O'Dell, H. Augustus and Agnes Cleveland, House-Inch House

The O'Dell or Inch House is deemed eligible for the National Register under Criterion B as the home of an important early and mid-twentieth-century Detroit architect, H. Augustus O'Dell. O'Dell practiced architecture on his own or as part of several different firms from 1901 until the mid-twentieth century and was known especially for his apartment buildings and large suburban houses. His own house is a fine example of late 1920s residential architecture, interesting for its eclectic approach to design, for its high quality finishes, including the highly textured slate roof with its rounded valleys and the floors made from irregular pieces of marble, and its innovative use of a commonplace material, cinder block, in random ashlar form in some of the exterior walls.

Inch House, so named by H. Augustus O'Dell after his family's ancestral home in Ireland, was designed and built in 1926 by Detroit architect H. Augustus O'Dell as his own home. Inch House is an informal, two-story L-shaped house with intersecting gable roofs, ten dormers, and two protruding porches. The house displays superb details and integrity. It is a solid building that seems to combine elements of French Eclectic and English Cottage styling while using modern building materials, including cinder block. This is evidenced by the house's irregular lines, steep slate roof with rounded valleys, dormers, use of patterned brick, cross gables, casement windows with small panes, plus sloping walls on the interior of the upper level. The dominant exterior feature of the house is its steep undulating slate roof of graduated, highly textured Vermont slate. The interior of the house reflects the Arts and Crafts movement in its use of heavy oak woodwork, built-in cabinetry, textured wet plaster, Pewabic tile sills, hand-hewn beams, and a one-of-a-kind random marble floor that dominates the main level of the house.