Henry D Shelden

Historical Architecture of Grosse Pointe – The Lost Estates – 525 Lakeshore

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on Tuesday, April 24th, 2018 at 1:39pm.

This week we continue with our review of the lost estates of Lakeshore with our penultimate post about these wonderful homes.

Last week we reviewed the lost Ford estates, designed by Pittsburgh architect Albert H. Spahr. This week we focus on 525 Lakeshore – one of the largest estates to have ever graced Grosse Pointe – Deeplands, set on a colossal 80 acres. To give you a rough idea on the size of this estate, once the home was demolished and the land sub divided more than 80 homes (of varying sizes) were built on the area. Source: Grosse Pointe 1880-1930 by Madeleine Socia and Suzy Berschback.

Deeplands was built in 1911 for Henry D. Sheldon, and his wife Caroline. They were married in 1887 and had three children. Mr. Sheldon was born in Portville, N.Y in 1862. He attended Yale College in 1886 where he studied law, and was admitted to the Michigan bar in 1887. Between 1887 and 1890 he was involved in the wholesale dry goods business, after which he divided his attention between various corporate boards. He passed away in 1941. Mrs. Caroline Sheldon was a Detroit society leader. She was born in 1865 to General Russell A. Alger, the former Govenor of Michigan and Secretary of War in President McKinley’s cabinet. She was a member of many prominent societies in and around Detroit including the Society of Arts and Crafts, Daughters of the American Revolution, and the Detroit Museum of Arts Founders Society. She passed away in 1935. Source:

The Sheldon’s new home was an opulent mansion in the style of an Italian Villa. The exterior walls were faced with grayish-yellow bricks, while the roof tiles were green. The entrance, approached by a driveway, was at the rear of the house, nestled within an abundance of trees and shrubs. The front of the home faced Lakeshore, and had 1,100 feet of frontage on Lake St. Clair with a portion extending inland by 3,000 feet. Source: Grosse Pointe Historical Society.

The property also included three smaller buildings – a four-car garage, stables and a house for the gardener. Based on research by the Grosse Pointe Historical Society the house was named ‘Deeplands’ because the property extended back into the country.

The interior of the home was stunning, and no expense was spared in creating a luxurious interior for the family, and a fashionable showplace for the Sheldon’s many lavish parties.

Arthur Heun of Chicago designed the home. Mr. Heun was born in Saginaw in 1866. He initially trained in architecture at his uncles’ practice in Grand Rapids. In 1888, when he was 22, Heun moved to Chicago to work as a draftsman for Francis Whitehouse, one of Chicago’s most popular residential architects of that era. Five years later, 1893, Mr. Heun took full control of the practice due to the retirement of the firm’s distinguished owner. By now Arthur Heun had a fine reputation as a residential architect and was highly sought after. His work tended to follow the Prairie school aesthetic similar to his mentors Frank Lloyd Wright and Louis Sullivan.

He created many homes in the Chicago area for prominent residents of the city, along with designing several country estates in the suburb of Lake Forest on the city’s North Shore. His work also included several commercial projects, including the Casino Club, and the Art Club in the city. Mr. Heun was also a skilled designer in the area of decorative arts. Early on in his career he was known for creating decorative glass panels, wall sconces and chandeliers. It is not clear, however, if any of these skills were applied to his work at Deeplands.

It is possible that 525 Lakeshore was Heun’s only project here in Metro Detroit, and certainly Grosse Pointe.

After the death of Mr. Sheldon (in 1941) the house was demolished, and the land was subsequently sub-divided. Sadly all that remains are the two streets named after the original estate – N. Deepland and S. Deeplands – along with the 80 homes that now occupy the original space.

We will be concluding our story of Grosse Pointe’s lost Lakeshore estates next week.

Written by Katie Doelle

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Henry D Shelden.

Deeplands Road. Henry D. Shelden House. Named for the estate of Henry D. Shelden, Built between 1911 and 1915. Horse chestnut trees running south from Deeplands Road fronted the Shelden property.

Allan Shelden

Shelden Mansion

196 Fort Street West, Detroit, Michigan

Built 1875, for Allan Shelden (1832-1905) and his wife, Katharine Butler Dusenbury (1829-1916). This was among the grandest of the great mansions that once lined Detroit's Fort Street West. Designed by Gordon Lloyd, it is thought to have been an early influence on the central block of the Traverse City State Hospital (built 1885). The Shelden mansion was demolished circa 1920.

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Allan Shelden Residence, Detroit

https://digitalcollections.detroitpubliclibrary.org/islandora/object/islandora%3A149307

Allan Shelden ran a wholesale dry goods firm with his business partner, Senator Zachariah Chandler (1813-1879), which became known as Allan Shelden & Co. when the latter died in 1879. His selection to the board of the Detroit National Bank cemented his position among the city's business elite. His wife (whose name is also spelt Catharine or Catherine) was the eldest daughter of Henry Richard Dusenbury (1801-1860), a wealthy lumber merchant of Portville, New York.

