Cadillac House

Jeremiah Jenks and John L. Woods built the Cadillac House hotel in the Italianate style in 1860. The business opened on July 4 of that year with great fnfare, including songs from the Lexington Glee Club, a parade, dinner and dancing. The hotel was named for Antoine De La Mothe Cadillac, the founder of Fort Pontchartrain (later Detroit). It inititially housed people staying in Lexington for the fishing and lumber industries. By 1884, Cadillac House was the largest hotel in Lexington. It boasted thirty rooms in 1893. When Lexington´s fishing and lumber industries declined near the start of the twentieth century, Cadillac House became a resort hotel. Business thrived in the 1920s, when automobiles and new roads brought more summer vacationers. The hotel portion had closed by the 1960s, but the restaurant served customers until 2016. A historic rehabilitation of the building in 2018 included replicating the nineteenth-century brick chimneys, front porch and cupola. In 2019 the project earned two state historic preservation awards.