6001 Cass is a striking example of historic preservation through adaptive reuse.
Built in 1920 on Cass Avenue and York Street, and designed by renowned architect Albert Kahn, this structure was originally the Cadillac Sales and Service Building. It featured a grand second-floor showroom and embodied Detroit’s automotive golden age.
By 1930, Cass Avenue had come to be known as “Automobile Row” because it was home to so many dealerships, automobile showrooms, manufacturing plants, distribution centers and repair shops. General Motors' massive world headquarters – today known as Cadillac Place – stands just to the north, at Cass and Grand Boulevard.
In 1964, Cadillac stopped selling cars at 6001 Cass, and GM was using the building as a warehouse by 1971. A year later, GM donated the building to Wayne State University, which converted it into classrooms and offices for the school's Department of Criminal Justice. In 1989, WDET-FM and The South End newspaper joined other WSU departments at the building.
With 6001 Cass in disrepair, Wayne State University’s Board of Governors voted in 1993 to tear down the building, but four years later, school President Irvin Reid had it removed from the demolition list, citing the building's beauty.
In 2001, the building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places as a contributing structure in the New Amsterdam Historic District.
In 2017, Detroit-based developer The Platform -- which had focused most of its efforts in the greater New Center area, including owning the Fisher Building -- acquired 6001 Cass from WSU and set out to restore its architectural grandeur while modernizing it for contemporary use through a $40 million rehab. Farr Associates was the architect on the renovation, and PCI One Source was the contractor.
Engineering consulting firm Tata Technologies Inc. announced May 25, 2018, that it would be leaving its suburban Novi, Mich., headquarters and moving into 20,000 feet on the sixth floor of 6001 Cass. it would complete the move in October 2019.
In September 2019, it was announced that then-popular co-working space company WeWork would take over 91,000 square feet inside the building, from the second through fifth floors.
The Platform announced Nov. 13, 2020, that the renovation was completed, capped off by the installation of one of the largest vertical blade signs in the city, standing four stories and 44 feet tall and 12 feet wide. It pays omage to a Cadillac La Salle sign that adorned the building three-quarters of a century earlier.
It would be a shortlived stay, as the money-losing company closed its location inside 6001 Cass on that Nov. 10, 2022, in the wake of the global COVID-19 pandemic and rise of work-from-home arrangements.
The company burst onto the scene in 2010 in New York and spent billions opening locations around the world. An attempt at an initial public offering in 2019 failed. Nevertheless, as of the second quarter of 2022, it had 777 locations globally with 917,000 desks. It never turned a profit, however, at the closing of the 6001 Cass location followed net losses narrowed of $1.1 billion for the first half of 2022. The company filed for bankruptcy protection in Novewmber 2023, and owed The Platform more than $5.1 million at the time - the sixth-largest claim listed in the company's bankruptcy filing.
WeWork issued a statement reading, “Over the past two years, WeWork has conducted an in-depth review of our global real estate portfolio in order to optimize our assets and operations around the world. In line with that effort, we have made the decision to no longer operate at 6001 Cass Ave."
On Dec. 12, 2025, The Detroit News announced that it was relocating its newsroom to the building after losing its space in the Federal Reserve downtown.