Hotel Yorba

The Hotel Yorba at 1 West Michigan Avenue in Corktown, Detroit, is a century-old single-room-occupancy hotel that became the title and subject of one of the White Stripes' most beloved early songs. Jack White and Meg White recorded 'Hotel Yorba' in 2001 as a raw, acoustic love song, with White singing: 'I was watching / I was watching / I keep my eyes wide open all the time.' The song opens with a reference to the hotel's address -- 'I was watching / at the Hotel Yorba / I was watching / all night long' -- and captures something of the scrappy, impoverished romantic world the White Stripes inhabited in their early Detroit years.

The Hotel Yorba was built in 1926 as a residential hotel for workers. Corktown, Detroit's oldest neighbourhood and the home of the Detroit Tigers' old stadium (demolished in 2000), was a rough-edged working-class district when the White Stripes were writing songs about it. Jack White grew up nearby on Ferdinand Street in what was then a largely Mexican neighbourhood and developed his musical aesthetic in part from the industrial decay and human resilience that characterised this corner of Detroit.

The building fell into severe disrepair over subsequent decades and was renovated and reopened as transitional housing and affordable accommodation. It remains in operation today. Corktown has undergone significant gentrification since the early 2000s, fuelled partly by Ford Motor Company's investment in the Michigan Central Station building nearby; the neighbourhood that produced 'Hotel Yorba' is considerably more polished than the one Jack White knew. The hotel itself, though renovated, still stands at the same corner.