Exterior Description Tuller Hotel, Detroit Michigan
The Tuller Hotel faced northeast and overlooked Grand Circus Park and defines the northwest edge of this commercial district . The Grand Circus was originally a major feature of Judge Woodward's 1807 street plan for Detroit, modelled after the plan for Washington, D.C., utilizing a series of circular parks, with streets radiating outward. Landowners north of Adams stopped the Woodward plan, preferring the grid system of land subdivision. As a result, Grand Circus Park is only a half circle . This district, with forty commercial buildings, mostly taller than ten stories, concentrated within a small area, defines the northern edge of Detroit's central business district. Just north of Adams, the buildings are generally less than six stories in height and include a mixture of apartment buildings, small office buildings, and shops. This abrupt change in the face of the urban landscape reflects the end of growth in Detroit's Central Business District in the late 1920s.
The Tuller Hotel was a complex of three connected buildings that were constructed from 1905 to 1923. The first structure (Building I) was built in two stages in 1905-06 and 1910. It is 13 stories in height and measures 71' across Park and 123' deep along Adams. A cylinder-shaped bay with three windows per story is situated at the corner of Park and Adams, and projecting trapezoidal bays with two or three windows per story are located on the Park and Adams facades . All bays originally began at ground level and extended up through the 12th story, but later modification of the Park facade effaced the trapezoida bays at the first story. Building I is rectangular in shape, although an alcove measuring 12' 7" wide and 17' deep is carved out on the Adams side. The alcove extends from the second through the 12th story .
Building II was built in 1914 and was also 13 stories in height. It is nearly rectangular in shape, measuring 65' along Park and 125' along Bagley. Within a decade of its erection, Building II was altered on the first floor through the conversion of the Park facade into four rectangular bays, and the construction of three more on the Bagley side near the corner of Park.
Building III was constructed in 1923 and connected to the south side of Building I. It is 14 stories tall and had a T-shape layout above the third story, with the elongated top of the T extending 123' along Adams. A one-story segment at the northeast corner, built to house the hotel kitchens, was also constructed in 1923, along with a three-story segment at the south corner of Building III. The division of the first story along Adams into nine bays is evidence of the fact that the first floor was designed for commercial establishments. All three buildings had basements and sub-basements .
The Tuller Hotel was of steel-frame construction with reinforced concrete floors. The exterior brick walls are non-load-bearing .
