Detroit Classic | Ep 5: The Whitney Mansion

[Music] my family wasn't into restaurants and we've never had a dream of owning a restaurant or anything like that but it was the Whitney it was on Woodward in Detroit on the corner of Woodward again field and the opportunity to have the downtown office in a historic structure that's been sitting alongside Woodward for 125 years was really appealing to us [Music] though this was kind of suburban Detroit back then and there were you know from brush Park on out there was just fabulous homes that lined the streets and unfortunately we've lost a lot of those homes and one of our motivations for coming here was to preserve and protect this one as an example of those homes that were part Detroit's history good morning my name is Jim and I'll be doing the tour today my name is Jim Moriarty I'm also known as the professor and I do with the tours at the Whitney mansion I think that the Whitney's reputation is well known it provides really good food services phenomenal it's always offered upscale American cuisine composed plates fish steaks seafood there's some sometimes you have to kind of create a concept and there sometimes you have to realize that you don't need to out think what's already there and this was one of those times I was sort of like let it be what it is and then delight your your customers with great cuisine and consistency and an excellent service but still paying homage to the authenticity of this base and the authenticity the restaurant and the fact that it has been standing along Woodward for a hundred and twenty-five years and that's what we wanted to celebrate [Music] this house was built by david whitney jr. he was a man who believed in hard work he believed in direct communication he was totally honest when mr. Whitney was of age he began working in the lumber industry on the East Coast where he worked his way up through the company and then aged 27 he moved to in Detroit and he ultimately bought a lot of timberlands in Michigan but also in several states in the Midwest and mostly white pine his business was about blind lanes harvesting the trees and then either some logs or selling lumber mr. Whitney realized that for him to grow his company to the size that he wanted it to grow that he was going to need to be able to deliver a product along the entire Great Lakes system so he started a steam barge system to be able to do this and when he wasn't delivering his products he was delivering iron ore mostly and that came from Lake Superior moving forward to 1871 we had the great fire in Chicago and three point three square miles burned to the ground that part of Chicago at the time was mostly wood so from 1872 to 1880 the city of Chicago rebuilt with wood at that point in time mr. Whitney was the the low-cost provider of lumber to rebuild Chicago he was reasonably wealthy before he moved to Michigan then with the period of time of eight years to rebuild Chicago his wealth greatly increased and by the time he died in 1900 he was the wealthiest man in Detroit and fourth a fifth wealthiest man in the state of Michigan I don't think he was flamboyant or ostentatious on the other hand he built this house to be the most opulent house in Detroit at that point in time this part of Detroit was mostly farmland downtown Detroit was the center of business it was congested it was crowded some of the people who could afford to live up and this part of what would happen who did so this was considered to be way out of downtown he had all the assets he would need to build a home first of all he was wealthy second of all he had the ships to move his own lumber he had the crews who knew how to shape wood he used all the finest materials to build this house and he over built it and over engineered it in every way I mean it's 120 years later and we still find things that are like wow I can't believe that he did this for instance hardwood floors are often like a quarter as a wood thick and we have hardwood floors in the house that are like two and a half inches of wood thick the concrete in the driveway is usually a couple inches it was you know 14 inches thick here you know so he really over engineered it and that's that's because he could and there's all kinds of great stories about how he built the house Gordon Lloyd was the primary architect of the house he designed it in the Romanesque style which is kind of the the heaviness and and the pillars and some of the other features that you'll see on the exterior of the house it also combined Victorian elements representative of the time it was built and I think it was bigger and grandeur than most of the houses of the time the house was completed in 1894 as built is 21,000 square feet had 52 rooms 218 windows 20 fireplaces and 10 bathrooms mr. Whitney spent about four hundred thousand dollars to build the house it would be about ten and a half million dollars today the family moved into the house in 1894 along with a staff of about 20 people they David Whitney passed in 1900 this part of Woodward Avenue had changed his character Detroit had expanded and moved northward of Woodward Avenue so now it was crowded and congested the estate allowed Wayne County Medical Society to use this house on a no charge basis as office space the Medical Society sold the property to the visiting nurses the visiting nurses continued to use it until 1979 1980 and a man named Richard who bought the property and decided to convert it into a restaurant when he bought it most of the home was covered with drop ceilings and drywall it had the unattended consequence of protecting all the wood and protecting all the trims so when Richard Kuhn came in and bought the house he knew enough of the history to expect that there was detail and kind of ornate woodwork behind all these drop ceilings and of course as he