Hotel’s signature eatery, serving up southern Italian dishes and a date-night atmosphere. I opted for the homemade focaccia, mezzi rigatoni with veal and peppercorn, and a vodka cocktail appropriately named Sweater Weather. OK, I had two, which made the walk to the Fox all the more fun. I joined Lauper fans bedecked in rainbow wigs and tulle skirts, but it was hard not to ogle at the Fox’s lavish décor, a hallucinogenic mélange of Asian motifs gilded and carved to the nth degree, with marble columns and lion statues and a gilded Hindu elephant on the proscenium arch. The concert was terrific, and my head swiveled between Lauper, a legend still rocking in her 70s; the adoring crowd; and the mind-boggling theater. You can tour the Fox for $20, but the best way to experience it is with 5,000 like-minded strangers.
I had big plans for Friday night. My partners in partying were Kaja and Ken, New York friends who had retired to Toledo, Ohio. We started with dinner in the Book Tower, another reborn Book brothers property across the street from the Westin Book Cadillac. Its soaring glass-domed lobby is tied with the DIA’s Rivera Court and Michigan Central Station for my favorite space in Detroit. Le Suprême, the Book Tower’s highly rated French restaurant, had just opened during my first trip in 2023, and a year later, it was packed and abuzz with joie de vivre. Escargots, a craft cocktail with gin and pear eau-de-vie, brook trout, quality time with people I’d missed, crème brûlée, and a charming waiter: “Another Parisian Laundry? Mais bien sûr!”
After dinner, we spontaneously headed up to Kamper’s Rooftop Lounge and hung out with the beautiful people, admiring the glowing skyline at night, before walking to Cliff Bell’s. I’d stumbled across this iconic jazz club while walking back from the Cyndi Lauper concert. Named for a bootlegger turned club boss, the legendary venue has a vintage, black-and-white movie feel (without the cigarette smoke). The Sean Dobbins Organ Trio featuring Luke Sittard on guitar commanded the stage. It felt like a quintessential Detroit night: boozy, sexy, and joyous. The next morning, a breakfast sandwich from Iggy’s Eggies, a window in a wall on Grand River from which savory delights emerge, was just what my hangover ordered.
More Must-see Museums
The People Mover goes in a circle downtown, while the QLine goes straight up Woodward 3.3 miles, passing through Midtown, the museum district, and the ever-expanding Wayne State University universe. At Ferry Street, I disembarked and walked a few blocks to the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History, next to the Michigan Science Center. The museum was the passion project of Dr. Charles Wright, an OB-GYN who started what was first named the International Afro-American Museum in 1965, using many of his own artifacts collected on trips to Africa. It moved twice before settling in a magnificent new building in 1997, designed by the Black architectural firm of Sims-Varner & Associates (now SDG Associates). The massive Ford Freedom Rotunda is jaw-dropping; the 92 flags around its perimeter represent nations where large numbers of the African diaspora live. During my visit, there were exhibits on the Tuskegee Airmen and James Baldwin, but the core exhibit is And Still We Rise, a more than 20-gallery saga documenting the Black journey in America, from slave ships to civil rights to the mayor’s seat in Detroit. It is unflinching and utterly necessarily, especially now.
A few blocks from the Amsterdam Street QLine stop stands arguably the most important automobile heritage site in the world, the Ford Piquette Avenue Plant Museum. Talk about an innovation hub. In 1904, Henry Ford built this handsome three-story brick factory and with his team churned out a series of automobiles culminating with the first Model T, the car that changed the world. Owned by a nonprofit and run by volunteers, who saved the building from demolition in 2000, the Piquette Plant remains much as it was in the early 1900s, raw and unvarnished, with creaky floors and large factory rooms filled with over 65 rare Fords, including an almost-full set of “alphabet cars”: B, C, F, K, N, R, and T.
Are You Not Entertained?
On Sunday, I was traveling on the QLine from a museum visit to Grand Circus Park for the Lions game when people in Honolulu blue jerseys began boarding at Midtown. Looking down at the cars driving along beside us, I noticed all the occupants were wearing blue Lions jerseys and big Lions chains. The trickle of Honolulu blue became a torrent at Ford Field’s lively pregame festival, with food trucks and beer and selfies at the new Barry Sanders statue.
My press pass took me to an area high above the action with rows of very serious sports reporters, and I felt like a Roman at the Colosseum watching the game unfold, though it’s really a spectacle. I have loved football all my life, and I remember when there were two halves, someone twirled a baton, and you went home either happy or sad. This was a whole other level. There was a very exciting football game, of course, in which the Lions crushed the Tennessee Titans 52-14, but also a halftime corgi race and the best part, coach Dan Campbell stalking the sidelines.
I challenge anyone to find a more stirring sound than the united roar of 65,000 Lions fans. The team’s run to greatness was always the fairy tale part of the comeback story, but if anyone knows that the happy ending comes only after adversity and heartbreak, it’s the good people of Detroit.
To read the full 2025 City Guide, visit hourdetroit.com/cityguide. And to read about Dana White’s first experience in Detroit, check out last year’s City Guide.
This story originally appeared in the April 2025 issue of Hour Detroit magazine. To read more, pick up a copy of Hour Detroit at a local retail outlet. Our digital edition will be available on April 7.
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