Business & brands / Politics
Matilda Dodge Wilson
1883–1967 · heiress, philanthropist, Lieutenant Governor of Michigan, co-founder of Oakland University
John Dodge's widow, who built Meadow Brook Hall and Music Hall, became Michigan's first woman lieutenant governor and gave her estate to found Oakland University.
- Born
Walkerton, Ontario, Canada- Died
aged 83- Birth name
- Matilda Rausch
- Also known as
- Matilda Dodge
- Detroit years
- 1900s–1967
- Field
- Business & brands, Politics
01 / The Detroit story
The Detroit story
Matilda Rausch, the daughter of German immigrants from Ontario, worked as a secretary at the Dodge Brothers company and married John Dodge in 1907. After his death in 1920 she inherited a large share of the Dodge fortune, and in 1925 she and Anna Dodge sold the company for $146 million. With her second husband, lumberman Alfred Wilson, she built the 110-room Tudor Revival Meadow Brook Hall near Rochester (1926–1929), and she financed the Wilson Theatre in downtown Detroit, opened in 1928 and today the Music Hall Center for the Performing Arts. In November 1940 Governor Luren Dickinson appointed her lieutenant governor, making her the first woman in the country to hold such a post, though the appointment was legally disputed. In 1957 the Wilsons gave their 1,400-acre estate and $2 million to Michigan State University to found a branch campus, which became Oakland University. She rests in the Wilson mausoleum at Woodlawn Cemetery.
Highlights
- Built Meadow Brook Hall, 1926–1929
- Built the Wilson Theatre (now Music Hall), 1928
- Appointed Lieutenant Governor of Michigan in 1940
- Gave her estate in 1957 to found what became Oakland University
02 / Their Detroit places
Their Detroit places 4
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 · 1929–1953
Meadow Brook Hall
Her 88,000-square-foot Tudor Revival mansion, now a house museum on the Oakland University campus.
Founded · 1928
orsa Music Hall (Music Hall Center for the Performing Arts)
The 1,731-seat theater she built as the Wilson Theatre; later home of the DSO (1946) and still a working venue.
Founded · 1957–1967
Oakland University
The university founded on her donated Meadow Brook estate, originally as Michigan State University–Oakland.
Buried here · 1967
Woodlawn Cemetery (Wilson mausoleum)
The pale granite Art Deco mausoleum the Wilsons built in 1939.