Hugh T. Keyes

• Name — Hugh Keyes • Birth Name — Hugh Tallman Keyes • Born — 1888 • Birthplace — Trenton, Michigan, U.S. • Died — 1963 • Education — Harvard University U.S. Naval Academy • Significant Buildings — Significant houses in Bloomfield Hills and Grosse Pointe, Michigan • Significant Design — Regency (mostly French) houses of white brick

Keyes was married to Faye Elizabeth Keyes, and had two daughters and two sons. He lived most of his adult life in Birmingham, Michigan, and was "a life member of the Detroit Boat Club."

• Illustration — The "Wonders of Bloomfield Hills", 1966 (clockwise from upper left): Frank Lloyd Wright's Affleck house, Eliel Saarinen's Cranbrook, and Keyes's Woodland (Bugas house) Keyes studied architecture at Harvard University (where his drawings won an honorable mention in the "Intercollegiate Architecture Competition, the most important event in the collegiate architecture world") and subsequently worked under architect C. Howard Crane and was an associate of Albert Kahn ("the foremost industrial architect of the United States")—where he worked on Kahn's "signature project" the Neo-Renaissance Detroit Athletic Club. Keyes also graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy and served as an ensign in the Navy during World War I and as a major in the Army during World War II. He travelled extensively in England, France, Italy, and Switzerland, all of which influenced the development of his architectural style. Keyes opened his own office in Detroit in 1921, and his career spanned the Roaring Twenties, the Great Depression, and into the post war boom mid-century modern period. Keyes's style ranged from Tudor Revival (the most ubiquitous style in the early 20th-century metropolitan area) to rustic Swiss chalets, but he is most noted for the Georgian/Palladian and symmetrical bow-fronted wings, wrought iron balconies, and hipped roofs (often with parapets or mansards) of the related Regency style of architecture. • Illustration — A 1930s model of a proposed residence by Keyes, showing the first floor entrance and hall and second floor hall and living room Keyes's houses were known for being "built for the ages" (typically of "concrete and steel construction") and devoid of frills or affectation, his "free use of classical forms" done "without trickery or ostentation." He was particularly influential in the Art Deco movement for which Detroit would become renowned, and was at the forefront in the area in introducing the streamline moderne designs of the movement in the 1930s. Keyes's designs often included glass-walled conservatories, exploiting natural light from hillsides or lakesides. He was one of the Detroit architects that frequently employed architectural sculptor Corrado Parducci to embellish his designs. By the end of his life, Keyes's works were considered some of the most significant in the area. One of his most notable works, the Bugas House (or Woodland, see below), was featured by the Detroit Free Press in 1966 as "Wonder number one" of its "Wonders of Bloomfield Hills"—along with Frank Lloyd Wright's Gregor S. Affleck House and George Booth's Cranbrook. Several of Keyes's designs (specifically the Bugas/Taubman, Knudsen/Hermelin, and Harris houses) have made lists of the most expensive homes in Michigan. Keyes played an active role in the creation of the Cranbrook Institute of Science in 1933 (in the vicinity of which he would create many residences), and was one of its original honorary members. Commenting on the technological and aesthetic trend in modern architecture, Keyes observed: The World today is being made over to fit a new tempo of life, and it is unthinkable that Detroit, leading the country in the advance of industrial design, should be content to live in homes of the past.