started taking down some of those features he saw all the details and he did a lot of preservation work he had to treat uh call the stones at a cost of a couple million dollars Richard Kuhn continued to own the restaurant until in 2007 at that point in time mr. Leibler bought the entire property and is the current owner of the Whitney there's all types of different wood throughout this house David Whitney was a lumber baron so wood was his business and his passion with several floors in here that have three or four different inlaid woods of different colors to create different designs and the floors are fabulous and unfortunately unfortunately as a restaurant and as a commercial business so you can't really leave the floors exposed but we try and maintain them underneath the carpet the house was built with a number of very specialized architectural features you'll even see David Whitney's DW initials on the exterior of the house kind of carved into the granite so he certainly left his mark both figuratively and literally on the house I think he wanted to build a house that would be here after him so here we are a hundred and twenty years later in mr. Whitney's house talking about mr. living [Music] you know at that time people referred to Detroit as a Paris at the West there's a lot of wealth here and you know what when we talk about the wealth in the city of Detroit we often relate that to the auto industry but the truth is long before the auto industry came there was raw materials carriages there's a lot of industry here that was making Detroit a very wealthy City went back to the 1850s so when the Gilded Age came up and people really wanted to express themselves in architecture art and all those other kind of things Detroit collected a ton of assets both the internal and external walls of the house I've made a brick and the beams in the house are made of iron when you came into the building when you saw the outside you notice that it's made of stone and that stone is actually jasper quartzite is a naturally occurring material that is extremely hard the people would shape the stones when they actually got here in the corner Woodward and Canfield and because the stone was so hard the tools would dull very quickly and so the workers were having to continually sharpen and get new tools so he built a blacksmith shop on the premises I mean this was a serious production this was the first private home in Detroit to have an elevator and it was put in the house during the construction of the house I'm very happy to tell you that today that it's not the original elevator car so you should be very comfortable using it when this house was built one of David Whitney's contemporaries was Thomas Edison and he was operating in Detroit because electric lighting was so new David Whitney wanted to have it and try it out in his house but he also wasn't sure it was gonna work so he had just his bet by having kind of both lighting systems the house was built between 1890 and 1894 so in 1893 it was electrified there's four electrical fixtures in the house that are original and the rest of the fixtures are replacements as they changed the the system in the house of course the anomic time there's no there's no public pile in in the house you know each tour is different and each tour you try to customize it for the people or in that particular tour and my objective is really to enhance their experience to make it more than just having dinner in this beautiful restaurant is none of the furniture in the house richard kuhn went to New York City in 1985 timeframe with a man named Ron Fox and they went to New York to buy period-correct antiques for the house for example the large chandeliers that you saw and when you enter the house those came from the New York trip well what's interesting about the door--and and this is true of all the doors in the house that if you look at the way it's decorated on this side and then look at the way it's decorated on this side you can see that sides are decorated differently when the door is closed the decoration on that side matches the rest of the decoration in the room the windows at least many of the primary stained glass windows were done by Louis Comfort Tiffany who was one of the Tiffany brothers who later became Tiffany's you know in a big deal at that time he was just a dude who was really good with stained glass he did a bit stained glass in the music room in mrs. Whitney sitting room next to us and on the staircases he didn't do his whole repertoire there's a couple of very unique pieces that we have here the one and mrs. Whitney's sitting room is floral and Tiffany hadn't done many floral pieces stained glass and then on our staircase is a swordsman and he had only ever done two swordsmen one was here and one was at the University of Houston and those are kind of portfolio pieces of his and very unique and very different from most of his work in stained glass so you know we're proud to have those pieces here that grand hallway when you walk in the house it's a moment that kind of says it all you sort of walk in and say wow okay this place is is for real this is the grand ballroom or the Grand Hall in the house if we look at the floor we can see that the floor is made out of English tile it's a mosaic done in the Flemish pattern now you want to remember that at this period of time that each and every one of these tiles had to be laid in cement it's an original floor made here in Detroit and pieced together on site the floor itself took about two-and-a-half to three years to be made when you look at the fireplace the color of the brick is Pompilius which is a reddish orange and that's the color you would have found in Pompeii in the large houses prior to Mount Vesuvius erupted a clock that's in the center that's an original 24-hour clock which means