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Along Detroit’s Park Street just outside of Downtown there is a string of highly visible skyscrapers that once belonged to hotel magnate Lew Tuller. Tuller, a self-made man, who sold newspapers in downtown as a boy, became one of the area’s biggest hotel developers. His first hotel, aptly named “The Tuller” was so successful that it was renovated and expanded no fewer than five times. As a mogul of the booming 1920s hotel scene, owning and managing just one hotel was not going to satisfy Lew Tuller’s ambitions. Tuller began expanding his empire northward along Park Street, building three more hotels just off this one thoroughfare. In 1926, construction was completed on Tuller’s largest and most lavish hotel to date – the 14-story, beaux-art Park Ave. It became one of downtown’s premier “live-in” residential hotels.
During the late 1980s and early 1990s as the crack cocaine epidemic swept across America’s inner cities, the Salvation Army in Detroit stepped up and opened what was then the largest substance abuse and addiction treatment center in the world. The converted 14-story hotel was renamed the Salvation Army’s Harbor Light Center. The Harbor Light took in the most desperate people from Detroit’s streets and treated them for their addictions. For more than a decade this full-scale treatment facility helped thousands to regain their lives. Sadly, by 2003 the facility was vacated and left to the wild. It was at this time I started monitoring the building, just before it was abandoned, knowing full well that in five short years it would be nothing more than another haunting reminder scarring the face of our once great Detroit.		In the early twentieth century, hotels were commonly used as a permanent or semi-permanent place of residence. Some floors, usually the ones higher up and more spacious, were reserved for long-term stay customers. Lower floors with their cramped confines were reserved for the overnight guests who arrived late via train and left early. The Park Ave was a five star residential hotel that boasted some of the best amenities in Detroit. Some of the touted conveniences offered at the 255 unit Park Ave were indoor plumbing (both toilets and hot baths), laundry service, ten retail shops, a restaurant and a rooftop garden for residents to enjoy. The Park Ave Hotel truly offered the crème de la crème of downtown living. The proximity to Detroit’s main artery (Woodward Ave – US 1) and retail shopping and entertainment districts meant that the Park Ave Hotel enjoyed a prosperous boom from the time it was built until the mid-1960s. Not much is known about the demise of the hotel or its official date of closure, but at some point after the operations ceased, the Salvation Army of Detroit moved in. By the late 1980s the area around the hotel became known as Detroit’s skid row, or the Cass Corridor neighborhood. Like any skid row, the area just outside of downtown was the area where local authorities had for decades pushed the local drug activity, prostitution, and general civic indecencies, concentrating them into the stretch of Cass Ave Between I-75 to the university district. Day and night the wounds of the city are on display as junkies and addicts sell, use, and trade drugs for sex in the open, less than one mile from our city’s downtown.
		By mid-2005, cracks in the armor of the building’s exterior were starting to show. The large glass-blocked windows of the lower floor were being chipped away at slowly and the razor wire that covered much of the courtyards wall had been removed. Drug addicts had also begun squatting inside the low-rise apartments that led to the main tower opposite a courtyard. This is where I began looking for my way in. First I examined the low-rises but opted for a less conspicuous means of gaining entry. The last thing anyone who does urban exploring wants to do is announce to a building full of hostile, desperate, drug addicted squatters that you’ve arrived, and with pricey cameras in hand. Personally, when exploring, I avoid confrontations whenever possible. In some cases however, it can be in your best interest to make friends. Being polite and humble and introducing yourself can go a long way with someone who just wants another human to talk too. On occasions, talking with a lonely scrapper or squatter has led to some of the best scouting information on other buildings in the immediate area; you just have to trust your instinct. This, however, was different. These squatters were also scrappers who were protecting their operation by living inside the building.
On a very cold afternoon in April 2006 a prime opportunity presented itself. The Red Wings were in the playoffs at home and the area around the hotel is routinely used as auxiliary parking for game day. By 5 pm that afternoon the area was filled with suburbanites enjoying the tailgating festivities. This, for one reason or another, likely panhandling and scavenging, had driven off almost all of the locals inhabiting the low-rise apartment homes along Park Ave. Still opting to forgo the apartments altogether, my comrade and I used a set of crates stacked nearby to scale the wall and razor wire. We dropped down in the courtyard between the two buildings. Entering through a broken window in a hallway that connected the two structures I was surprised to see how many usable, non-perishable goods were left behind. Everything from canned goods, to clothes, electronics, office supplies, and medicines, icluding clean needles for injections. In the center of this Beau-Art classic we found two identical stairwells that lead to all 14 floors. Some of the doors in each stairwell were locked and could not be opened. In many areas, two, three, and sometimes more doors in a row we encountered were locked, leading to frustrated decision-making and impossible mapping. Inside the stairwells and hallways the eerie noise of the both scrappers and the building’s many smoke detectors randomly chirping at intervals because they were low on batteries, made it hard to think. Slowly and methodically we combed the lower floors going through offices, meeting rooms, bedrooms and classrooms, constantly drawing closer to the noises above us. Our plan was to explore around them, attempting to skip any floors that we knew scrappers were actively working on.
