Rose Terrace

01 / The story of this place

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Rose Terrace was the name of two successive mansions on the same lakefront property on Lake Shore Road in Grosse Pointe Farms, home to the family of automaker Horace E. Dodge. The first, a red sandstone house designed by Albert Kahn, was built in 1912 for Horace and his wife Anna Thompson Dodge, its gardens terraced down to Lake St. Clair and planted thick with the roses that gave the estate its name. After Horace died in 1920, Anna, who later remarried actor Hugh Dillman, had the original house razed and replaced it with a far larger Rose Terrace, designed by Philadelphia architect Horace Trumbauer and completed in 1934 at a cost of roughly four million dollars. Anna Dodge lived there until her death in 1970 at age 100. The house was named a Michigan State Historic Site and listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1971, but no buyer could be found willing to maintain a mansion of its size, and despite preservation efforts it was demolished in the summer of 1976, after which the property was subdivided.

1. First Rose Terrace built in 1912, designed by Albert Kahn
2. Second, larger Rose Terrace completed in 1934 for roughly four million dollars
3. Home of automaker Horace Dodge and his wife Anna Thompson Dodge
4. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1971, then demolished in 1976