Smith House
5045 Ponvalley Road, Bloomfield Township, Michigan 48304
Frank LLoyd Wright is a well known an American Architect who built over a thousand homes. His “Falling Water” home is his most famous. From artistic homes that blended in with nature to prairie homes for more average Americans to live in. Wright had a huge impact on twentieth century residential design; his influential Prairie School houses were practical yet innovative. He commissioned the smith house for two school teachers.
Meyer May House
450 Madison Ave SE, Grand Rapids, M49503
Designed for a prominent clothier in 1908 by Frank Lloyd Wright (see previous paragraph) was Meyer May House. Meyer May was a prairie style and is still maintained that way today even after Steelcase bought it and made it available to the public, the architecture and furniture is still as intended.
K.W. Kellog Manor House
3700 E Gull Lake Dr, Hickory Corners, MI 49060
W.K Kellog was the founder of the Kellogg Company, who manufactured a wide array of cereal products. He is known for his invention of Frosted Flakes. W.K. Kellogg Manor House is the former estate of cereal magnate W.K. Kellogg and his wife, Dr. Carrie Staines Kellogg. The Manor is rich with history, and touring the Manor with the guides offers a more extensive history lesson behind the cereal.
Henry Ford Estate
1 Fair Ln Dr, Dearborn, MI 48128
The Henry Ford estate was owned by Henry Ford. He was the founder of Ford Motor Company, and he came up with the idea of creating an assembly line during his mass manufacturing of cars.
The Henry Ford Estate is where he stayed with his wife throughout years.
Honalulu House
107 N Kalamazoo Ave, Marshall, MI 49068
The Honolulu house was owned by the ex-ambassador of Hawaii where he had diplomatic power. It was built by Abner Pratt in 1860. He was chief justice of the Michigan Supreme Court, and United States Council to Hawaii under President James Buchanan.
The Honolulu House is the only royal palace on continental soil. It is listed in the National Register of Historic Places.
It showcases beautiful examples of Italianate, Gothic Revival and Polynesian architecture.
The Whitney
4421 Woodward Ave, Detroit, MI 48201
The Whitney was owned by David Whitney Jr, a prominent lumber baron from Detroit,Mi.
Saarinen House
39221 Woodward Ave, Bloomfield Hills, MI 48304
The Saarinen House was owned by Eliel Saarinen, a Finnish-American architect known for his art-nouveau style.
Aden B. Dow House
315 Post St, Midland, MI 48640
The Aden B Dowe House was owned by no other than Aden B Dowe, an architect right from Midland, Michigan who came up with his own style of architecture called Michigan Modern.
Cranbrook House and Gardens
380 Lone Pine Rd, Bloomfield Hills, MI 48304
Crankbrook House and Gardens was owned by Detroit newspaper publisher and philanthropist George Gough Booth and his wife, Ellen Scripps Booth. It was built by Detroit acrhitect Albert Kahn. They purchased a 174 acre run down farm in Bloomfield Hills, and named it Cranbrook after the English town that the Booth family came from. The estate is now the center for the Cranbrook Educational Community campus, a National Historic Landmark.
The architecture is arts and crafts style seen through the artisan decoration, man built lakes, and gardens.
Castle Farms
5052 M-66, Charlevoix, MI 49720
Castle Farms was owned by Albert Loeb, president of Sears, Roebuck & Company. Castle farms was once known as Loeb Farms, designed as a working model dairy farm to showcase products available in the Sear’s catalog.
Thirty five European craftsmen worked with local men and field stones to build this Northern Michigan castle. The architecture is based off of Neo Norman soaring stone towers found in barns and castles of Normandy, France.
The Laurium Manor
320 Tamarack St, Laurium, MI 49913
The Hoatson House was owned by Thomas H. Hoatson, vice president of the Calumet and Arizona Mining Company. He grew up the son of a miner in the Keweenaw and chose to stay rooted there with his family. In 1907, he constructed a house in Laurium as a surprise for his wife and children. It is one of the largest houses built in the Upper Peninsula with forty five rooms. His family lived in the house until his death in 1927. Then it rotated owners a few times until it was turned into a funeral home in the 1940s. The owner of the funeral home, Maynerd Hurlbut, murdered his wife and grandson before committing suicide in 1979. The home sat vacant for several years until its restoration in the 1990s. The Hoatson House was converted into a bed and breakfast and renamed the Laurium Manor. Maybe you can spend the night in a possibly haunted historical bedroom instead of just visiting.
If you’re at all interested in Calumet, I recommend the historical fiction book “Women of Copper Country” by Mary Doria Russell.
Meadowbrook Hall and Gardens
350 Estate Dr, Rochester, MI 48309
The Meadowbrook Hall and Gardens was owned and built by the automotive aristocracy’s Matilda Dodge Wilson, and her second husband Alfred Wilson, a lumber baron. Her first husband was John Dodge, an automotive manufacturing pioneer who founded Dodge car company.
Meadow Brook represents one of the finest examples of Tudor-revival architecture in America.