Frederick K. Stearns House (Red Gables)

01 / The story of this place

Make time for these

Frederick K. Stearns, heir to the Frederick Stearns & Company pharmaceutical fortune, commissioned architects Stratton & Baldwin to build this half-timbered English Tudor house on East Jefferson Avenue in 1902. Its steep gabled roofline and dark trim earned it the nickname Red Gables, and Stearns filled it with the same taste for craftsmanship he brought to his massive collections of musical instruments and Asian art, much of which he later gave to the Detroit Institute of Arts. He lived there through the 1900s and 1920s before the house passed out of the family's hands. The mansion was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1985 as one of the finest Tudor Revival houses on the old Jefferson Avenue mansion row, most of which is long gone. After decades of decline, new owners spent four years restoring it and reopened the building in 2022 as the Frederick Stearns House, a small inn with a speakeasy-style bar downstairs.

1. Built in 1902 for pharmaceutical heir Frederick K. Stearns
2. Nicknamed Red Gables for its steep, dark Tudor roofline
3. Stearns donated much of his art and instrument collection to the DIA
4. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1985
5. Restored and reopened as a boutique inn in 2022