The McGraw Hotel’s story is not only one of inclusiveness, but of a whole lot of drama.

It was one of a number of smaller hotels that popped up in neighborhoods around the city to support the factories spread out across the city’s 139 square miles. It would also appear in Green Books, providing African Americans a place to stay when they were turned away from white hotels in Detroit during the era of segregation.

The hotel opened in 1925 on the northwest corner of Junction and McGraw avenues in what was then a Polish enclave of the city, about two blocks from a large Kelsey Hayes wheel plant and a mile from the Lincoln Motor Co. plant. The architect of the McGraw is unknown, as news of its construction and opening didn’t make the papers.

This McGraw Hotel is not to be confused with another McGraw Hotel, which was located at 2110 Clay Ave.

This one was built by Louis Duscoff, a real estate investor who owned several properties around town, such as the Duscoff Apartments at 3137 Brush St., the Sharon Apartments at 7443 Linwood, and the Linwood and Hudson hotels. Duscoff was also one of the organizers of the United Hebrew Schools and was the chairman of the UHS’ building committee. In addition, he played a key role in building several other Jewish institutions around the city.

An ad in the May 25, 1926, edition of The Detroit News said the Hotel McGraw was for "men and women" and located in "the heart of (the) west side business and industrial section." Each room had its own bathroom, which doesn’t sound all that special in today’s day and age, but was actually considered an amenity at the time, when many older hotels had communal bathrooms. A postcard put out in the hotel’s early days promised that “you will always feel at home at the Hotel McGraw.”

A drama McMagnet

The drama started almost from the get-go. In late 1926, Frank Schwartz sued Duscoff, alleging that the hotel was to be his dowry in exchange for marrying Duscoff's daughter, Sara Duscoff. Schwartz told Circuit Court Judge Alfred J. Murphy on Dec. 8, 1926, that Louis Duscoff said he "would build a hotel for him at Junction and McGraw avenues. ... The income, he said Duscoff told him, would support him and his bride.”

Schwartz, a lawyer, had moved to Detroit from Kansas City, after a meeting between the future couple had been arranged by a Detroit cantor. They married June 22, 1924, but Sara Schwartz filed for divorce June 7, 1926.

Frank Schwartz still wanted the hotel, suing for possession and citing what he claimed was a prenuptial agreement. Sara Schwartz, meanwhile, accused her estranged husband of having hit her and Percy Nelland, the hotel's manager, on June 14, 1926.

Frank Schwartz’s suit was settled out of court a day after he filed, without terms of the agreement being announced. However, Louis Duscoff would continue to own the McGraw up until his death on Dec. 16, 1930, after he fell off a ladder while inspecting a new Jewish orphanage that he had helped get built. He was 60 years old.

More fireworks, though of a different sort

A little after 11 p.m. on March 23, 1931, windows of 15 rooms at the McGraw Hotel were shattered by a blast from an explosion at the Bon-Dee Golf Ball Co. factory at 5626 McGraw Ave. Two employees were injured, and the fire was so intense, several nearby houses caught fire. More than 50 people were evacuated from their homes. Two walls of the one-story plant collapsed, and the streets around the plant were littered with twisted steel and brick. The blast was blamed on a 40-gallon tank of naphtha, which was used in cleaning and removing impurities from rubber used in the production of golf balls.

"All at once, the door of the boiler blew open and flames shot out into the room," employee Albert Asselin told The Detroit News for the next day's edition. "The naphtha tank was only a few feet away, and I knew there was sure to be an explosion. There were two 500-gallon drums of naphtha 40 feet from the boilers. (The factory's night watchman, Richard Cyriax) was standing a little farther away. I yelled to him to run, and then I started for the front door. I either jumped through the glass or the explosion threw me. Anyway, the next thing I knew I was lying in the street. Cyriax was staggering across the sidewalk.”

Not even the newspaper classifieds were safe from the McGraw’s drama. On Jan. 11, 1929, a classified ad was taken out in the Detroit Free Press saying, "After this date, Jan. 8, I, Charles Bowman, McGraw hotel, will not be responsible for any debt contracted by my wife, Mrs. Charles Bowman." And if that’s not weird enough, it happened again, on April 12 and 13, 1938, when another McGraw resident took out a classified in the Free Press proclaiming that he was "NOT RESPONSIBLE for any debts contracted by my wife, Edith. Paul Von Mehren, McGraw Hotel."

Around this time, the hotel was taken over by a new proprietor, Henry “Clay” Thomas, who also ran the Sportsman Hotel at 3761 W. Warren Ave., a mile to the west of the McGraw. Thomas "had quite a job restoring the hotel's usefulness after the previous guests moved out - but you should view it now," the Detroit Tribune reported Oct. 26, 1946.