They commissioned Detroit's most celebrated architect of the time, Gordon W. Lloyd (1832-1905), to build them a sumptuous new family home on the site of - or very near to - the recently demolished farmhouse that had belonged to Senator Lewis Cass (1782–1866), Governor of Michigan. Lloyd blended brick with a cut stone finishing to produce a predominantly Elizabethan design, though the central tower with it's mansard roof was typical of Second Empire architecture.

A contemporary account in the Detroit Free Press described the mansion as containing, "countless rooms, each of which is fitted in superb style": These included the butternut hallway interspersed with ornamental panels, a music room, billiards room and a library of cherry-wood. The drawing-room, filled with treasures of art and sculpture, was decorated in the "American renaissance," with walls lined in delicate oriental silk under an "unusually rich frieze and decorated ceiling".

Even before the Civil War, Mrs Shelden had gained a reputation as one of fashionable Detroit's most popular hostesses. Her portrait that hung in the music room on Fort Street was donated to the Detroit Institute of Arts in 1985 by the widow of her great-grandson, Allan Shelden III (1916-1976). It was only shortly before her death that she left her home of forty years for Deeplands.

Shelden had died at the mansion in 1905, when it was left to their only child, Henry Dusenbury Shelden (1862-1941). Harry, as he was known, lived there with his society wife, Caroline Annette Alger (1865-1935), children, and widowed mother. But, having relinquished his role in dry goods back in 1890, it was now only his less time-consuming executive positions that tied him to city-life.

From 1911, the Sheldens (including his widowed mother) made their permanent home at Deeplands, Harry's recently completed country estate on Lake St. Clair in Grosse Pointe. The history surrounding the final chapter of their city mansion is as yet unclear, but it was not before long that it suffered the same fate as many like it and was demolished to make way for progress.

Henry D Shelden

Deeplands

525 Lake Shore Road, Grosse Pointe, Michigan

Completed in 1911, for Henry Dusenbury Shelden (1862-1941) and his wife Caroline Annette Alger (1865-1935). Neighboring Clairview on an estate of 80-acres, this Italianate mansion was one of the first of its kind to be built outside Detroit as a year-round home rather than a summer house or weekend retreat. It was demolished in 1947 and the land redeveloped into what is now referred to as the Deeplands Subdivision of Grosse Pointe.

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Deeplands, 525 Lakeshore Road

Harry Shelden had grown up at the Shelden Mansion in Detroit, the only son and heir to a fortune established through dry goods and banking. Educated at finishing schools in France and Switzerland, his wife was the daughter of Russell Alexander Alger (1836-1907), the Civil War General who became U.S. Secretary of War under McKinley, a Senator and Governor of Michigan.

Following in the footsteps of his brother-in-law, Russell Alexander Alger Jr. (1873-1930), Shelden made the decision to quit the city and build a permanent year-round home on a country estate at Grosse Pointe. Influenced by the Italianate style of The Moorings, Shelden hired Arthur Heun (1866-1946), the well-known architect from Chicago who had recently completed the spectacular Mellody Farm in a similar style for J. Ogden Armour (1863-1927) at Lake Forest, Illinois.

The house sat on an estate of 80 acres, with a frontage of 1,100 feet on Lake St. Clair and reaching back into the woods some 3,000 feet - giving rise to it's name, Deeplands. Set back from Lakeshore Road, the house was approached by the rear via a long drive lined with horse chestnut trees. Outbuildings on the estate included the gardener's cottage, a four-car garage and stables.

Built of stone with a distinctive yellow hue and topped with green tiles, the central block gave on to a terrace accessed by French windows and flanked either side by projecting bays. Much of the interior was decorated with furniture, paintings and heirlooms that had once adorned Mrs Shelden's childhood home in Detroit, Governor Alger Mansion. For example, the library displayed a collection of family portraits as well as a number of mounted hunting trophies.

Harry Shelden died at Deeplands in 1941. He'd been predeceased by his only son, Allan Shelden II (1890-1935), whose widow, Elizabeth Buhl Warren (1895-1982), kept a house on Lakeshore Drive as well as the 800-acre Greenhill Farm in Stony Creek Metropark. Therefore, Deeplands was left to his grandsons: Allan Shelden III (1916-1976) and William Warren Shelden (1919-2002).

In 1947, the brothers took the decision to demolish the house and subdivide the property, creating the Shelden Land Company. The 80-acre estate is now referred to as the Deeplands Subdivision on which 80 new houses have been built, mostly on Deeplands Avenue.