Abandoned Durant hotel in Flint Michigan

Hotel Durant, Flint Michigan

Date added: February 14, 2023 Categories: Michigan Hotel

Lobby from mezzanine level, looking southeast (2007)

The Hotel Durant served as Flint, Michigan's premier hotel for over fifty years. It was built in 1919-20 by the Durant Hotel Company, a partnership of Flint business leaders, and the United Hotels Company. The hotel was designed by the Buffalo, New York, firm of Esenwein & Johnson, and was initially operated by the United Hotels Co. In 1942 the hotel was purchased from the Durant Hotel Company by the Albert Pick Hotels Company, which owned the building until its closing in 1973. Durant, the founder of General Motors and a key figure in Flint's business life, was a major investor in the hotel project and maintained a suite there throughout the remainder of his life. The hotel was the site over the years of numerous important events associated with General Motors and the auto industry, including events associated with the General Motors Sit-Down Strike of 1936-37, an important episode in Michigan and the nation's labor history.

In the early twentieth century, the city of Flint was transformed from a carriage and wagon-building center into a leading automobile manufacturing town, the home of the Buick Motor Company and the birthplace of the General Motors Corporation. Flint's population nearly tripled between 1900 and 1910, rising from 13,000 to 38,550, then more than doubled again by 1920, to 91,599 people, and reached an estimated 165,000 in 1931. In just thirty years the population rose to twelve times its 1900 level. The dramatic rise in population relates directly to the rise of the automobile industry in the city. The city's rise as an automobile manufacturing center resulted directly from its earlier role as a leading producer of horse-drawn vehicles. Leading manufacturers of horse-drawn vehicles such as William A. Patterson, William C. Durant, and J. Dallas Dort became pioneers in the city's auto industry after the turn of the twentieth century. A. B. C. Hardy's Flint Automobile Company, established in 1901, was the city's first auto manufacturer, but Buick, which moved to Flint from Detroit in 1904, and Chevrolet, which moved from Detroit in 1913, soon became the mainstays of the auto industry. Buick and Chevrolet both became parts of the General Motors Corporation, established in Flint in 1908, and General Motors dominated the city's economy.

Construction of the Hotel Durant stemmed from an urgent need for more hotel rooms as Flint and General Motors expanded dramatically. By the mid-1910s the automobile company that had blossomed from the seed of the Buick Motor Company under the enthusiastic leadership of W.C. Durant had become an industry leader. Flint's and GM's growth brought a need for more and better hotel accommodations. The Flint Journal wrote on December 18, 1918, "Mr. Chrysler told how men, who came here to purchase Buicks at wholesale, and the retail dealers of the company in various towns had been forced to go to Saginaw and Detroit overnight to secure hotel rooms," and that the Buick Motor Company had to "bring them in groups instead of for one large convention which was desired, all because of a lack of hotel accommodations." Two years earlier, in 1916, at the instigation of the board of commerce, a group of leading Flint businessmen had established the Citizens' Hotel Company, a stock corporation, to finance construction of a large and modern hotel for the city. Citizens' contracted with the United Hotels Company of America to supervise the construction, furnishing, and equipping of the hotel and run it when it went into operation. The United Hotels Company then operated sixteen hotels in the United States and Canada, including ones in Albany, Syracuse, Toronto, and Niagara Falls. By December 1918, with the promise of a $150,000 subscription to the building fund by William C. Durant representing his business interests, the Durant Hotel Company, newly reorganized from the old Citizens' company, had obtained about $500,000 in stock subscriptions, the amount thought needed to fund the hotel project. Even before this, the proposed hotel had been given the Hotel Durant name to honor Flint's leading businessman and booster.

The United Hotels Company retained the Buffalo, New York, architectural firm of Esenwein & Johnson to design the building. Construction began in June 1919. The original plan was for a six-story building, but during the fall of 1919, the decision was made to add two more stories of rooms to meet the growing demand. The new hotel opened on December 14, 1920, for a convention of Dort Motor Company distributors. Governor Albert E. Sleeper was the first to sign the guest register, followed by J. Dallas Dort and Dort Motor Company executives. A formal opening took place on New Year's Eve, December 31, 1920. In the end, because of the severe inflation at the time, the hotel's cost was more than $1,000,000.