		Some rooms were bare, others filled to the brim, and a couple was simply overflowing with oddities left behind during the abandoning. It appeared that staff cleared only the lower few floors and left the rest of the building’s contents behind. We came to find out that the squatters living in the building had devised a clever way of communicating to each other their boundaries. Lit candles were “hobo code” alerting you that someone was living in that room and wanted to be left alone. The first time we saw this I was worried about the possibility of a fire while I was inside, so I put it out, only to find it re-lit minutes later. A healthy amount of irony could be found in some of the items that were left behind. For instance, all of the religious and ”stay drug free” propaganda that littered the building made us laugh. Beyond that, there were lots of beds, donated clothes and other items, and random canned foods. It was a haven for the couple dozen people taking refuge in the Harbor Light's decaying corpse.
We sat for hours and sifted through thousands of patient records, case files and tax documents. The amount of data that was just sitting there was staggering – people’s personal information just left unprotected from criminals. You have to wonder what some of this info in the wrong hands could do to the lives of hundreds of thousands of the city’s residents, now and for many years to come.
		The Park Ave Hotel was a hotbed of illegal action for a couple of years. Once it had been mined and exploited to the brink by the squatters, city officials bulldozed the low-rise apartments and eventually sealed the lower four floors with cinderblock. Once most of the windows, pipes and other metals had all been taken and the low-rises demolished, the atmosphere became much less tense. During our subsequent visits we often found ourselves in one particular room where hundreds of Halloween costumes were stored. Masks and special effects makeup lie scattered in all over the tiny room.
After reaching the top floor we found what was probably the building’s original dinning room and restaurant that had been converted to a theater. It was not the largest or most elaborate hall, but it is easy to imagine this area filled with people dinning, dancing and listening to live music. Judging by the tacky wallpaper and carpet, this room was renovated during the late 1960s. Looking south toward the city, one can witness an unimpeded view like no other in Detroit – a stunning wall of late nineteenth century architecture, the highest concentration of any city in North America. Renaissance revival, next to classic art deco and neo-gothic treasures were all standing tall, looking noble draped in warm gold from the early spring twilight.		Next door, just feet away is the Hotel Eddystone, another one of Lew Tuller’s masterpieces that fell victim to Detroit’s woeful neglect. It too is now a hollow shell of its former glorious self, ravaged by both man and nature. And, the irony continues... In 2006, a development company unveiled fancy new banners on both the Park Ave and Eddystone Hotels. “New Developments Coming Soon!!!” it read. Now tattered and weathered like both the buildings themselves, the hope and sense of revival were lost for good when the economy collapsed and Detroit fell off the economic map. Most recently, and with great hope, new development plans are being rumored around town. Nearby acquisitions of land leave the fate of the Harborlight building in question. A $2-million dollar lease recently signed for the land the Eddystone occupies is sure to mean the building will be torn down for the presumed new Red Wings Stadium, which will definitely be built in the next couple of years. The same could be done with the Park Ave. However, it is a possibility that the Illiches, who are widely believed to be behind the sudden land grab, could use this building as an adjoining hotel for a new stadium and/or and an extension of their casino and entertainment companies.

The Park Ave Hotel has only one chance for salvation. Temple Street, which runs between Woodward and the Motor City Casino, is presumed to be the new “Fox-Town North” development corridor. Like Montcalm Street half a mile south, the Temple Street corridor would boast several Illich Holdings Co. properties and be a somewhat self-contained economic engine. If rumors are true, the new Wings stadium could be built off Woodward Ave on the land directly in front of the now derelict building. Finalized plans for the new M-1 Rail line will have direct access to both Comerica Park and this new suspected development site all but guaranteeing any new stadium will boast historic Woodward Ave frontage. I envision trolley type transit to run down the Temple Ave corridor stopping by the Illiches Casino, the Masonic Temple (also Illich controlled) and any new Stadium. If this entertainment district does come to fruition there is a real possibility that the Park Ave Hotel can be reclaimed as a viable new hotel, furthering to bridge the gaps of the Cass Corridor neighborhood.
		It was developers like Tuller who dreamed big, and built bigger. The legacy of Lew Tuller is not lost. Although two of his beautiful buildings are in ruins and his namesake hotel was demolished years ago, there is still one that remains. The Royal Palm building (originally the Park Ave House) is virtually a miniature version of the Park Ave Hotel and its successful turnaround could serve as model for bringing the Harborlight back to life. In the current economic crisis it seems like a long shot, but new developments and leadership from the Illich Family could once again re-establish this area of midtown as an entertainment and hotel destination. For better or worse, Mike Illich may be the everlasting savior of Lew Tuller’s legacy and the decider for the fate of Tuller’s last two standing masterpieces. Turning this haunting reminder of what “was” into a symbol of what could be for the future would have a seismic impact on the psyche of the surrounding area and could ultimately be the catalyst needed for great things to come. Left: The Royal Palm Building (Lew Tuller's Second Hotel) once known as The Park Ave House is the oldest continually operated hotel in Detroit.