Cadillac Hotel

We have nothing like this in Lane County. Frank H. Buck built Springfield and took our trees. The Buck Institute on Aging should be shut down, and the monies saved sent North to help poor disabled seniors live better lives. I am one of them. We are having problems finding a companion for me that will take me grocery shopping.

Jon Presco

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westin_Book_Cadillac_Hotel

The hotel was developed by the Book Brothers—J. Burgess, Frank, and Herbert. The brothers sought to turn Detroit’s Washington Boulevard into the “Fifth Avenue of the West.” Part of that vision was the creation of a flagship luxury hotel to compete against the Detroit Statler Hotel three blocks to the north.

In 1924, architect Louis Kamper used these same arms [5 bends wavy on chief 3 cinqfoils surmounted by a crown] on the facade of his building, the Book Cadillac Hotel in Detroit, Michigan. Here the arms surmount a statue of Robert de Navarre, founder of the North American line of Navarres. The statue is rightmost in a series of four statues representing significant figures of Detroit history (L-R: Gen. Anthony Wayne, Antoine de Lamothe Cadillac, Chief Pontiac, and Robert de Navarre). The four together adorn the 220 Michigan Avenue entrance of the Hotel. Black and White photos of the statue and arms, taken of the Book Cadillac Hotel in the Fall of 1999, appear courtesy of Constance E. (Taylor) Anderson, a descendant of Robert de Navarre through his son John Mary Alexis Navarre. Color photos are from my own trip to Detroit on June 26, 2000.

The Book Cadillac Hotel first came to my attention through Shirley Ward’s article “The Navarres: From European kings to Potawatomi chiefs.” She comments on Robert de Navarre:

the first Navarre to arrive in America was Robert, the four times great-grandson of Anthony de Bourbon. He came to Fort Ponchartrain at Detroit in 1739 to represent the French government as Royal Notary. His original land grant now is Grosse Pointe. His service was so important to the growth of Detroit that his statue was placed atop the Book Cadillac Hotel along with those of Gen. Anthony Wayne, Cadillac and Pontiac.

The statue, however, is hardly “atop” the hotel. It rather forms part of the architectural adornment of the Michigan Avenue facade where four engaged statues surmount the entablature over four fluted pilasters of the Corinthian order. Each of these statues is crested by an individual coat of arms. The entablature itself consists of 1. an architrave sporting two bossed disks over the outer two pilasters, 2. a frieze decorated with an element carved in relief over each of the four pilasters [over the inner two pilasters lie lions of St. Mark facing each other in mirror symmetry, over the outer two pilasters are shields on rolls, and between each of these four elements the frieze is festooned with a pair of garlands cradling two rosettes and tied at the middle], and 3. a cornice combining dental molding under a row of acanthus, which itself supports a row of bead and reel.

On Sunday, June 26, 2000, I traveled to Detroit myself and visited the Hotel across the street from the Book Cadillac Hotel–the Downtown Detroit Best Western. There a Mr. Darek Urbaniak was most patient and gracious in letting me photograph Robert’s statue from Room number 631 and indeed had taken me to several floors in order to ascertain the best view afforded by his hotel. He was most kind and I cannot thank him enough. Interestingly, in the plaza at the foot of these two hotels lies a statue of Robert de Navarre’s grandson Gen. Alexander Macomb, the commanding general of the United States Army and the victor of The Battle of Plattsburgh. The sculptor was Adolph Alexander Weinman (1870-1952), who also designed the “liberty dime” and the statue of Lincoln for the monument in D.C.

See aerial photo. See high-quality image at Burton Historical Collection.