Famous people's places / Grosse Ile
Pagoda House
An eccentric Japanese-style boathouse mansion Henry Ford built on the Detroit River for his controversial enforcer Harry Bennett, complete with escape tunnels and hidden rooms.
01 / The story of this place
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Henry Ford had this extravagant Japanese-inspired boathouse built on the Detroit River side of Grosse Ile in 1939 for Harry Bennett, the Ford Motor Company personnel director who ran the company's tough internal police force and helped crush early unionization efforts, including the 1937 Battle of the Overpass. Designed with a distinctive pagoda-style roofline, the roughly 10,000-square-foot house included boat slips built directly into the structure, secret passageways, hidden rooms and an escape tunnel that reportedly led across the road to the estate's stables, all reflecting Bennett's wariness of his many enemies inside and outside the company. Bennett lived here through the 1930s and into the 1940s until Henry Ford II forced him out of Ford in 1945, ending his run as one of the most feared men in Detroit industry. The house survives today as a privately owned residence on the Detroit River, still one of Grosse Ile's most striking landmarks.
- Built 1939 by Ford for enforcer Harry Bennett
- Roughly 10,000 square feet, Japanese pagoda-style design
- Includes secret passages and an escape tunnel
- Still standing today as a private home
Famous Detroiters
Famous people tied to this place 1
Lexicon entries for the people who lived, worked, performed or liked to spend time here.
- Harry Bennett 1892–1979 · head of Ford's Service Department, Henry Ford's enforcer
Lived here
The Asian-style boathouse he built on Grosse Ile, one of several eccentric retreats he kept in Michigan.
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Sources & fact check · Checked: 2026-09-25
An independently written bilingual guide. This collection is not an attendance-based ranking.
03 / Events
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