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There wasn’t much to Detroit when S.K. Harring opened the National Hotel on Dec. 1, 1836, on the southeast corner of Campus Martius. The city was a sleepy hamlet of only about 9,000 people, and nothing that stood downtown then stands today. The hotel would go through a string of owners, each growing and remodeling parts of it.
Then, in 1857, William Hale bought the property and hired the architectural firm Anderson & Jordan to overhaul the building. It was then leased to W.H. Russell, who opened it as the Russell House on Sept. 28, 1857.
The Russell would be the city’s leading hotel for nearly half a century, and it was the center of Detroit’s social scene. “It is first class …(with) comfortable elegance everywhere abounding,” the Detroit Free Press wrote at the time of the hotel’s opening. “In all respects, the house is (a credit) to its projector, to the city and the West.” The Russell continued to morph over the years, with sections being torn down and rebuilt and additions being tacked on in attempt to keep up with Detroit’s growing population. Over its 48-year existence, the Russell would completely be transformed, looking nothing at the end like it did in the beginning.