Over the weekend our fine nation enjoyed the opening of Ides of March, a film that stars George Clooney and Ryan Gosling with a supporting role for a hotel right here in Detroit. The Roberts Riverwalk Hotel offered up three rooms for the shoot and even removed a wall so the crew could shoot through the bathroom to the bedroom. Manager Stephanie Donaldson had to field calls from fans trying to go to the hotel during the shoot.
"People were like, 'Oh, we have a daughter who's getting married. Can we look at the hotel?' No you don't. You don't have a daughter," says Donaldson with a laugh.
So what's this building doing with its new-found fame now? Just shilling out 106 guest rooms as usual since opening as a hotel last May. What was it doing before? Back in the day it was known as the Parke-Davis Research Laboratory and later Building 55-Detroit Research. When it was built for a pharmaceutical firm in 1902, could it have ever imagined this magical gift of touched-by-Gosling fame? Some buildings have all the luck. · Park Davis Research Laboratory [Detroit1701]
· Scouting the local locations in 'The Ides of March' [Freep]