• Illustration — Schlafer House Schlafer House Fairway Hills Dr., Franklin (1961) Client: Maurice A. Schlafer Style: Regency, Ranch In 1961, when Keyes was 73, five years after he designed Fisher House on Fairway Hills Dr. in Franklin, Maurice A. Schlafer (of the Schlafer Iron and Metal family) hired him to design a miniature version right across the street. The single-story ranch-style house wraps around the back of the property in a U-shape, leaving a deceptively diminutive façade that belies its five-thousand square feet (which still makes it one of the smallest of Keyes's houses). It has Fisher House's Regency white brick and Tuscan colonnade and entablature with spiral volutes. Contrasting French shutters frame the walls of windows. Keyes retained his characteristic clean lines, open floor plan, and dramatic light-filled rooms—provided by the maximized window surface area from the back courtyard. Schlafer House would be the last project of Keyes's career. Whitby Hall Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit (1955) Style: Colonial Georgian Keyes was chosen by the Detroit Institute of Arts to design the elaborate interior rooms of Whitby Hall, the centerpiece of its American Decorative Arts Gallery. The interiors "were completely redecorated with a new background formed by panelling from Early American Colonial houses. The alterations made to Whitby Hall were quite comprehensive." New ceilings, fireplaces (including a design with elaborate Doric frieze carving in the parlor), windows, air supply equipment, wiring and lighting "presented a number of problems which were successfully solved." Whitby Hall was an 18th-century Pennsylvania country house, the farm acquired in 1741 and the house enlarged in 1754 by James Coultas (merchant, shipowner, and high sheriff of Philadelphia from 1755 to 1758). The original house featured a steep pedimented gable with cove cornices, and a three-story, pedimented stone entrance and stair tower. Much of the architectural ornament of Whitby Hall is originally attributed to Samuel Harding (who designed the interior of Independence Hall in 1753, the inspiration for Whitby's stair tower). The interiors were removed from Whitby Hall in the 1920s and installed at the DIA (where, "ironically, the façade is of white clapboard, a far cry from Whitby's actual stately gray stone"). Emory Ford House Woodland Pl., Grosse Pointe (1949) Client: Emory M. Ford Style: Regency Another renovation and addition by Keyes, the Emory Ford House was originally built in 1928 by Robert O. Derrick. When Emory M. Ford (the great grandson of John Baptiste Ford and part of the "Chemical Ford" family) acquired the estate in 1940, Ford hired Keyes to make significant changes. Keyes added "artistic glass and mirror installations, including a stair banister with glass balusters," as well as an attached conservatory overlooking Lake St. Clair and a mansard roof with parapet. The house sits just down the road from Keyes's much earlier mansard house Pingree House. • Illustration — Tyrol Ski Lodge Tyrol Ski Lodge Hidden Valley Resort, Gaylord (1947) Client: Donald B. McLouth Style: Swiss Chalet The Hidden Valley Resort was formed in 1937 by Detroit-area steel magnate Donald B. McLouth (founder and president of McLouth Steel) and was the first private ski club in North America (and had the first motorized rope tow in the U.S.). Members included Detroit industrialists such as the families of Henry Ford, William Durant, Walter Briggs, C. Thorne Murphy, Alvan Macauley, David Wallace, Gordon Saunders, and Lang Hubbard. In 1947, 6 years after McLouth hired Keyes to design his home in Bloomfield Hills, Keyes was hired to design an extensive expansion of the resort with a Tyrolian Alpine motif (aided by Austrians in charge of construction and desired by club founders who frequented the slopes of Austria and Switzerland). At the centerpiece of Keyes's design was a "Hansel-and-Gretel-look" Swiss chalet style lodge, where he incorporated bow-fronted, symmetrical wings and specifically referenced the traditional building style of houses and farms in the Alpine regions of Switzerland, Savoy and Tyrol. (Keyes's designs subsequently inspired an alpine theme throughout the nearby village of Gaylord.) The lodge's "original caramel-stained pine logs, accented with Bavarian-blue trim, are retained today." • Illustration — McLouth House McLouth House Martell Dr., Bloomfield Hills (1941) Client: Donald B. McLouth Style: Regency, Georgian Designed by Keyes for Donald B. McLouth (of McLouth Steel) in 1941, McLouth House was in many ways a precursor to Goad House and Fisher House, both built in 1955; McLouth House was Keyes's initial use of many of the forms used in these much later projects, such as an ornately corniced triangular pediment, Tuscan-colonnaded and entablatured front portico, attached conservatory, curved, pilastered brick walls framing the property, and double-story patios in back (almost identical to that of Fisher House). Keyes used what was becoming his signature clean white brick construction. (McLouth House and Goad House were both filming locations in the 2013 film The Ides of March.) McLouth would later again hire Keyes for his summer home and private wilderness club Green Timbers, as well as for the Tyrol Ski Lodge at his Hidden Valley Resort. (McLouth House is also known as the Caldwell House, after its subsequent owner Philip Caldwell, the successor to Henry Ford II as chairman and CEO of Ford Motor Company.) • Illustration — Joy House Joy House Renaud Rd., Grosse Pointe Shores (1938) Client: Richard P. Joy, Jr. Style: Regency Joy House is another of Keyes's flat-roof designs with ornate double-cornices and white brick construction, and