Orchard Lake Schools Historic District

The Orchard Lake Schools are architecturally significant as a unified complex of Victorian Romanesque institutional buildings arranged around a quadrangle. They are historically significant for their associations with noted early Michigan entrepreneur, politician, and Civil War general, Joseph Tarr Copeland, the nineteenth century Michigan Military Academy and the Polish Catholic Orchard Lake Schools. Copeland was born in Maine in 1813 and attended Harvard where he studied law. He moved to Michigan in the early 1840s where he became a county judge and later Justice of the Michigan Supreme Court.

He invested in timberlands and soon became a prosperous lumber mill owner. In 1862 Copeland enlisted in the Union Army. By the time of his discharge in 1865 he had been promoted to Brigadier General. Upon returning to Michigan after the Civil War he was elected to the State Legislature to serve in the Senate.

Copeland built the house at Orchard Lake in 1858 to serve as his country residence. In 1871 he enlisted some businessmen in a scheme to convert the estate into a summer resort. By 1872 wooden guest wings had been constructed adjacent to the rear of the mansion and it had opened as The Orchard Lake Hotel. The venture was not ultimately successful and the hotel closed in 1877.

The wooden wings were subsequently demolished. Copeland sold the estate to Joseph Sumner Rogers in 1877 and retired to Florida. Rogers, a Maine native, had also fought in the Civil War, but unlike Copeland, he stayed on in military service after the war and was eventually stationed at Fort Wayne in Detroit. In 1874 he was appointed professor of military science and tactics at Detroit High School.

During the drill team's summer encampment at Orchard Lake, Rogers found the perfect location for a military school. He bought the Copeland property on September 4, 1877, and the Michigan Military Academy was incorporated. The institution was closely modeled after West Point and only accepted intelligent, industrious students. Soon the school attained not only regional, but national prominence.

Cornell and the University of Michigan waived entrance examinations for academy graduates, and the University of Chicago offered a special scholarship to the academy students.

The Orchard Lake Schools are located in the Village of Orchard Lake, in Central Oakland County about 25 miles northwest of Detroit. The campus occupies 120 wooded, grassy acres on the north shore of Orchard Lake between Commerce and Orchard Lake roads. Only about 15 acres of the central campus are included in this nomination. The historic district includes 11 structures arranged around an elongated landscaped quadrangle overlooking the lake.

All of the buildings are red brick structures of Romanesque or Tudor design with the exception of the former Riding Hall which is a functional, buttressed, gable-roofed, exhibition type structure of indeterminate style. The oldest of the buildings is the Copeland House built in 1858. This is a two-story castellated, brick, Gothic Revival mansion with corbelled parapets, brick hood moulds and two towers modulating its asymmetrical elevations. The original arcaded wooden porch linking the three-story round tower and the three-story semi-octagonal bay has been removed.

A modern, metal, barrel vaulted porch has been constructed in its place.