The Billinghurst is one of many apartment buildings built in Detroit to serve the influx of young men coming to the city to work in its many auto factories.
It was built for A.C. Billinghurst and designed by the firm Lundblad & Lundblad. The building originally opened as the Billinghurst Hotel on Aug. 6, 1922, and was advertised - like most of its competitors - as being the “newest and most thoroughly modern bachelor hotel in the city.” These hotels were not for travelers, but long-term guests, so there were more like apartments with hotel amenities. Like many of the city's other bachelor hotels, you could rent a furnished room by the week or month. Rents at the time of its opening ranged from $8 to $12 a week, or $156 to $235 a week in 2026 valuation, when adjusted for inflation.
A.C. Billinghurst was already an established hotel man in the city, having managed the Willard Hotel. He previously had managed the Croxden Hotel in Cleveland before coming to Detroit. Shortly after the Billinghurst opened, he and business partner J.C. Hirsack became involved in a project to build a near-copy further north on Woodward Avenue called the Prenford Hotel, which still stands and is now known as the Normandie Hotel. This project utilized the same architects, builders and management teams as the Billinghurst.
The Billinghurst would continue to operate for the next half century without too many incidents.
On March 25, 1966, 36-year-old Richard H. Rule took his own life by jumping from the Billinghurst's roof. The Detroit Free Press wrote the next morning that Rule had recently been released from the Ionia State Hospital, a facility that served those with mental health issues. Rule had been living in the Billinghurst following his release.
Like many smaller hotels spread across the city, as more autoworkers moved into single-family housing and Detroit's population began to free fall, the Billinghurst's rent and standards of tenants fell, too. The hotel became a halfway house in the 1980s and accepted housing vouchers from low-income Detroiters. At that time, it had 110 rooms.
In the early morning hours of Feb. 17, 1989, a deadly fire broke out on the Billinghurst's ground floor and quickly enveloped the structure. Having been an older hotel serving lower-income residents, it hadn't been updated with modern fire-suppression systems or fire alarms. Almost all of the hotel's residents were welfare recipients.
Leland Antoine, then 48 years old, had just gotten out of prison two days before the fire and had moved into the Billinghurst. While recovering at Detroit Receiving Hospital with other survivors, he told the Detroit Free Press for a Feb. 18, 1989, front-page story that "I've never been so scared in my life. I didn't think I was getting out of there."
Police and firefighters dragged mattresses around the four-story building to give terrified residents cushioned landing spots as they jumped from their windows.
In the end, four people died, 57 were injured and some 100 people left homeless. The four victims were Melvin Jackson, James Martin, Wendell Mathews and Ernest Lee Melton. The tenants were put up at the Yorba and Roosevelt hotels until long-term housing could be arranged for them by Wayne County's Department of Social Services. The community rallied to donate clothing and food. Four Detroit police officers were among the injured.
Within days, fire investigators had ruled out arson, saying though the exact cause couldn't be determined, it appeared accidental. The blaze at the Billinghurt was part of a surge in the number of fatal fires in the city. In 1987, Detroit had 19 deadly fires and 13 the following year. By February 1989, Detroit had already suffered 22.
Though the blaze was severe, the Billinghurst was fixed up, and in the 1990s became the Doorstep Homeless Shelter, an emergency shelter for women and children run by Jon Rutherford. In 1994, there were 287 people - including more than 150 children - living there. Given that the Billinghurst's capacity was around 200, Doorstep opened a larger facility in Highland Park along Woodward Avenue. The Billinghurst became abandoned.
In 2012, Scott Lowell bought the beleaguered Billinghurst and set out to stabilize and secure the property. Lowell is no stranger to saving historic Detroit buildings, having not only operated for two decades the storied Traffic Jam & Snug in Midtown - which opened in 1965 but closed in 2022 following a fire - but also buying and renovating the Blackstone Hotel, Bronx Bar and Cliff Bell's. In 2013, he bought the fire-ravaged Forest Arms Apartments - the most significant apartment building in Midtown - and brought it back from the brink, reopening it in 2016.
On Feb. 25, 2026, Lowell presented a plan to the Detroit Brownfield Redevelopment Authority that would make the Billinghurst next, turning it into 31 apartments starting that spring. The $9.5 million plan includes adding ground-floor retail and building a new addition on the west side of the building with an elevator. Lowell said that 20 percent of the units will be afforded as affordable housing.
A public hearing on a request for a $1.5 million tax capture incentive for the redevelopment was tentatively scheduled for March 9, 2026.
Stay tuned for more updates.