The hotel's architects, Esenwein & Johnson, were an established design firm with several hotel projects already under its belt. Formed in 1897, the firm became one of the most prominent architecture offices in Buffalo at the time. August Esenwein, the senior of the two partners, was born in Germany in 1856 and trained in both Stuttgart and Paris before emigrating to the U.S. in 1880. James A. Johnson worked for McKim, Mead and White, and was a specialist in ornamental design. After forming their partnership, the firm of Esenwein & Johnson designed a significant body of work over the course of the next thirty years. One of their important works was the very first Statler Hotel in Buffalo, NY, built in 1905-08.

In designing the Buffalo Statler, the firm worked very closely with Ellsworth M. Statler to realize his vision, a vision that would be replicated around the country as he built up his hotel empire. Statler's vision for a city hotel, established in the Buffalo Statler, was not for a luxury hotel, but for a "commercial hotel for traveling salesmen and for families. ... [that] offer[s] service and comfort and privacy beyond anything ever before offered" through economy, efficiency, and standardization in design and construction. Statler economized on the Buffalo hotel by siting off the main street on cheaper land and by giving the hotel a plain and therefore less costly exterior, but in turn provided as standard features bathrooms in all rooms and other amenities then not seen at any but luxury hotels. It was presumably the firm's experience in designing classy but cost-effective and efficiently planned hotels that led to the United Hotels Company's selection of Esenwein & Johnson to design the Durant. Esenwein & Johnson's highly successful Buffalo Statler served as a model for later Statler hotels, including Statler's third, the Detroit Statler, which opened in 1915, and for numerous urban hotels across the country in the early twentieth century.

The Hotel Durant is an architectural and visual landmark in downtown Flint. It was built during the time between World War I and the early 1930s when Flint's downtown acquired many of its leading buildings and when it developed a skyline through the construction of several bank and office towers - the Genesee County Savings Bank (1919-20), Industrial Savings Bank (1922-23), First National Bank (1923-24; 1929-30), Citizens' Commercial and Savings Bank (1926-27), and Union Industrial Savings Bank (1929-30), that still dominates the city's skyline today. All are Neoclassical or Art Deco buildings of high architectural distinction. The Durant, with its massive bulk, also has a commanding presence in the downtown. With its elegant limestone and red brick street facades, arched entrance and windows in the limestone-faced base, and elaborately detailed lobby and dining room areas, the hotel is the city's outstanding example of Neo-Georgian commercial design.

The hotel stands as a testament to Flint's early twentieth-century growth and development, but also a testament to the hotel's namesake, Flint businessman William C. Durant, the pre-eminent figure in Flint's entire history as an auto-manufacturing center. The hotel possesses several direct associations with Durant. Not only was Durant's $150,000 subscription instrumental in galvanizing local support for the building project but Durant also used the building on a regular basis for meetings and business activities and also maintained an eight-room suite in the hotel for his private use for the rest of his life despite the ups and downs of his business career.

W.C. Durant was a key figure in Flint's and Michigan's early automobile history. A charismatic leader whose passion and ambition allowed him to build successful businesses from the ground up, he started his first business by purchasing a patent on a two-wheel cart in 1886 for $1,500. Focusing primarily on sales with his partner, J Dallas Dort, Durant hired a Flint wagon and carriage builder, William Paterson, to make the carts while he and Dort sold them to the public. In a short time, the production capacity was outpaced by sales. Durant and Dort, dissatisfied with their supplier, decided to build the carts themselves and, to further control the production process, also created their own supply chain for raw materials and parts. In this way, the Durant-Dort Carriage Company became a pioneer of vertically integrated production. Their assembly methods, using a standard set of parts to create a large variety of vehicles, was highly innovative for its time and preceded Henry Ford's assembly line operation by many years. By 1895 the company was reportedly selling 75,000 vehicles a year.

