Business & brands / Visual art
Charles Lang Freer
1854–1919 · railcar manufacturer, art collector, founder of the Freer Gallery
Detroit railcar industrialist whose Asian and Whistler collection, once housed in his Ferry Avenue home, became the Smithsonian's Freer Gallery of Art.
- Born
Kingston, New York- Died
New York City, New York
aged 65- Detroit years
- 1880–1919
- Field
- Business & brands, Visual art
01 / The Detroit story
The Detroit story
Freer left school to work as a clerk in Kingston, New York, where railroad manager Frank Hecker hired him. The two moved to Detroit around 1880 and, backed by investors including James McMillan and Russell Alger, founded the Peninsular Car Company in 1885. After its 1892 merger with the Michigan Car Company, the combined firm was Michigan's largest manufacturer, and Freer retired rich in his mid-forties. He began collecting art in the 1880s, befriended James McNeill Whistler and built one of the finest collections of Whistler and of Chinese and Japanese art in the country. His shingle-style house at 71 East Ferry Avenue, finished in 1892, held the collection, and in 1904 he installed Whistler's Peacock Room in a gallery there. In 1906 he gave his collection to the Smithsonian and paid for the Freer Gallery in Washington, which opened in 1923, after his death. His Detroit house is now part of Wayne State University.
Highlights
- Co-founded the Peninsular Car Company in Detroit in 1885
- Leading collector of Whistler and East Asian art
- Installed Whistler's Peacock Room in his Detroit home in 1904
- Gave his collection to the Smithsonian (Freer Gallery of Art)
02 / Their Detroit places
Their Detroit places 1
Where they lived, worked, performed and liked to hang out. Closed and demolished places stay here too, because they are part of the city's history.
Lived here · 1892–1919
Charles Lang Freer House
His Ferry Avenue home, where the Peacock Room was once installed; now Wayne State's Merrill Palmer Skillman Institute, with occasional public tours.