Brinkerhoff-Becker House

Constructed probably between 1863 and 1869 and remodeled to its present appearance about 1891, the Brinkerhoff-Beeker House is a two-story, clapboarded, Queen Anne structure with a hip roof and shingled, front and side gables. Because of its helmet-dome, oriental, corner tower--unique in the Ypsilanti-Ann Arbor area, and perhaps in all of Michigan--this elaborately detailed structure is significant as a key visual and architectural landmark in the City of Ypsilanti.

Occupying a street-corner site near the Eastern Michigan University campus in the northwest section of Ypsilanti's nineteenth and early twentieth-century, central core, the Brinkerhoff-Beeker House is a square, two-and-one-half-story, frame structure with Queen Anne-style, gable, porch, and doorway trim. The house's most prominent feature is a round, helmet-dome tower which, clad in brick below and patterned shingling above, stands at the street-corner angle of the house. The structure has recently been restored on the exterior and rehabilitated in the interior for apartment use. Resting on a fieldstone foundation, the house is a two-and-one-half-story, clapboarded, Queen Anne structure with a hip roof and prominent, shingled, front, side and rear gables. The four gables all display sunburst-pattern gable ornaments and paneled vergeboards, while the porches which front the north and east entrances have turned posts and valance-like, spindlework bands across the tops of the openings. Back of the square, north porch, the front entrance consists of six-panel, bullseye-decorated, double doors--each containing a large, square light of glass fringed along its upper and outer edge by a row of smaller lights. The house is painted gray with white, red, and green trim. The structure's most unusual feature is its helmet-domed--or, as it is termed locally, 'Byzantine'--round, corner tower facing the Forest-Perrin intersection. Said to have been constructed as an addition, the tower has a red-painted, brick lower story, white-painted upper story clad in cove-butt shingling, and roof clad in octagon-butt, wood shingling and tinted a dark, forest green. Unoccupied in recent years, the house suffered considerably from neglect. However, the exterior retains all of its original detailing and has been restored in the last two years. The interior, too, retains much of its original floor plan and simply detailed wood trim. However, replacement of all the plastering, necessitated by water damage and vandalism, and some alterations in the arrangement of rooms have recently been carried out as part of a general rehabilitation of the property for apartment use. The house's interior is arranged about a broad, central hall (back of the main, north entrance) containing the simple, Late Victorian staircase. In the first floor, parlors flank the hall at the structure's northeast and northwest corners. The northeast one contains the rounded, alcove-projection of the tower base and also, at its southwest corner, the house's only fireplace and mantelpiece, ranged diagonally across the room's corner. The more simple northwest parlor will be remodeled into a bedroom and bathroom. A small room in the house's southeast corner, whose original use is no longer known, is to become a kitchen. To its west, in the structure's south-central section, is a bay-window-fronted dining room. The original kitchen, at the southwest corner, and a one-story, pantry addition to its rear, are to be converted into bedrooms. The second-floor plan is similar to that of the first. This story contains the upper stairhall, two bedrooms to its west (separated by a bathroom), a living room at the northeast corner (containing the tower alcove), and, behind the living room and hall, another kitchen and living-dining room. Reached by a staircase located directly above the main staircase, the attic space contained a broad and long stair hall extending through the building and, flanking it on either side, a large, partly finished room. In the renovation, the stair hall space will be somewhat narrowed and the rooms partitioned for bedroom, bathroom, and closet space.