Southeastern Michigan, with its long-established carriage and wagon industry, Flint called itself the "Vehicle City" long before automobiles became its dominant industry, and its growing business in gasoline engine manufacturing, soon became the center of the automobile industry. Durant's transition into automobile production took place in 1904. Various inventors and mechanics in the area attempted to build their own versions of the horseless carriage, introduced to the U.S. in 1895. W.C. Durant, a leader in the carriage business at this time, would soon be drawn into a partnership with a company started in 1902 by one of these inventors, David Buick. Buick had a product that was considered well-built and easy to drive, but he was not a good salesman, and sales languished. In 1903 James Whiting, a Flint carriage maker, purchased the Buick name. After a year of sluggish sales, he persuaded Durant to invest in the fledgling company. Initially Durant was skeptical, but after some rigorous testing, and a great deal of encouragement from his business partner, he decided to invest in Buick. However, the investment would only come if Durant had full control of the company. Whiting agreed, and in November 1904 Durant took over Buick Motor Company. Under Durant's leadership, with adequate capital and aggressive marketing, Buick took off to become the most profitable automobile company in the U.S. A new manufacturing facility in Flint was the largest in the world at that time, maintained the highest production, and became a major employer in the Flint area. Buick was a success.

As his company grew, Durant was soon approached by an eastern car maker named Ben Briscoe. It was he who introduced the idea to Durant of consolidating individual car companies into one large company that would dominate the market. It was this inspiration that drove Durant to make his first major acquisition, Oldsmobile, in 1908. He then proceeded to pick up other automobile companies, which he consolidated during 1908 into one large company called General Motors. As time passed, Durant created a large network of various manufacturers, including Cadillac, much like he did back in his days of carriage manufacturing. But the vastness of his vision soon became too unwieldy. Some of his less successful acquisitions began to pull down the rest of GM, and as finances worsened with a downturn in the automobile business, Durant was forced out of control of the company he founded.

Undaunted, however, Durant soon formed a partnership with Louis Chevrolet, and began to sell cars again. It wasn't long before Chevrolet became a huge success for many of the same reasons that the Durant-Dort Carriage Company, Buick Motors, and General Motors also succeeded. Through this success, Durant was able to purchase large amounts of General Motors stock, and with the help of some close business friends, was able to leverage the value of Chevrolet stock into a takeover bid for GM in 1916. Once again, William Durant would control General Motors, a company that now included Oldsmobile and Chevrolet, in addition to Buick and Cadillac, and also controlled Fisher Body, the leading manufacturer of auto bodies. Durant's involvement in financing and building the Hotel Durant took place while he was at the peak of his power at General Motors, at the same time GM was building its landmark headquarters building in Detroit. In 1920, however, shortly after the building was completed and opened, Durant was forced out of the company he established. As before, Durant's enthusiasm for acquiring companies had once again overshadowed sound business practice.

After being forced out of GM again, Durant went on to found another Flint-based automobile company, Durant Motors. The business drew attention immediately, largely on the reputation of Durant, and was initially successful. But, as before, Durant's successes as a deal-maker did not transfer to sustained profitability, and in a matter of a few years, his company folded. Afterward, he was for a time a successful speculator in the New York Stock Exchange, creating a portfolio of investments similar to the modern-day mutual fund. At one point he was reportedly worth four billion dollars. But, like all of his ventures, the success would not last, and the crash of the stock market ruined his fortune. By 1938 he was bankrupt and penniless. He suffered a stroke in 1942, and died five years later at the age of 87. Despite the ups and downs of his career, Durant was clearly the most important person in the history of the automobile industry in Flint. Despite the tough economic times in his later life, Durant retained his eight-room suite at the Durant for his visits back home to the very end.

For most of its history as a hotel, the Durant was far and away Flint's leading hostelry - the largest in terms of number of rooms, the most distinguished in terms of its architecture and service, and the leading place for important visitors to stay and a place where important meetings and gatherings were held. Michigan Governor Albert E. Sleeper was the hotel's first guest. The building's formal opening on December 31, 1920, was celebrated with a great party that brought out the community's leading citizens. Over the years a who's who of local organizations used the hotel for their meetings and gatherings. Research at the Sloan Museum Archives revealed all types of community gatherings and celebrations. Programs of events found in the collection included ones for the Genesee County District Dental Society, the Part-Song Club Late Spring Concert, the Service Award Dinner for the McDonald Dairy Company, and the Flint Drug Club's Annual President's Dinner Dance, in addition to countless other weddings, funerals, and birthday celebrations Gatherings such as these continued until the Durant's last day in 1973. On that day the Flint Journal reported that five of the city's most recognized service clubs would be losing their homes with the Durant closing. Those clubs, Kiwanis, Civitan, Downtown Lions, Rotary, and Downtown Optimists, had all convened at the Durant since the early 1930s, and some had met there since its opening in 1920. It is fitting that, among the three articles in the Flint Journal on the Hotel Durant's last day, there was one column entirely devoted to the civic loss that would result from the closing.