it has to be wound every day the lights on the left and right hand side those lights are original and they were installed by Thomas Edison himself on this floor all of these large rooms have these large pocket doors and what there were four was so in the wintertime when we're trying to heat the house these doors would be closed to isolate the big windows and so hopefully they could better heat the core of the house the house itself had a state-of-the-art heating system we don't use a steam heat anymore I mean now we have a very complex heating and cooling system because you can't run invasive ductwork through walls like this you know it'd be nice to think that you could have central heating and central air-conditioning and flip one switch and have it go but that's not how we do it nor how many historic buildings like this do do it if we were coming to the Whitney's house and we're gonna have dinner the butler would bring us into this room which was the receiving room and the receiving room mr. and mrs. Whitney received each and every individual each and every couple the fireplace surround is white onyx and if we were able to pull up the carpet that we have here today you would find a floor that was made of bird's-eye maple and mahogany the mahogany comes from Honduras he was sourcing material around the world as he was building this house if you look at the room the style of this room is the Empire style you can see that on the ceiling and on the walls that we have the detail painted out in a monochromatic white when the Whitney's were here it was done with an ivory color with gold relief the drawing room is where the rest of the guests would be for the evening and you would mix with them you have cocktails and wait until the butler announced that dinner was ready [Music] so the butler has announced that dinner is ready and so we've moved to the formal dining room and the formal dining room the first thing to look at is the beautiful chandelier that chandelier is an original Tiffany chandelier and then when you look at the ceiling and we can see the beautiful mahogany ceiling and all these circles that are in the ceiling are just absolutely perfect the scenes that you see inside the geometric shape those scenes are hand painted on canvas the rest of the wainscoting in this room is also mahogany as is the built-in sideboard the tapestries that you see on the far end of the room those tapestries are original the third tapestry on the left it's actually mounted on a door and behind the door is a steel safe and it's they're both as a safe room for his family as well as for his valuables in 1890s it was before banks were insured federally and so a lot of very wealthy people would have some of their wealth stored in their home when you see these older homes that have a large lock and safe it's usually in the center of the house and the architectural support beams of the house actually lay across and beside it so theoretically if you were to try and blast a safe out of the house the house will collapse inward onto you and you couldn't separate it out because it's part of the actual structure [Music] here we have the fireplace in the dining room the marble surround it's called no Billiam and it's from africa and you can see all the great detail that is on the mantel here [Music] so here we are in the library we have the fireplace and you can see that it has a beautiful blue surround the tile is Delft tile it comes from Holland it's heated to about 1900 degrees to give it the sheen on the surface and also the deep blue colors that you can see in those days a lot of socializing and recreation would be gathered around the piano so a lot of that occurred in the music room and if you look in the music room where the large buffet is that was originally a custom grand piano because mr. Whitney wanted the wood in the grand piano to work with the wood in the music room above the grand piano you'll find four stained-glass windows those are Tiffany windows the one on the left is st. Cecilia playing a pipe organ the third one over is Apollo playing his Lear and then we have the second and the fourth windows which are cherubs come down into the room from the ceiling on the ceiling it's hand-painted and it's painted on silk as if you were going to be nun silk you'd always back it with paper and in those days the highest quality paper was always used for music scrolls and so if you peel that down and you look at the paper behind it you'll find that it's actually the old musics girls because that's the thickest best paper that you could get in those days the long carving that you see across the two poles that's done out of maple and it was done out of one piece of wood you can see how intricate it is and it's amazing to think that all of us was done by hand there were no computer-aided drawings and it's a beautiful piece of work [Music] and now we're going to look at the night and the centerpiece in that beautiful Tiffany window and the night is there to protect the lineage of the Whitney family his beard and his face and his left hand is very detailed and that's because that is actually painted glass not stained glass louis Comfort Tiffany he started out as a painter so for him that would not have been a difficult transition in terms of painting on the glass [Music] so this is the second floor of the house and was reasonably typical for houses of this period the ballroom was on the second floor and this is the main bedroom floor for their family mr. Whitney used this house for business purposes he did a lot of business entertaining and when they had a large event they used the ballroom by this time 1895 1896 mr. Whitney had the largest Lumber Company in the United States he was doing a great deal of shipping on the Great Lakes he owned more land in Detroit than the next four people