Places to stay, eat, drink, and see Detroit’s design legacy in motion.
Charles and Ray Eames started here. Florence Knoll too. For much of the twentieth century, Detroit was America’s workshop—cars rolling off the line, Motown cut to vinyl, furniture that would define an era sketched in classrooms at Cranbrook and College for Creative Studies. That was the Detroit of yesterday.
Today the city wears a new badge. In 2015 it became the first and only UNESCO City of Design in the United States, recognition of a place where design has always been part of the backbone. Every September during Detroit Month of Design those roots spill into the streets—block parties lighting up alleys, warehouse studios alive with talent, galleries that feel more like community platforms than white cubes. It’s not glossy, not overproduced.
When I arrived for the first time and my Uber rolled up to The Siren hotel just after midnight, a crowd was buzzing by the bar next door. Hip hop was humming. Inside, the lobby was dark and sultry, adorned in red velvet and low lighting, and from my window upstairs I could see the glow of the Music Hall sign, the opera house, the stadiums, a city still wide awake.
This guide is a way into that world. Places to stay, eat, drink, and see Detroit’s design legacy in motion. With each stop, they sketch a city that is reinventing itself one block at a time.Stay
Each of Detroit’s hotels tell a different version of the city’s story. The Siren, with its Italian Renaissance-style furnishings and late-night bar crowd, feels like stepping into a film. A few blocks away, the Shinola Hotel leans into Detroit’s craft legacy, tying the brand’s clean aesthetic to the city’s industrial past. For smaller, more intimate stays, ALEO and the 1 Room Hotel are the kind of places that feel like secrets, while the Detroit Foundation Hotel, once the fire department headquarters, wears its civic bones with pride. Newer arrivals like ROOST and the restored David Whitney bring a polished downtown sheen to the scene.