One of the most notable times for the Durant came during the 1936-1937 General Motors Sit-Down Strike in Flint, a key episode in Michigan's labor history because of the ultimate success of the strikers in securing recognition of the United Auto Workers as their bargaining agent in the face of determined opposition from not only the company but also the Flint city government and police and community leadership arrayed against them. The month-and-a-half-long strike began on December 30, 1936, and ended on February 11, 1937. Over the course of that time, the Durant acted as headquarters for the forces opposing the strike (the hotel's chief switchboard operator, the wife of a "trolley striker," kept the UAW informed about what was taking place there). On January 11, 1937, the hotel's Adams Room hosted a meeting of 200 Flint businessmen brought together by the "Flint Alliance," an organization established to raise public opposition to the strike. This meeting took place earlier on the same day as the police attack on the Fisher Body 2 plant "sitdowners" that resulted in a running battle that, known as the "Battle of the Running Bulls," was an important event in that strike (it left the strikers firmly in possession of the plant). In the wee hours of the following morning Governor Frank Murphy arrived at the hotel from Lansing to meet with all parties to evaluate the need for calling out the National Guard to maintain order.

With ties so close to the industry that built it, the Hotel Durant would not be able to weather the economic storm of the late twentieth century. By the late 1960s General Motors' operations in Flint were in decline, as the company began closing its older plants there and moving operations elsewhere. In 1973 the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) placed its oil embargo on all western countries. GM and the rest of the U.S. auto industry saw a drop in auto sales and in demand for larger vehicles with the shortages and skyrocketing cost of gasoline that were the fallout from the embargo. The year 1973 thus stands as a symbolic shock point to the dominance of the U.S. auto industry. It also marks the year that the Hotel Durant closed its doors for the final time. Since then the building has stood empty. It remains largely intact, but faces increasing amounts of water damage and vandalism as each year passes.

Building Description

The Hotel Durant is a massive eight-story Neo-Georgian building with a flattened V-shaped footprint that presents three primary facades. A two-story rear section, housing the former ballroom and service areas, fills in the space between the two wings of the taller portion. All three of the primary facades are characterized by a granite sill course and a two-story base finished in limestone cladding, with the top six stories being faced in red brick with limestone detailing. The secondary facades at the rear of the building and inside the V are finished entirely in common brick.

The hotel stands at the intersections of Martin Luther King Avenue, East Second Avenue, and Saginaw Street about two blocks north of the edge of Flint's downtown. The site is a trapezoid bounded by the aforementioned streets on the west, south, and east sides, respectively, and East Third Avenue on the north. The front of the building faces East Second Avenue, and looks across the Flint River toward downtown. Each of the three primary facades of the building sits directly on the sidewalk with no setback. The rear of the building faces East Third Avenue to the north, fronted by a parking lot that encompasses the full width of the northern half of the site. A variety of buildings and open spaces surround the Durant's site, including the campus of the University of Michigan - Flint to the east, a small park to the south, several store buildings to the west, and an office building across East Third Avenue to the north. Four large billboards sit on the property at the edges of the parking lots.

Three entrances lead into the building's lobby. A west-side one, on MLK Ave, still has a metal canopy (not original) extending over the sidewalk, and would have been used as the formal entrance leading to events held in the first-floor dining room. The main entrance, at the front of the building on Second Avenue, leads into the hotel lobby. It is flanked and topped by three large arched windows looking into the public park directly across Second Avenue. A large entry canopy that once sheltered the sidewalk has been removed. The third entrance, on Saginaw Street, is small and opens into a narrow corridor leading to the east side of the lobby.

