The Belcrest Apartments is one of the city's most-intact historic residential buildings.

The building was announced Nov. 14, 1925, and built for prominent Detroit real estate developers Max Hamburger and Jacob Singer at a cost of about $2.1 million, the equivalent of $37.6 million in 2025, when adjusted for inflation. The men had already developed properties around Detroit’s Palmer Park, and were looking to make similar inroads in the luxury market in the city’s Cultural Center, which had seen the main Detroit Public Library open, and the Detroit Institute of Arts on the way. By the 1920s, the area had already established itself as a fashionable residential area of mostly single-family homes and apartment buildings.

It was one of the first “apartment-hotels” in the city. The idea was to offer the services of a hotel - such as room service - in a long-term residential apartment building. In other words, Hamburger and Simon sought to merge the luxury of Detroit’s finest hotels and its fanciest apartments, all in one of the city’s most desirable neighborhoods.

The 12-story steel-and-concrete tower is located on the east side of Cass Avenue between West Ferry and Kirby streets, near the heart of Wayne State University’s campus. Its location was one of its key selling points.

Detroit investment brokers S.W. Straus wrote in its bond prospectus for the Belcrest that “The location of this property could not be better for the purpose. … Detroit is greatly in need of a north-side apartment hotel of this character near the Art Center.”

Construction on the Belcrest would take less than a year. The general contractor on the building's construction was the Everett Winters Co. of Detroit. The hotel would formally open Sept. 1, 1926, with 176 suites, ranging from one to six rooms, all of which came fully furnished, from rugs and furniture to glass and silverware.

"Completion of the Belcrest throws open one of Detroit's finest apartment hotels, an imposing edifice designed to offer the comforts of home with hotel conveniences and luxuries, and at the same time fills a long-felt need in this city for a type of structure that is out of the ordinary," the Detroit Free Press wrote Aug. 29, 1926.

The Belcrest’s architect, Charles N. Agree, told the Free Press: "Replete with every luxury and convenience known to modern hotel and apartment house construction, the Belcrest gives Detroit one of its most imposing buildings as well as a distinctive center of social activities," Agree told the paper Aug. 29, 1926.

Agree gave the building a T-shape to maximize the number of windows for each unit. The first floor featured lounges and dining rooms for residents, as well as restaurants. There were also three high-speed elevators, a pool, tiled bathrooms with tub and shower, and kitchens with refrigerators connected to a central cooling system. The Belcrest also had its own adjacent 175-car parking garage, where an attendant brought and returned cars for tenants.

"You will not outlive your impression of elegance when first you behold the lobby of the Belcrest," an advertisement read ahead of the building's opening.

And despite being on one of Detroit’s busiest north-south corridors, "thick partitions, heavily padded concrete floors and insulated connecting doors make each apartment as soundproof as if isolated by miles of open country," managing director H. Edgar Gregory boasted to the Free Press for the Aug. 29, 1926, article.

Hamburger and Singer signed a deal in 1929 to make the Belcrest a part of the Albert Pick Hotel chain.

As Wayne State University continued to grow, the hotel was converted to apartments. In 1966, the Belcrest was rebranded the International Inn, offering studio efficiency units for $145 a month ($1,473 in 2025, when adjusted for inflation), one-bedrooms for $230 ($2,330) and two-bedrooms for $330 ($3,350).

But by 1972, it was back to being the Belcrest. Three years later, rents were $500 a month for a three-bedroom, three-bath luxury unit ($3,930 in 2025); $316 for a two-bedroom and two-bath ($2,483); and $176 for a studio ($1,383).

"What you get for your money at the Belcrest is carpeting, which within the building runs the gamut from worn turquoise to acceptable avocado to burn-your-eyes-out blues," the Free Press wrote May 25, 1975. "Kitchen appliances are old, some even ancient. ... The Belcrest swings a little, but Dick Kuschell, the manager and owner, insists that 'there are no prostitutes in this building. Absolutely not.'"

But the Free Press wasn't all critical.

"Romantic is what the Belcrest is, in a slightly tacky sort of way," the paper continued. "One has the distinct feeling walking around the place that one is on a pleasure cruise. ... The Belcrest is a very social place. There's a set of relationships between the tenants, who unanimously call the Belcrest home and say they've made new friends there. Individual privacy is respected -- the Belcrest is hardly a dormitory for adults."

At the time, The Belcrest was home to the Japanese restaurant Daruma and the Mad Anthony Wayne Bar off the lobby. The building also hosted live music into the early 1980s, including legendary trumpeter Marcus Belgrave, who played there frequently.

At some point in the late 1970s or early '80s, the Belcrest fell under ownership of the federal Department of Housing & Urban Development (HUD), which sold the building in the summer of 1983 to Birmingham, Mich., developers Robert Davis and Robert Rubin of the Belcrest Associates Limited Partnership for $827,560 (about $2.7 million in 2025). To tap historic tax credits for the project, the Belcrest was added to the National Register of Historic Places on May 31, 1984. That year, Davis and Rubin embarked on a renovation that converted the building into 12 efficiency units, 106 one-bedroom apartments and 23 two-bedrooms, plus about 7,000 square feet of office and commercial space. Rents were expected to range from $210 to $437 a month ($665 to $1,385 in 2025). At the time of the renovation, the building was about 40 percent vacant.

In the ensuing decades, the Belcrest continued to be home to a number of Wayne State students.

In 2022, Holcomb Development Co. LLC bought the Belcrest for about $19.1 million, and embarked on a $6 million renovation. That work sought to restore the building's historic character, from original plasterwork to the original subway tile and cast-iron tubs. It now features 139 apartments, from studios to three-bedroom penthouse suites.

Today, the property is nearly fully occupied.