A $60 million commission in downtown Birmingham, Michigan might have produced something safely civic and forgettable. Instead, Chicago firm Booth Hansen delivered a limestone-and-glass facade with the composed authority of a European grand hotel transplanted to the Midwest's most quietly prosperous Main Street address. The Daxton Hotel opened in 2021 with 151 rooms and an ambition that extended well beyond its corner plot at 298 S. Old Woodward Ave — including fifth-floor private terraces and a second-level green roof courtyard that soften what might otherwise feel like a formal urban statement. Inside, KTGY Simeone Deary Design Group navigated the tension between glamour and livability with considerable skill. Guest rooms pair dark leather platform beds and ebonized millwork with ornate plaster crown molding and oversized botanical wallcoverings set behind arched niches — a collision of gothic romance and contemporary restraint that somehow holds together. The bar is the property's most theatrical gesture: a veined black marble island at its center, surrounded by a geodesic steel-and-brass ceiling structure that pulls daylight through the space like a lantern. Throughout, a 400-plus piece art collection curated by Saatchi Art anchors the interiors in something more considered than mere decoration — large mixed-media portraits in the restaurant and graffiti-inflected sculpture in the bar give the whole property a cultural seriousness that earned it a MICHELIN Key designation before Hilton's Curio Collection came calling in 2024.

30min drive from Detroit

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