Ford-Bacon House

The Ford-Bacon House is historically significant both as the residence of members of one of Wyandotte's most important industrialist families and as an example of late Victorian Queen Anne architecture designed by the prominent Detroit firm of Malcomson and Higginbotham. It was built as a home by Edward Ford, then president of the J. B. Ford Company and the Michigan Alkali Company, in 1897, and occupied by his daughter Mary and her husband, Mark Reeves Bacon, from 1902 until 1942 when Mary Bacon and her sons deeded it to the Wyandotte Public Schools to be used as the public library. In 1994, the public library separated from the schools and is now the Bacon Memorial District Library.

Wyandotte is the second oldest incorporated city in Wayne County, Michigan, after Detroit, and has been important for its industry throughout its history. J. B. Ford was a pioneer industrialist who introduced plate glass manufacture in America at the Star Glass Company in New Albany, Indiana, in 1881. From there he built the Pittsburg Plate Glass Company in Creighton, Pennsylvania. In his 80's he and his son Edward came to Wyandotte, Michigan, where, after the demise of the Eureka Iron and Steel Company in 1892, they rescued Wyandotte from financial ruin when they founded the Michigan Alkali Company to mine salt to make soda ash for their plate glass factories. Soon 800 men were employed at Michigan Alkali and the J. B. Ford Company, which produced cleaning products (such as Wyandotte Cleanser) made from the soda ash. These two companies merged as Wyandotte Chemicals Corporation in 1942 and Wyandotte Chemicals was purchased by BASF in 1970 and is still the major manufacturer in Wyandotte after 100 years. Edward Ford also established the Edward Ford Plate Glass Works near Toledo, Ohio, which is now Libby-Owens-Ford Glass.

Edward Ford built two beautiful homes across from each other on the main street, Biddle Avenue, both suitable residences for the most prominent family in the town. He moved into the home on the river side of Biddle and gave the other one to his daughter Laura and her husband George MacNichol as a wedding present. When Edward moved to Toledo in 1898 to run the Ford Plate Glass Works, his son John B. Ford both took over management of the Wyandotte companies and moved briefly into the Bacon House. Then, in 1902, Edward Ford gave the Wyandotte home to his daughter Mary and her husband, Mark Reeves Bacon. Mark Bacon was an attorney, one of the officers of the Michigan Alkali Company, and briefly served as a U.S. Congressman in 1917, before a recount unseated him. He is noted for voting against the entry of the United States into the First World War. The Bacon family occupied the home until 1941 when Mark died, although they spent most winters in Pasadena, California. In 1942, Mary Bacon decided to move permanently to California, and she and her sons, John and Milton, deeded the Ford-Bacon House to the School District of Wyandotte to be used as the public library.

The Ford-Bacon House is an excellent example of Queen Anne architecture, a late Victorian style favored for large homes between 1880 and 1900. Distinctive Queen Anne features are the tower, the encircling porch with 26 columns supporting the porch roof, the roofline with many different gables and dormers, and the stained glass and leaded glass windows. Both this home and the MacNichol Home were designed by the prominent Detroit architectural firm of Malcomson and Higginbotham. William G. Malcomson (1853-1937), F.A.I.A., and William E. Higginbotham (1858-1923) were appointed consultant architects for the Detroit School Board in 1890. They designed the Central High School in Detroit in 1894, now known as the Old Main building at Wayne State University, as well as three-fourths of all the Detroit schools built before 1923. Other important work included the David MacKenzie House on Cass Avenue in Detroit, also owned by Wayne State, Welch Hall at Eastern Michigan University in Ypsilanti, Henry Ford Hospital (1914) and several large Detroit churches.

The Ford-Bacon House is a substantial three story, cross-gable-and-hip-roof house of Queen Anne design, with walls of grayish-buff St. Louis hydraulic pressed brick trimmed in reddish sandstone. Steeply sloping roofs, elongated chimney stacks with flanks patterned in rectangular panels, and sharply pointed dormers give the building a Chateauesque appearance. The house has overall ground dimensions of 62' x 95', and contains 5,836 square feet of space on each floor plus an attic whose ceiling is 20' high in some places, a full basement and a covered porch on two sides. Given to the Wyandotte Public Schools in 1942, the house now serves as part of Wyandotte's public library; a modern one-story building was attached at the rear in 1962 to extend the library.

The house occupies two city lots at the southeast corner of Biddle Avenue, Wyandotte's main street, and Vinewood Street, and faces west on Biddle. This location is two blocks from the Detroit River, a few blocks north of Wyandotte's central business district and eleven miles south of Detroit. The house stands directly across Biddle from the Ford-MacNichol House in the Cultural Center area of Wyandotte. The MacNichol House and the Marx House within the same block are already listed in the National Register of Historic Places.