evolved into his Regency style with a colonnaded front portico and delicate iron gates and railings. Joy House also has an early example of what would become Keyes's signature large central transom window. A gabled roof was later built atop the original flat roof (though not by Keyes). (Richard Joy, Jr., for whom Keyes designed the house, hails from the Joy dynasty, his grandfather James F. Joy a railroad magnate and "one of the foremost business men of the U.S." and his father Richard P. Joy the President of the National Bank of Commerce and a Director of the Packard Motor Car Company—where his brother Henry B. Joy was also President and a major investor—among other companies. Records of Richard Jr. mention him only as a "yachtsman"—the Joy family were long time New York Yacht Club members.) • Illustration — Lake Park House Lake Park House Lake Park Rd., Bloomfield Hills (1937) Client: Max M. Gilman Style: Regency, Georgian Keyes designed Lake Park House for Max M. Gilman (President of the Packard Motor Car Company). His "huge house in Bloomfield Hills" represented a departure from the huge baronial houses in Grosse Pointe, such as that of Gilman's long time predecessor Alvan Macauley (whose son Edward also owned a Keyes Grosse Pointe house). Keyes continued his large white brick façade, accented with French shutters, a unique colonnaded copper front portico, and a steep, hipped roof broken up with curved dormers. In the back, copper awnings frame the windows, a two-story windowed vestibule with more columns overlooks the sloping garden, and a lower wing extends to the side (which was later removed when the large estate was subdivided) where an iron-railed patio is concealed above an open garden conservatory. The wooded end of the garden rolls sharply down to an inland lake (Quarton Lake, along the same tributary as Goad House). Hudson House Lothrop Rd., Grosse Pointe Farms (1937) Client: J. Stewart Hudson Style: Regency, Georgian Hudson House is one of several Regency style houses built by Keyes in Grosse Pointe in the thirties containing many Neo-Palladian and Jeffersonian (sometimes labeled as Georgian) architectural details. The broad, imposing red brick mansion has symmetrical wings flanking a central triangular pediment tympanum with circular stone relief, an Ionic-columned stone portico, arched brickwork, and a flat, parapet roof. An iron fence frames a circular drive in the front and intricate gardens and fountains in the back. The interior features arched doorways, a loggia and two-story sweeping staircase. The estate was built for Doctor J. Stewart Hudson. • Illustration — Trix House Trix House Fisher Rd. (formerly E. Jefferson Ave.), Grosse Pointe (1937) Client: Herbert B. Trix Style: Regency, International Designed right after Buhs House, Keyes continued his International/Functionalism Style in Trix House, with a simple flat roof, white brick construction, large windows and rounded walls—though with an increasingly distinctive Regency flair with ornate double-cornices and contrasting French shutters. Its otherwise very cubic volumes are broken up by a curved entranceway that leads to a side garage wing with attached greenhouse. The estate originally had an E. Jefferson avenue address, until the large lot was subdivided and the house used a new facing side road as its address. The house was built for Herbert B. Trix, President of automotive supplier American Injector Company, Director of several banks, one-time mayor of Grosse Pointe, and, at forty, the youngest president in the Detroit Athletic Club's history. • Illustration — Pingree House Pingree House Woodland Pl., Grosse Pointe (1935) Clients: Hazen Pingree family Style: Second Empire Pingree House was built in 1909 (the first house ever built on once heavily wooded Woodland Place on Lake St. Clair—now a suburban cul-de-sac) as the summer home of the Hazen S. Pingree family. (Pingree was a four-term mayor of Detroit and Governor of Michigan.) The original small house was built in a whimsical Dutch Colonial style with gambrel roof and flared eaves, designed by William Stratton (who built a similar gambrel-roofed, "low, one-and-a-half story English farm house" the same year a block away for Frederick M. Alger). In 1935, the Pingrees hired Keyes to design extensive additions to their home (as he had done in 1925 for William Pickett Harris), tripling its original size in order to turn it into a year-round residence. Keyes retained the same brick construction (including in the new carriage house), and created several bow-fronted wings of additions that wrap around the original structure. Keyes blended a new mansard roofline with the original similar gambrel roof, giving the expanded house a more French (Second Empire) style. (Keyes borrows from Robert O. Derrick's 1926 design of nearby Edwin H. Brown House, "striking a note of restrained yet charmingly intimate French Classicism with its Mansard roof.") Pingree House is significant in that it marked the beginning of Keyes's more restrained and increasingly French-influenced Regency style, and it was his first use of the mansard roof that would be a prominent feature in what he considered one of his greatest designs—Woodland. Descendants of the Pingrees lived in the home until 1976. (It is also known as the Parker/Mills House.) • Illustration — The Acorns The Acorns Metamora (1931) Client: Gail Stephens Kinard Style: Log Lodge, Swiss Chalet Gail Stephens (Kinard), a "wealthy Detroit sportswoman" whose father was lumber baron Henry Stephens, hired Keyes to build "a magnificent lodge named 'The Acorns' in the quiescent hills of Metamora, far from the hustle and bustle of the motor city." Described as a "costly Norwegian hunting lodge," "an