All three of the main facades have boarded-up commercial storefronts. Historic images of the building show each of these openings with full-height storefront windows and doors and a small canopy or awning overhead. The canopies and tall transoms were removed and the spaces infilled with three matching courses of limestone veneer during a 1940s renovation, perhaps following the 1942 purchase of Hotel Durant by the Albert Pick Hotels Co. From the third floor to the roof, the building is clad in red brick with bands of limestone detail on the fourth and eighth floors. A brick and limestone cornice/parapet adorns the top of the building. The brick facades are punctuated with identical, six-over-six, double-hung windows with limestone sills. Of particular note on the west wing of the building are the four large arched windows looking into the two-story dining room. These four windows are similar in design and size to the two flanking arched windows on the Second Avenue facade. There is also a metal guardrail (perhaps original) surrounding a lightwell at the base of the four windows.

The building has a flat roof that extends around the entire V. Elevator penthouses sit at each of the two inside corners of the building, and the top of the old exhaust shaft rises over the parapet along the building's west wing. On the three main facades, a parapet extends roughly sixty inches above the roofline. The parapet then steps down to roughly twenty-four inches above the roofline along each of the secondary facades. Remnants of the old signage structure that once adorned the top of the hotel, visible throughout the city, stand atop the roof today, the sign's letters scattered across the roof of the ballroom below.

The rear of the building, both on the north elevations and inside the V, is more modest in detail, and exhibits a more irregular massing than the three primary facades. Most of the windows on these elevations match the size of the double-hung windows on the primary facades and have similar limestone sills, but do not exhibit the same six-over-six divided light design. Similarly, most of the granite and limestone detail employed on the primary elevations is absent at the rear, thereby leaving common brick as the only cladding material found on these facades. Also varying from the design of the primary facades is a shorter, two-story wing nestled into the open end of the eight-story V. This wing encompasses the former ballroom and its accompanying service spaces, and also includes the two-story sub-basement space that once housed the bulk of the building's mechanical equipment. A small wedge of space between the ballroom wing and the east wing of the building, once open to the air, was filled in by an addition that included the existing rear entry canopy. Finally, there are two elevator penthouses at the inside corners of the V, and an exhaust shaft running the entire height of the west wing of the building. All of these elements are clad completely in common brick.

The interior of the building is characterized by a few significant public spaces on the first and second floors, several former retail spaces along the first-floor street front, a labyrinth of basement and subbasement spaces, and the 264 former guest rooms on floors 2-8. Front and center to the building, off of Second Avenue, stands the historic lobby. The lobby is a two-story high space with several large columns within. Its upper level is surrounded by an open mezzanine accessed by historic staircases at the northeast and northwest corners. Exiting to the east and west of the lobby, along the street front, are two retail spaces. The north end of the lobby then exits into the main elevator vestibule to the east, and the corridor leading to the dining room to the west. The dining room is a two-story high space that takes up most of the west wing of the building. The space contains several large columns, two entries capped by broken pediments, with arches above, and five arched windows looking onto MLK Avenue and the rear of the building. The east wing, on the other hand, contains a handful of retail spaces entered off Saginaw Street. The retail spaces extend the entire width of the wing, and can be accessed through a small corridor along the inner face of the east wing.

The building's second story contains the mezzanine overlooking the lobby and the ballroom, entered off the back of the mezzanine. The ballroom is a large open space built within the open end of the eight-story V. Accompanying the ballroom is a series of kitchens, storage areas, and other service spaces built on the first floor and basement levels, directly beneath the footprint of the space. These service areas are connected to both the ballroom and the dining room on the first floor by a wide stair at the southwest corner of the ballroom. The rest of the second floor contains a lounge and several offices at the southwest corner of the building, and a series of guest rooms in the hotel's east wing. The second floor of the west wing contains the upper portion of the dining room space.

