Grand Delusions

In the 1920s, grand houses were a dime-a-dozen.

Well, not quite, but there were several. Henry Ford built Fairlane, his residence in Dearborn. The house, a cross between Frank Lloyd Wright’s prairie style and Romanesque, is a modest 33,000 square feet on 1300 acres. Alfred Wilson and Matilda Dodge Wilson, the widow of auto pioneer John Dodge, built the Tudor style Meadowbrook Hall on 1400 acres in what is now Rochester Hills. At 88,000 square feet, it is the fourth largest private residence in America, dwarfing the White House. Horace, John’s brother built an even more grand house, Rose Terrace, in Grosse Pointe.

Edsel Ford, Henry’s son, along with his wife Eleanor, also built a house in Grosse Pointe along Lake St. Clair. At 20,000 square feet on 87 acres, it is more modest than many of its contemporaries. Being a second generation auto magnate, I suppose he had less to prove. The house, built in English Cotswold style, was furnished by gutting half the castles in England. It was furnished with first-class artwork, including works by Cézanne and a Renoir. It is also more human-scale. It is a house I could see myself living in. 

Fat chance.

These houses were all built out a little from the industrial hub of the city. A generation earlier, their predecessors were built in the Boston-Edison District, within walking distance of the old Chrysler complex in Highland Park, and not far from the original Ford plant on Woodward. I guess they figured that with their new automobiles, they didn’t need to walk to work anymore.

These extravagant excrescences are not out of line with the actions of their predecessors. The men that turned America into an industrial powerhouse after the Civil War – the Vanderbilts, Rockefellers, Carnegies and DuPonts – did the same thing. The ultimate tier of grandeur, populated with Biltmore (Vanderbilt), Winterthur (DuPont), and Oheka Castle (Kahn, a New York financier) reflect a similar need to reflect their owner’s status as gold medal winners in the American Dream competition.

In my stories, the dela Mothes, heirs of Antoine dela Mothe Cadillac, have similar pretensions. The family owns five square miles along the northern boundary of (fictional) Paris, Michigan, where they have built chateaux to rival the finest homes in the country.

While Antoine’s estate fits into the classical mold of the real homes above, his brother Charles’ 150,000 square foot house, sheathed in polished black granite, conveys his sinister pact with the devil. A fresco depicting an industrial scene in the ceiling of the dining room is reminiscent of Dante’s Inferno. You get the picture.

Some other characters, including the Firenze family, live in palatial digs on a lesser scale, but the imagery is a new social class well beyond humble working-class Frank Healy’s imagination.

Those people have it made and you, I and Frank should know our places: nowhere near the head of the table. Maybe in the scullery. 

Grab an apron and get to work.