Posts
Tuesday, May 25, 2021
Monday, May 24, 2021
Friday, May 21, 2021
Monday, May 03, 2021
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.
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.
Styles
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.
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.
Categories
Styles
Share
Contributed by Mark Meredith on 26/09/2018 and last updated on 20/01/2019. Show references
Connections
Be the first to connect to this house. Connect to record your link to this house. or just to show you love it! Connect to Shelden Mansion →
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)