The rest of the building, floors three to eight, house the remainder of the 264 former guest rooms. These rooms are accessed by a total of three elevators and two stairwells located at the inner corners of the V. The primary guest elevators are located on the east side of the building, while a secondary elevator is located at the west. The two stairwells rise from the second floor and extend the full height of the building, exiting onto the roof. On each floor, the elevators exit into enclosed vestibules. These vestibules then lead directly into a double-loaded corridor off which the guest rooms are located. The guest rooms vary in size and configuration, with the smallest containing only a sleeping area, bathroom, and closet. Larger units add a separate sitting room to the space, while the grandest, like the former Durant Suite on the eighth floor, combine several units into one large open suite. The basement of the Durant is a labyrinth of spaces devoted to guests, staff, and building services. Directly beneath the lobby and a portion of the ballroom are several meeting rooms and lounges reserved for guests. The west wing's basement houses locker rooms for the staff along with several other work rooms including a large laundry facility. Further to the north of the west wing are located the bulk of the mechanical spaces for the building. The long exhaust shaft running the entire height of the building terminates at this location, and connects to a large, two-story sub-basement space. The east wing of the building, in contrast, contains a series of storage rooms accessed by a long corridor running the length of the wing.

In the hotel's interior, the lobby stands out as the building's showpiece despite its deteriorated finishes. Upon entering the room, one's view is immediately drawn to the original, two-story Corinthian columns and matching piers around the perimeter, supporting a beamed ceiling, that grace the large and airy space. The faux marble cladding (not original) on the columns is cracked and chipped in places and the plaster Corinthian capitals are in varying states of repair. However, the decorative wood wainscoting at the base of the columns and along the perimeter walls remains in good condition. Central to the rear of the space is the large reception desk. The desk was modernized significantly over the course of several renovations, and very little of the original detailing remains. At the east end of the space stands a sundries counter that remains in the same configuration as the original, with a lower service counter at the front and a taller display case at the rear. Despite maintaining some of its historic wood detail, the counter has suffered a great deal of damage. Some of the original balustrades around the mezzanine of the lobby is still intact, although much of it is significantly deteriorated and portions have collapsed. The plaster capitals of the columns and piers and molded plaster ceiling details have also weathered a great deal.

Exiting from the lobby are two retail spaces at the southeast and southwest corners. The northeast corner exits to a vestibule leading to the main pedestrian elevators servicing the guest rooms on the floors above. This portion of the lobby is a one-story high space that embodies much of the same detail as the two-story space, including the wood wainscoting on the walls, although a great deal of it has deteriorated over the years.

The dining room also retains a significant amount of its original character. While much of the wall covering is peeling, the wood and plaster detail beneath is in decent condition. The space is defined by three large columns on either side. The detailing on these columns matches a parallel set of pilasters set a few inches back from the columns. Ceiling beams connecting the columns and pilasters are in salvageable condition, with much of their original detail intact. The west side of the space is further defined by four large arched windows looking onto MLK Avenue. Much of the original trim around these windows remain intact. The east side of the room is dominated by a walkout balcony (formerly an orchestra stand) over the east entry into the space. The balcony spans between two of the large columns, and much of its wood and plaster detail is still intact. Decorative wood corbels springing from the columns support the balcony at each end.

Under the balcony, three doors lead into the former service spaces, while a small access door from the second floor is tucked into the corner of the balcony itself. Also of note is the broken pediment over the entrance at the south end of the room. It is topped by a large arch that once contained a mirror. The trim remains largely intact.

The ballroom, on the other hand, has been renovated numerous times, and has lost its original detail. Most notably, the seven large windows looking to the north and east, clearly visible on the exterior of the building, have all been covered over on the interior. Any plaster detail or wood trim seen in historic pictures of the space was stripped long ago, the wood flooring is buckled and damaged throughout, and the room currently stands, quite literally, as a mere shell of its decorated past.

Throughout the guest rooms the finishes and partitions have deteriorated significantly. The rooms and common corridors appear to have been renovated on several occasions, and it is hard to determine which, if any, of the remaining finishes are original. In addition, all of the partitions throughout the space are constructed of a gypsum block product, and years of water damage and cold temperatures have caused these existing walls to become severely compromised. The result of this damage is that most of the floor surfaces in the building are covered in a thick layer of gypsum dust that has precipitated from the deteriorated block. Some of the woodwork decorating these walls, both in the common corridors and guest rooms, remains intact, but the poor structural integrity of the gypsum block substrate ultimately renders these walls beyond repair.