Hudson-Evans House

The Hudson/Evans house stands on lots nineteen and twenty of the Edmund A. Brush subdivision in Detroit. In 1871, a warranty deed for the property was issued to William H. Craig, a wealthy land speculator, who had been residing in a home on the west half of lot twenty since 1868. The next year, 1872, Craig sold lot nineteen and the east half of lot twenty to Fannie E. Wright, wife of Philo Wright a local shipowner. The Wrights are first listed in the city directory as occupying the site in 1874. This puts the construction of the house at some point between 1872 and 1874. The Wrights lived in the house until 1881 when it was sold to David Whitney Jr. The house was a wedding gift to his daughter Grace who in 1882 married John E. Evans of the firm of Evans and Walker Wholesale Grocers. The couple lived in the house until Evans died in 1892. Mrs. Evans continued to occupy the house until 1893. In the years following the death of her first husband, Grace Whitney Evans became deeply involved in charitable activities. She was the first president of the Detroit Y.W.C.A., and a short time later, she built a home for working girls. Even following her marriage to John J. Hoff in 1900, and her subsequent move to France, where she lived for the rest of her life, she remained interested in the Detroit Y.W.C.A. She gave the organization $35,000 in 1904 to enable it to open its new home on Washington Boulevard free of debt. In 1927, she gave $55,000 to the campaign which raised funds for four buildings, including the present Y.W.C.A. building. On her numerous trips to Detroit, she remained actively interested in the Grace Whitney Hoff Federation of Industrial Girls Clubs which she had founded within the Y.W.C.A. Yet her charitable activities were by no means confined to Detroit. While living in Europe she became deeply involved in the establishment of a British-American Y.W.C.A. in Paris, did all she could to help American and French troops during World War I, and personally paid for an elaborate international student center in Paris in 1928. For these, as well as other activities, she received numerous awards which included: election to the Legion of Honor in 1925, the Order of Queen Elizabeth of Belgium, and an honorary Doctor of Law Degree from the University of Western Ontario in 1934. When Grace Whitney Evans left 79 Alfred in 1893, she rented the house to another famous Detroiter, Joseph Lowthian Hudson, who lived there from 1894 to 1904.

The Hudson/Evans house is a three-story red brick structure approximately fifty-six and one half feet wide by ninety-four feet long. The building is an excellent example of Victorian Style architecture, and shows influence of both Second Empire and Italianate schools of design. On both sides of the building are elaborate bay windows which reach up to the second story. There is also a deeply recessed oval window on the east side as well. The porch across the front or south side has been altered. However, the presence of stone columns incorporated into the existing porch demonstrates that a porch was part of the original design. There is a smaller porch on the west side of the house which is original although it has since been screened in. A carriage house is located across the back of the lot. It is approximately twenty-eight feet wide by fifty-six feet long and is built in the same style. The house has a mansard roof covered with slate. Around the edges of the roof, the dormer windows on the north side, and the second story bay windows, is an elaborate wood molding. The windows throughout are one by one double hung sash in wooden frames. Except for the dormer windows, and the second story bay windows, all windows are trimmed with the same brick used in the exterior of the house, and topped with elaborate stone hood moldings of Italianate design. A variation of the same style hood molding frames the front door. Similar styled moldings may also have been present over the windows of the carriage house. The interior of the home is highlighted by high-ceilinged rooms and heavy ornate walnut woodwork. There is a spiral staircase extended for three floors, with a skylight over the top landing. 'Elephant hide', a heavy embossed paper, is used on the walls of the vestibule and in the stairway. There are three marble fireplaces downstairs, and two fireplaces upstairs. The house throughout is heated by radiators which feature ornate designs. Some of these radiators are of an unusual circular design. Except for the front porch, the overall structural integrity of the house is excellent and all but unchanged from its original design. The basic condition of the carriage house is equally as good, although the mansard roof has been temporarily covered with a tar paper roof.