Baker, Henry W., House

The Henry W. Baker House is architecturally significant as a well-preserved example of Italianate domestic architecture and historically significant as the home of a prominent local businessman whose company achieved national prominence in the late-nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The Baker House is one of the more fanciful Italianate style dwellings in the region. Probably based upon a pattern book illustration, the house became a local landmark after it was constructed because of the extraordinary pagoda-like tower which topped the gable. This feature, which was removed after 1943, is to be rebuilt by the present owner as part of his meticulous restoration of the structure. Other than the removal of the tower and a chimney stack, the house retains all of its elaborate exterior trim. Henry W. Baker (1833-1920) was the son of an upstate New York farmer and his wife who emigrated to Michigan and settled on a farm near Plymouth in 1842. Trained as a photographer, Baker established a photography studio with his cousin in Ypsilanti where he worked during the Civil War. Upon returning to Plymouth in 1866, he became a successful merchant. Eight years later he went to work in the lumber industry. In 1882 he founded the Plymouth Iron Windmill Company. Sales were slow, and in 1888 the company began to manufacture metal air rifles to offer as a free gift to farmers who purchased one of their windmills. The guns were more popular than the windmills, and in 1890 the company began to manufacture the Daisy Air Rifle as their principal product. By 1895 the company was renamed the Daisy Manufacturing Company. The company grew steadily and after Chairman of the Board, Baker's death in 1920, his nephew Charles Bennett guided the firm as it grew into a major concern manufacturing 90 percent of the world's B-B guns from its Plymouth plant. After Bennett's death in 1956, the firm was sold to Clint Murchison Dallas, a Texas oil millionaire, who moved the business to a new facility in Rogers, Arkansas where it continues in business as a major producer of air rifles. In 1875, upon his entrance into the lumber industry, Baker built the house on Main Street where he was to live with his wife and sister Anna until his death in 1920.

The Henry W. Baker House is located about two blocks north of downtown Plymouth on one of the town's principal thoroughfares. The surrounding area was once one of the town's finest residential areas built-up with fine houses constructed between 1860 and 1920 sited back from the street on large, well-landscaped lots. Today all of the houses have been converted to commercial or office use. The Baker house is a brick, two-story, mansard-roofed house of fanciful Italianate design with cut stone foundations. It is asymmetrical and consists of a rectangular two-story front section articulated with bay windows, porches, and gables with a one-and-a-half-story, mansard-roofed kitchen wing extending to the rear. Various structures have been adjoined to the back of the kitchen wing including an old board-and-batten carriage shed and a two-stall, flat-roofed, concrete block garage. A clapboarded stair enclosure is cantilevered from the second floor of the kitchen wing over the roof of the carriage shed. The facade of the house and the south elevation are the most elaborately articulated. The two-bay, sidehall plan facade contains a double-door entrance sheltered by a small porch with chamfered, incised posts and an elaborate modillion cornice. The segmentally-arched door head is enframed by a brick hood mould. Over the porch at the second floor level is an attenuated window with a wide panelled surround terminating in a gabled pediment that breaks through the bracketed eaves cornice of the house and extends into the mansard roof. Balancing the door and pedimented window on the facade is a canted, wooden, bay window with a modillion cornice surmounted by a paired window with a wide surround terminating in a boldly-profiled bracketed cap. Above this window, a tall flaring gable carries the brick walls above the mansard roof to a small, flat deck, which originally supported an elaborate, wooden, two-tier, pagoda-like tower. In the center of the gable, which is outlined by lacy, pierced bargeboards, is an ocular window with a keystone-enriched surround. The south elevation contains a sideporch, originally similar to the front porch, but now enclosed with glazing, which abuts a canted, two-story, brick bay window. The windows on the first floor have bracketed caps while the second-story window is treated in the same manner as the window over the front porch, with a pediment that breaks through the eaves cornice into the mansard roof. The low, mansard roof of the kitchen wing is broken by an ocular dormer with a broad metal surround made to resemble rusticated masonry. The interior of the Baker House is divided into four rooms on each of the first and second floors with the attic unfinished. The only architecturally enriched spaces remaining in their original state are the front and rear parlors, stair hall and bedrooms.