Thomas held a grand reopening event on Aug. 1, 1946, following his series of upgrades. The hotel was listed as having 85 rooms, each with a private bathroom. The dining room would be run by Hazel Bridgewater and called, appropriately enough, Hazel’s Dining Room.

But the drama wasn’t over at the corner of McGraw and Junction, not by a long shot.

Making a stink - and a big mistake

On July 9, 1948, the McGraw was victimized, along with five taverns and a restaurant, in what the Detroit Free Press called "the beginning of a jukebox war." The establishments were stink-bombed, and the owners told police they were targeted for revenge after installing their own jukeboxes and coin games. The McGraw had recently replaced a distributor-operated machine with a privately owned one.

The suspects were Floyd Lowe, chief organizer of the Hotel & Restaurant Employees Alliance, and Eugene James, business director of the Music Maintenance Workers of the AFL. James' union was part of the Teamsters and had serviced many jukeboxes in Detroit and Hamtramck. The Hotel Alliance had been under surveillance for fear of violence.

The putrid projectiles were made of fruit jars filled with foul-smelling liquid and lobbed from a passing automobile. One was tossed into the McGraw’s lobby through an open door.

Meanwhile, on July 6, 1948, McGraw Hotel resident Richard Wright, 28, decided to try to rob a grocery store in Pontiac. Unbeknownst to him, the store was owned by Isadore Mintz, whom the Detroit Free Press called "Pontiac's warring grocer" because he had killed one bandit and captured two others in the last three years.

Wright pulled a gun on Mintz, and when he went to loot an open safe, Mintz grabbed a meat knife and went into action. Police arrived and found the two men struggling for control of the knife. Wright was booked for armed robbery - and treated for cuts on his hands and head.

The Green Book

It is unclear whether the McGraw admitted Black guests from the start, but it ran frequent ads in the Detroit Tribune (a Black newspaper) following Thomas’ acquisition of the property. It also was listed in the 1949 and 1956-1963 editions of the Negro Motorist Green Book. Knowledge of these guidebooks among the general public has increased since a 2018 film, but it’s worth acknowledging their importance.

Victor Green (and later his widow, Alma Green) compiled the Green Books from 1936 to 1966, including hotels, restaurants and other businesses that would serve African-American vacationers or business travelers and not greet them with discrimination. There were about 90 Detroit businesses listed across the editions, including the McGraw. Nearly all of them have been demolished, including the McGraw.

"Travel-wise people travel by the Green Book," the 1954 edition said on the cover. "Carry your Green Book with you - you may need it."

In its Feb. 27, 1965, edition, the Detroit Tribune reported that the McGraw was sold to Fred Beatty, owner of the LaRose and Epworth hotels. Beatty, an African-American entrepreneur, began modernizing the McGraw in September 1964, with the renovations nearly completed at the time the article was published. Each of the hotel’s rooms would now feature a radio, a TV, a telephone and a bath. Rates were $2 and up, about $20 in 2025.

On Feb. 5, 1971, Beatty took out a permit to add more toilet and shower rooms, and the McGraw was listed as having 83 rooms.

From drama to horror

On Feb. 16, 1974, Detroit police rescued 30-year-old Jacqueline Laster and her 2-and-a-half-year-old son, Charles, from a harrowing kidnapping and extortion plot at the McGraw.

Laster was rear-ended in Inkster, and when she got out of the car to inspect the damage, a man pulled a gun on her. He got into her car and forced her to drive to the McGraw Hotel, where she was made to register under her own name. Then, he forced her to call her father-in-law and demand $15,000 in ransom. That's the equivalent of about $101,000 in 2025 valuation.

Police were alerted and kept an eye as the money drop was made at 33rd and Devereaux streets. Three people were taken into custody by the infamous Detroit STRESS police squad after being pulled over with the ransom money in the car. As Mayor Coleman Young had officially disbanded the controversial police unit by this time, the members of the squad were said to have been free to handle the operation.

Laster and her son were found safe and without injury inside the McGraw. However, because Laster failed to identify the three suspects that had been taken into custody, they were released.

Another vacant lot

The building was last sold in 1979. An ad appeared in the Detroit News in January 1980 seeking a plasterer for the McGraw Hotel, and on May 15, 1980, a permit was filed with the City’s buildings department to install a new stairway and front exit.

For reasons that are unclear, however, just six years later, a demolition permit was taken out for the McGraw on Dec. 16, 1986. It is assumed it came down in the new year, and the site has remained a vacant lot ever since. Why would it be demolished so soon after work was under way to renovate it? Perhaps there was a fire, though no record of one can be found in the newspapers.

It would have totally been on brand for the McGraw to go out the way it spent most of its life - with a bit of drama.