The grounds include six additional city lots. The four lots at the rear facing the river contain the library annex and parking lots, and the lots next to the Bacon House on Biddle are now a lawn. No original landscaping survives, although the front of the house, with bushes following the lines of the porch, looks similar to its appearance in photographs from the early days.

The home has eighteen rooms and eleven unique fireplaces, each with a different fireback, of which nine are still visible. The exterior is of grayish-buff pressed brick imported from St. Louis trimmed with northern Michigan sandstone. Originally the home had a slate roof, but that was replaced with asphalt shingles in 1973. A mosaic tile-floored porch with 26 columns supporting the porch roof dominates the north and west sides of the house, while a beautiful carved wood oriel window and the curved windows of the parlor are the main features of the south side. A square tower faces the river on the east side. The roof line is varied, with five chimneys, large and small gables, and bay windows on three sides. The outside is so irregular because the house was designed so that the river could be seen from windows in every room. Originally there was a porch across the back also, but this was removed in order to enlarge the library in 1962.

The first floor of the Bacon Home has six large rooms, plus two pantries off the kitchen. An oak-paneled vestibule with a door flanked by leaded-glass panels leads to a paneled entrance hall which runs the length of the house. To the left are the reception room, the library and the billiard room. Off the hall to the right are the parlor, the dining room and a hall leading to the servants' dining room and the kitchen. Four columns with Ionic capitals enhance the arches to the front rooms, and the parlor has two additional columns with Corinthian capitals. The fireplace is trimmed with green marble. The reception room features two leaded glass windows and Quetzal glass sconces on either side of the fireplace, which has a carved wooden mantel and is of red tile. Dentil molding is carried out throughout the first floor. The main staircase with a spiral spindle balustrade leads off the reception room to a landing with a large stained-glass window.

Following the hall toward the rear leads to the dining room and the library, also used as Mr. Bacon's office. The dining room is paneled in mahogany and features four more columns and a beamed ceiling. A built-in buffet and cabinets with glass doors cover one wall. Five bottle-glass windows are the glass seen through the oriel window. A door from the dining room leads to a linen pantry with a food warming cabinet and then to the kitchen. In the kitchen is a built-in ice box with thick walls of white glazed tile. In the center of the ice-box is a small compartment with a door leading to the outside through which ice was delivered. The rest of the kitchen is not original except for the sink, the wainscotting, and a bell box which was used to summon the servants.

The library across the hall from the dining room features a built-in writing desk, built-in bookcases with leaded-glass doors along two walls, and an ornately carved mantel. The dining room, library, and the billiard room all have sliding doors. The billiard room features oak paneling, window seats, wall sconces, one with an art glass globe, and leaded glass windows. A hall off this room leads to the side door to the porch and did lead to the carriage port, and a semi-circular drive, which no longer exist. Ornate gratings in the floor eliminated the need for radiators in the family rooms on the first floor. All the glass in the home came from the Toledo Glass Company, which was owned by the Ford family. Several of the light fixtures were equipped for both electricity and gas.

The second floor contains six bedrooms, one with a sunroom off it which is located below the tower room. Each two bedrooms are connected by a bathroom. Every bedroom has a unique fireplace. Stencilling can still be seen in two of the original marble claw-and-ball-footed wash basins with silver fixtures. The original electric fuse box still has a blueprint scheme identifying the rooms which the fuses served by their names from 1897. On the third floor there are two servants' bedrooms, a cedar room for storage and a huge attic. The basement features a dryer which consists of metal rods on which to hang clothes in an enclosed compartment where the clothes were dried by the heat from the fire which was used to boil the wash water; a cistern also remains in the basement.

The Ford-Bacon House was used as the Wyandotte Public Library from 1943 to 1962. In 1962, the rear porches were removed and an annex was built which is now the main part of the public library. The new part, attached via a hallway at the northeast corner of the house, is a rectangular one story, flat-roofed, modern building with two rooms containing 9,000 square feet of space. The exterior is of yellowish brick to blend with the Bacon House, but other than that the style was not intended to complement the original building. The house was left intact except for the porches. In 1973, the original slate roof was replaced with asphalt shingles and the carriage port was removed. Some of the exterior details have also been removed through the years, such as lightning rods and decorative iron fleur-de-lis which were around the porch roof, and the iron staircase leading to the ice box.

The Ford-Bacon House is in use as part of the library, for special collections, offices, storage and meeting rooms. It has been well maintained, and the Library Board is currently implementing a maintenance and restoration plan to keep it in good shape as we celebrate its centennial anniversary.