William C. Boydell House

The William C. Boydell house is architecturally significant as a fine double house in the Beaux Arts Classical style. It is also historically important as the home of a Detroit industrialist whose firm achieved national prominence in the paint manufacturing industry. At the time he commissioned this house, William C.

Boydell (1849-1902) was the vice president and treasurer of the Boydell Brothers White Lead and Color Company. The firm was founded in 1865 by William's brother John, and grew from a small local manufacturer to a major national producer of prepared paints, oils, and varnishes, with a large market in the Midwest and the East. The firm remained in the Boydell family until 1959 when it was sold to the Wyandotte Paint Products Company of Michigan. The Cass Avenue house was designed for Boydell in 1895 by Almon Clother Varney, a prolific Detroit architect and building contractor.

Varney was best known for his commercial and industrial buildings, including the still extant structures he designed to house the Boydell Paint Company downtown at Beaubien and East Lafayette streets. His domestic structures are more notable as a reflection of his interest in multi-unit and urban housing types than for their architectural qualities. Varney designed one of Detroit's first apartment buildings, the Varney, and experimented with rowhouses, duplexes, and other urban housing types. The Boydell house is an interesting example of a double house designed as a unified composition.

The William C. Boydell house is located about one and three-fourths miles north of downtown Detroit in a mixed-use area of old residences, institutional buildings, and commercial structures. Originally a fine residential section of upper-class houses, the Cass Avenue area today only retains a few remnants of its late nineteenth-century heyday. The Boydell house is a three-story, low-hip-roofed, brick-and-limestone, classically influenced structure designed as a double house.

The only architecturally articulated elevation faces Cass Avenue. The sides and rear of the building are constructed of common brick without architectural enrichment. The design of the facade reflects the fact that the building is actually a double house designed to resemble a large single-family house. Set back from the street behind a narrow, tree-shaded lawn, the facade is fronted by a pair of raised terraces of rock-faced stone with low parapet walls pierced by wrought iron grilles.

The larger terrace, reached by a broad flight of stone steps, extends across the front of the right-hand unit and wraps around the south side of the building. A separate set of stairs angles up to the entrance of the left-hand unit at the northern corner of the building. The fronts of the two units are unified by the banded limestone at the first story, the ochre brick of the upper levels, and the continuous metal modillion cornice and paneled brick frieze at the eaves. Both units are two bays wide with the larger house on the right side having a double door and curving bay window and the other half a single door and large single light window with transom and carved sandstone lintel.

The one-over-one, sash windows on the upper floors are enframed with molded brick surrounds. The interior is divided into two originally separated houses that are now connected by doors through the party wall. This alteration was made in the 1930s when the house was converted to apartments. At this same time, the staircase was removed from the smaller unit.

The larger south unit is the more elaborate of the two houses. Beyond the vestibule with its mosaic tile floor and molded plaster ceiling, the entrance hall is wainscotted in wood paneling to a height of about four feet. The focal point of the hall is the fine dark oak staircase with slender turned balusters and square newels with foliated caps. A built-in bench at the foot of the stairs is a typical period feature.

There are hardwood floors and a carved molded plaster ceiling with a small round medallion at the light fixture. The front parlor to the right of the hall is reached through a pair of six-panel sliding pocket doors. The focal point of this room is the Colonial Revival style oak mantel with free-standing colonnades and mirrored overmantel. There is a plaster cove molding and a plaster ceiling medallion.