Romanesque Revival Detroit Home Brims With Jaw-Dropping Details

Listed in the National Register of Historic Places, Detroit’s Indian Village is a neighborhood of approximately 350 residences constructed between 1895 and the late 1920s. Encompassing a wide range of architectural styles — Craftsman, Georgian, Federal, Tudor, et cetera — the district’s baronial mansions were designed for some of the city’s wealthiest citizens by a who’s who of the city’s most prominent architects, including Albert Kahn, William Buck Stratton, and Louis Kamper.

The Bavarian-born architect of downtown Detroit’s Book-Cadillac Hotel and Book Tower, Kamper produced a number of homes in Indian Village, including this resplendent Romanesque Revival now on the market. Built for hotelier Austin Elbert Morey, the 1906 mansion contains seven bedrooms, four full bathrooms, and three half-baths within its 7,000-plus square feet. The property also comes with a carriage house featuring an 1,800-square-foot apartment over garaging for five cars.

While the home presents a rather subdued façade to the outside world, a sensory overload awaits on the other side of its beveled-glass front door. Among a cavalcade of jaw-dropping Gilded Age features are intricately carved woodwork, a spectacular curved staircase, hand-painted murals, marble mosaics, stained glass panels, a butler’s pantry with deluxe burled-walnut cabinetry, and multiple fireplaces with Pewabic tile surrounds. There’s also a show-stopping, Versailles-worthy music room with oxeye windows and a 20-foot-high, domed ceiling embellished with hand-painted murals.

As for exterior amenities, along with the carriage house and an arched porte-cochere, the verdant .39-acre grounds are graced with a fish pond and a variety of majestic shade trees.

Last sold in 2011 for a mere $240,000, the pedigreed property is now asking $1.2 million. Kenan Bakirci of Keller Williams Metro holds the listing.