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Wellington Place / Seward Hotel

The Wellington building is a prime example of Detroit’s accelerated form of urban decay.

Seemingly overnight, the former Seward Hotel went from being a fairly nondescript 10-story brick apartment building to a windowless, gutted shell. Water pours through holes in the roof, walls have been smashed open by scrappers, and paint peels of the ceiling in giant sheets. It’s not uncommon to see this level of decay in buildings after 5 to 10 years; in the Wellington, it took less than one year.

59 Seward Street has gone by many names: It opened in 1925 or 1926 as the Seward Hotel, later becoming the New Center Apartments, Wellington Place, Wellington Plaza, Wellington Condominiums, and lastly Wellington Commons. The building at one time featured an ornate cornice, but these appear to have been removed during a renovation.

The neighborhood around The Wellington changed too. Seward street has a reputation for being a rough area in an already rough part of Detroit, with high rates of prostitution and drug trafficking. By 2009, conditions at The Wellington had declined to the point where the building was practically uninhabitable. Many apartments that were beyond repair had been boarded up or plastered over by the property managers; the remaining units were infested with bedbugs and other pests. Wellington Commons LLC went bankrupt in July of 2009; residents were given 30 days to vacate before the power was turned off due to unpaid bills.

The Wellington is one of several apartment buildings on Seward that was been purchased by a commercial property group looking to offer market-rate apartments in midtown. As of 2018, renovation work is underway.