Book Tower rises above you, the ornate Italian Renaissance tower the Book brothers built to remake this boulevard. Completed in 1926 and designed by Louis Kamper, Book Tower rose thirty-eight stories, briefly the tallest building in the city, sheathed in carved stone and topped with copper. The Book family dreamed of turning Washington Boulevard into a grand European-style promenade, Detroit's answer to Fifth Avenue, lined with luxury shops and hotels.
They never finished the vision, and the tower itself fell into decay, sitting empty and water-damaged for years. A long restoration completed in 2023 brought it back to life as apartments, offices, and a hotel, its limestone facade scrubbed and its copper crown gleaming again. Picture the caryatid figures and weathered ornament near the top, then the boulevard below, the elegant shopping street the brothers imagined a century ago, only partly built, now slowly being reclaimed.