combined the room to the right is mr. Whitney's bedroom it was reasonably typical in that period of time mr. and mrs. Whitney slept in separate bedrooms this is mr. Whitney's bedroom and most people when they see the size of the bedroom and how plain it is a rather surprised you'll notice that the windows are relatively plain the cornice work is simple and the fireplace is relatively small but mr. Whitney was quoted as having said that in fact he could live in a log cabin and so this room represents I think mr. Whitney as the person the ornateness of the house was mr. Whitney as the businessman mrs. Whitney on the other hand apparently never said that she would like to live in a log cabin so let's go down and look at her bedrooms so this is mrs. Whitney's bedroom and I think we can see it's quite a bit larger and nicer the windows are a beautiful big windows they look out on onto Woodward Avenue the cornice work is it's very nice it's very clean and I think her fireplace is large enough now to be elegant on the left side of the fireplace behind where the white flowers are is a door and that door went out to a balcony I would imagine that she would be out in the balcony in the morning having her tea and crumpets now let's go into her sitting room in some ways it was the counter to his office she could come in here she could relax she could you know if she sold her net she could do that she could read you know and so a sitting room was a place for the woman of the house to get away you can see her to the left we have French doors that goes out into that same small balcony that we talked about in her bedroom above the French doors as a Tiffany stained-glass window and notice in the lower right hand corner of that window that there's these nice red flowers you don't see red in stained glass too often outside of a church because to make the color red you mixed a glass with gold the fireplace that we have here the mantel and the surround is all original this marble comes from Africa the ceiling is very nice and very decorative the cornice work is bold and elegant and the chandelier that you see hanging there that is a reproduction next we want to talk about the Tiffany stained-glass windows that we see here on the landing that those when their windows are original they would have been made in New York City at his gallery and then shipped down here to Detroit and these Windows you depicts bringing nature and music up through the house you can see that there are large vines on the lower window and they've the vines come up and they go through the rosette and then down on the lower part of the window you can see shapes that look like musical clubs and then these three windows come up to the top window where you see in the center I heart surrounded by a vine and then supported by musical clubs this railing starts on the first floor and goes up here to the art gallery and what you see in the railing is you see this shape of a musical clef you have the shape of a bass clef here a rosette down here and a branch of a vine here we have the railing bringing the music and nature up through the house up to the Art Gallery and being able to combine all the passions of their life the large room on this level which we call the ghost bar was originally his art gallery so the bar course was not here until about 1985 so in Richard Kuhn was traveling in Italy and he saw the top of the bar that has the bust that that piece is from Tuscany it's circa 1880 so it's period-correct for the house and the bust on the top is that of Caesar Augustus the lower part of the bar was made by a man in epsilon e now we have a bar that has michigan on the bottom and we have italy on the top if you look at the ceiling you will see that there is white glass originally that glass was clear and behind the glass was indirect lighting for the gallery and we have these two sets of boxes that are leather material the lower box you can see is a face and it's a face of the muse in fact there are four different faces there there's three men there's one that is of a woman which is a little bit strange because usually muses are women and not men this from therefore in a guest bedroom the room on the other side was also and then the small room was the absence throne aware they drank the adult beverage of the day what we encourage people to do here at the Whitney is arrive early go up to our ghost bar have a cocktail be in that space mingle with your friends then you can go down the first floor enjoy your meal have great service great food and when your meals done you can come up to the dessert parlor have dessert coffee or cordial at the end of the night and now you've still had a meal with your group but you've been in kind of three different spots and you've changed your energy and location and you've gotten to move around and sit next to different people and you've got them fresh linens and tablecloths and glasses and everything else we made a commitment to this building in part because we wanted to preserve a piece of Detroit's legacy and protect it but it's so rewarding so nice to see now how much is being saved and how much is being renovated and most of the development activity both in Midtown Detroit and New Center most of it is historic renovation right now I think it's great that we're starting with historic preservation and saving the assets that we already had because Detroit was a fabulous city is a fabulous city and will be an even better city in the future I hope and so it's just really exciting for us to be part of that [Music]

Channel: City of Detroit

Views: 403,552

Keywords: The Whitney, Detroit, Restaurant, Historical Detroit, MI, Downtown, Dinner, Lunch, Breakfast, David Whitney Jr, Whitney Mansion

Id: zDFcIHtc3Us

Length: 26min 32sec (1592 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 05 2017