elaborate rural retreat" and a "palatial country estate," the building is constructed of large logs on the main floor and timber framing with board-and-batten exterior on the upper floor. Ornate murals reference the 19th-century Great Camps and Swiss chalet style of architecture. A massive stone fireplace has an inscription that reads: "They say— What do they say? Who cares what they say?" (Gail Stephens Kinard achieved much notoriety when she reunited with her childhood sweetheart, Dr. Kerwin Kinard, whom she first met as a student in Berlin and hadn't seen for twenty-five years, and suddenly married shortly thereafter—for which she was served a one-million dollar "alienation of affections" suit in 1932 from Dr. Kinard's estranged wife, and was "dropped from Detroit's social register of 1933.") • Illustration — Mennen Hall Mennen Hall Provençal Rd., Grosse Pointe Farms (1929) Clients: Henry P. Williams, Elma C. Mennen Style: Tudor Revival Arched chimney caps dot the roofline of Keyes's stately brick Tudor, Mennen Hall, that sits along a private, guarded road. It was built for (real estate tycoon) Henry P. Williams and his wife Elma C. Mennen (heiress to the Mennen personal grooming products fortune), whose eldest son was G. Mennen "Soapy" Williams (a six-term Governor of Michigan and Chief Justice of the Michigan Supreme Court). • Illustration — Dwyer/Palms House Dwyer/Palms House Lake Shore Rd., Grosse Pointe Farms (1928) Client: Marie Fleitz Dwyer Style: French Normandy Built "in the late 20s, when cost was of little or no consideration," for Marie Fleitz Dwyer, the widowed daughter of a Michigan lumber baron and grain merchant, the French Normandy style house was the first in the area wired for telephones (and, until recently, there was a circuit panel in the garage through which all the neighborhood phones were wired). The house was made from limestone and the roof from slate with a copper flat top, and an intricate stone-carved pediment frames the front door. The house contains "a step-down living room, a sweeping staircase, curved hallways," and numerous fireplaces. (Keyes designed a smaller version of the Dwyer/Palms House the same year on Kenwood Rd. in Grosse Pointe Farms.) The estate's "impeccable grounds" back onto Lake St. Clair, originally with a dock extending over 100 feet into the lake. The house and grounds have been the filming location for several movies. • Illustration — Keane House Keane House Lakeland St., Grosse Pointe (1926) Client: Jerome E. Keane Style: Tudor Revival Built for (investment banker) Jerome E. Keane, Keane House is a large Tudor of red brick and half-timbering. The design included Keyes's first use of a massive wall with slate-roofed pillars surrounding the estate, which matches and is incorporated into the brick façade of the house—an often-repeated motif later in his career. Multiple gables with intricate brick corbelling are a new Keyes motif (that he would use again and again, for example in 1928 in the Stoepel House on Touraine Road in Grosse Pointe Farms and later at Welch House and Woodland on Vaughan Road in Bloomfield Hills). • Illustration — Windmill Pointe Windmill Pointe Windmill Pointe Dr., Grosse Pointe (1925) Client: William Pickett Harris Style: Tudor Revival The "sprawling palace on Windmill Pointe with its groomed grounds, coffered ceilings and limestone arches" was originally designed by New York model farm architect Alfred Hopkins in an extravagant Tudor style for William Pickett Harris (an investment banker, expert on squirrels, and curator of mammals at the Museum of Zoology of the University of Michigan). Just four years after the house's completion, Keyes was hired to double its original size in order to accommodate Harris's growing family —which included his daughter Julie Harris (the stage, screen, and television actress—"the most decorated performer in the history of Broadway"). Keyes incorporated original architectural details, windows and doors into his outward and upward expansion. Among this expansion were additional bedrooms, including a master bedroom on the main floor ("a rare setup for a home built in the 1920s" —and one Keyes would later adopt in many other projects). But of most significance was Keyes's lower level recreation room and wine cellar along with a sunken rock garden. As American Home magazine described its innovative design in 1934: • Illustration — Ridgeland Ridgeland Lewiston Rd., Grosse Pointe (1924) Client: Charles A. Dean Style: Italianate On a sloping ridge surrounded by giant oak trees lies Ridgeland, a rambling country villa in the Italianate style made of tawny bricks (rather than Italian stucco). "Designed by Keyes during the height of the roaring twenties, it provided a dramatic setting for large parties the wealthy Charles Dean (its original owner) was famous for hosting." The house informally sprawls backward asymmetrically down the hillside, folding back on itself so that "the house becomes part of the view from its own windows." With its expansive brick walls, outbuildings, and potting shed, "the house feels like its own enclosed community." (It is thought that a secret underground passageway exists from the main house to the garage.) The variously scaled rooms open up through French doors to slate patios, intimate gardens and stretches of lawn. Ridgeland's Italianate style is Keyes's first significant experiment with Palladianism, synthesized with picturesque aesthetics: low-pitched and hipped tile roofs, stained glass windows, arched doors and ceilings, loggias and balconies with wrought iron railings, a tower, and walls and beams painted with elaborate 14th-century Florentine motifs. (Ridgeland is also known as the Charles A. Dean House.)