Gordon Hall

Samuel W. Dexter was born in Boston in 1792, the son of the Samuel Dexter who served as Secretary of both the War and Treasury Departments under John Adams. In 1824, after graduation from Harvard, he moved west to Washtenaw County, Michigan, and founded the village of Dexter a few miles northwest of the small settlement of Ann Arbor. Independently wealthy, Dexter was able to give free rein to his moral and political feelings without worrying about their popularity.

In 1829 he founded the first paper in the county, The Emigrant, known far and wide for its anti-masonic diatribes. The paper also espoused other penchants of Dexter's, which included abolition, temperance, and Unitarianism. A biography summed up his personality; "Yet there was that in the nature and make-up of the man that altogether without announcement or protest made any familiarity impossible. No motives of policy, or persuasions of society, or any earthly consideration could bring him to compromise." A candidate for public office several times on the Anti-Masonic and Free Soil platforms, Dexter's highest office was Regent of the University of Michigan.

Although he had constructed a fine, large house not long after he settled in Dexter, by the early 1840s Judge Dexter, as he was known, began to crave something more patrician. The site he selected was on a hill about one-half mile from town, looking down upon the village named in his honor. By 1844, what Fiske Kimball called "the amplest and most imposing of all the houses in the state" had been constructed. Local tradition has it that Calvin T.

Fillmore, the brother of Millard, was the builder. This could be true since for a number of years Fillmore was a practicing carpenter in the vicinity. Dexter died in 1863, and about 1900 the estate passed into the hands of Thomas Birkett. Birkett, an immigrant from England in 1852, began work as a miller in the Huron River Valley just a few miles upstream from the base of Dexter's hilltop retreat.

By 1906, he was described as "a prominent representative of the banking and milling interests of Washtenaw County." In 1938 the estate, named Gordon Hall after Dexter's mother's maiden name, was repurchased by a granddaughter. Restoration continued throughout the 1940s and in 1951 the property was given to the University of Michigan. It is currently used for faculty apartments. Studied by the Historic American Buildings Survey in 1934.

Gordon Hall was called by Talbot Hamlin "one of the most imposing in scale" of the Greek Revival houses in Michigan, and its imposing size, coupled with the massive hexastyle Doric portico, makes it unique. In plan, the building originally consisted of a nearly square two-story central mass with short, one-and-a-half story gable roofed wings on the north and south sides. The north wing was subject to a four-story addition in the 1870s. Wing and addition were removed in the early 1940s.

Shed roofed one-story Doric side porches flank the portico. There is a central entrance with transom and side lights. Timber frame construction, filled with brick nogging, was used, and the exterior was covered with clapboards painted white. Green shutters are present.

Two of the original four massive chimneys have been removed.