4020 Lafayette Boulevard
The Hotel Yorba
I’ve never taken a photograph of the Hotel Yorba that does it justice. After thoroughly documenting the exterior earlier this week, I still feel I need to do better by this historic landmark in Southwest Detroit. For now, these photos can tell the story.
The Hotel Yorba was completed in 1926 for Samuel Plotkin. The 300-room residential hotel was designed by Pollmar & Ropes at 4020 Lafayette Boulevard, decades before I-75 carved a path through the in-tact neighborhoods south of the hotel.
The adverts for the Yorba began shortly after opening and were fast and frequent. Initially, they described it as Detroit’s newest residential hotel, complete with the finest furniture, high-quality mattresses, and hot water. A single cost $1.50 per day, and a double would cost you $2. For a week, the same rooms cost $7 and $10, respectively. These adverts continued and were posted in the Detroit Free Press almost daily throughout 1927.
In addition to the Yorba, Plotkin built and owned the Roosevelt Hotels in Detroit and Pontiac. When the Yorba opened, it was managed by R. G. Harris.
In 1928, the property management department at the Union Trust Company took over the operations of the hotel. In 1933, Samuel Plotkin sued Union Trust for $2,500,000 in damages and the mismanagement of his hotels in Detroit and Pontiac. Plotkin alleged that Union Trust couldn’t account for $1,500,000 in collections and rent. He also stated that they had done “irreparable damage” to his hotels, the Detroit Free Press reported. It’s unclear whether Plotkin recouped the million-and-a-half he said Union Trust couldn’t account for or the extra million he wanted for damages.
In the early 1940s, the Yorba was featured in an advertising campaign around the state to try and entice visitors. The adverts also featured the Roosevelt Hotel and were found in the Ubly Courier, Sebewaing Blade, Unionville Crescent, and Minden City Herald. All four towns were located in Michigan’s thumb.
After the mid-1940s, adverts for the Hotel Yorba became much less prevalent. Not only had Detroit started its slow decline, but so too had the once opulent idea of a residential hotel. Over time, the concept became less popular due to the ever-expanding number of single-family homes. Over the next few decades, hotels were closing left and right in Detroit as the city began losing citizens and global appeal.
A chain never owned the Hotel Yorba—so the owners had a decision to make. Try to continue running a luxurious hotel in a neighborhood that was becoming less and less opulent, or change with the times and serve the clientele that needed a place to stay.
In the late 1970s, advertisements reappeared for the Hotel Yorba. It was still a residential hotel—cheap rates, 24-hour shared phone access, and community amenities were the name of the game. By this point, many residential hotels in Detroit had become a form of affordable housing for those on welfare or down on their luck.
A similar establishment, the Billinghurst Hotel at 71 W. Willis in the Cass Corridor, was the site of a disaster in 1989. A four-alarm fire tore through the structure, killing four, injuring 57 (including four police officers), and leaving 100 homeless. The building was old and needed repairs; some residents had no option but to jump from their windows to escape the flames.
One hundred two welfare recipients were housed at the Billinghurst at the time of the fire. Affordable housing was hard to come by in Detroit, and many old hotels had become havens for those living check to check, including the Hotel Yorba.
After the fire, around 30 residents were relocated from the Billinghurst to the Yorba. Elvis Cummings, a 29-year-old relocated resident, said, “I have nothing right now, not even a cigarette,” when interviewed by the Detroit Free Press. Many residents lost everything they had in the fire. The Billinghurst still stands and is undergoing renovations.
By 1991, the Yorba was owned by Jerry Jankowski. At the time, he also owned the King’s Arms and Huntington Hotels. Two hundred fifty welfare recipients occupied the Yorba, and Jankowski lowered rent to help his residents stay at the Yorba after welfare checks were reduced twice in the same year. Without cutting the price, the residents would have had to leave, and Jankowski would have had an empty building.
He told the Detroit Free Press he needed $204 per room per month to keep the place afloat. He knew that most of his tenants were given $174 checks per month, so he came up with the concept that if each of them were to collect ten bottles a day and returned them at 10 cents a pop, they’d be able to get the extra $30 needed to make rent. It was an odd way to explain the rent to your occupants, but the Yorba journeyed onward.
In 2001, the Hotel Yorba was put on the map globally. The White Stripes’ lead single off their third studio album was about and named after the structure—which was a short walk from where frontman Jack White grew up. The single version of the song was recorded by Brendan Benson (who’d later become a member of White’s band The Raconteurs) in room #286 at the Hotel Yorba in May 2001. Reportedly, ownership didn’t allow the band to record a video inside the building, but the exterior is prevalent in the music video.
Throughout the 2000s, the Hotel Yorba teetered on. In 1990, a year before Jankowski reportedly had 250 welfare recipients staying at his establishment, Detroit’s population was just over a million. By 2010 it had shrunk to less than 70% of that figure. With little money coming in, it had to be hard to justify making upgrades to a structure that was in desperate need of them, enabling it to fall further into disrepair.
In 2018, a 55-year-old man was found dead in his room at the hotel. He died of natural causes and was discovered after a few days due to the smell emanating from the room.
Two years later, the Hotel Yorba was listed for sale for $2.95 million. The sign remains in place, but the listing has been removed from the aggregator websites.
At some point, regardless of the list price, the Hotel Yorba will change hands. In recent years, Southwest Detroit, specifically the area near Clark Park, has seen significant investment from the city and private citizens. The Yorba currently is engrained within a community without a voice, but, odds are, it will serve a radically different population when it sells.
It’s been nearly a century since the Hotel Yorba opened at the hands of Samuel Plotkin, almost 35 years since residents from the Billinghurst were relocated there, and over 20 years since the White Stripes made it famous. I’m not sure what the future holds, but one thing is certain—the history of the Hotel Yorba is far from finished.
