The Townsend Hotel

From reading the news you’d expect Detroit literally to be an apocalyptic wasteland, second only to the Chernobyl exclusion zone. But while they’re not exactly wrong to say the city center’s a work in progress, the fact is that in Detroit the outlying suburbs are where the action is — and this includes the lovely town of Birmingham, Michigan, home of the upscale Townsend Hotel.

The exterior architecture may be an acquired taste — the building dates back only to the 1980s, placing it in the uncanny valley between historical and contemporary — but in hotels, as in a few other areas of life, it’s what’s inside that counts. In the case of the Townsend what’s inside is an absolutely classic luxury hotel, one that you’d swear had existed in its present form for half a century or more.

This means swanky guest rooms with marble bathrooms and all the high-end fixings, public spaces that are straight out of a prewar English country house, and an award-winning fine-dining restaurant, the Rugby Grille. It also means an afternoon tea service that wouldn’t look out of place in Downton Abbey, and a classic cocktail bar. Walking distance from downtown Detroit attractions you’re most certainly not — but you are close by to many of greater Detroit’s sporting, cultural and commercial attractions, which, needless to say, is even better.