Roy D. Chapin House

01 / The story of this place

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Roy D. Chapin, who co-founded the Hudson Motor Car Company and later served as U.S. Secretary of Commerce, commissioned architect John Russell Pope to design a lakefront mansion on Lake Shore Road in Grosse Pointe Farms in the late 1920s. Pope, who would go on to design the Jefferson Memorial in Washington, D.C., gave the Chapins a grand estate with gardens laid out by landscape architect Bryant Fleming, including 600-year-old English yews shipped over for the grounds. Chapin lived there until his death in 1936, and his wife stayed on until she died in 1956. Henry Ford II and his wife Anne then bought the estate and kept it as a residence for decades. In 1983, Ford had the mansion torn down and subdivided the waterfront property into condominiums. The house survives today mainly through architectural photographs in the Library of Congress's Gottscho-Schleisner collection.

1. Designed by John Russell Pope, later architect of the Jefferson Memorial
2. Home of Hudson Motor Car Company co-founder Roy D. Chapin
3. Gardens included 600-year-old English yew trees
4. Later owned by Henry Ford II
5. Demolished in 1983 for condominium development