Stearns, Frederick K., House

The Stearns House is significant for its association with Frederick K. Stearns and with the architects, Stratton and Baldwin; and it is architecturally significant because of its fine medieval and Arts and Crafts design. This house represents an important movement in artistic design and is characteristic of larger homes associated with the Arts and Crafts movement. The Stearns House is linked to some key figures in Detroit's artistic community at the turn of the century. Frederick K. Stearns, founder of the Stearns Pharmaceutical Company, was an important collector of Oriental art. His collection, which he donated to the Detroit Museum of Art, contained over 16,000 objects of art from several eastern nations.

The Frederick K. Stearns House is a two-and-one-half-story, gable-roofed house, with stucco and half timber facades, which faces southeast toward Jefferson Avenue. The house's medieval character is reinforced by a variety of window sizes and grouping and by several projecting bays and broad roof surfaces. The house is constructed of hollow tile.

The Stearns Building is architecturally significant as a well-preserved, turn-of-the-century, industrial plant incorporating manufacturing, warehousing and office uses into one unified composition. It is also important as an early work of the master architect William B. Stratton displaying the innovative massing and composition which was to become the hallmark of his later work. In addition, the structure is historically significant for its associations with Detroit's philanthropic Stearns family and the nationally known Frederick Stearns Company which contributed to the growth of the American pharmaceutical industry. The building, which was constructed in 1899 and enlarged several years later, is the work of the Detroit firm of Stratton and Baldwin. This firm was a leader in fostering the growth of the arts and crafts movement in Detroit. Heavily involved in the Tudor Revival at the turn-of-the-century, William B. Stratton helped pioneer the development of Detroit's arts and crafts based, northern European influenced, vernacular style of the 1920s. Stratton's work is particularly notable for its striking massing and abstract fenestration patterns played out against austere plains of brick masonry. A later example of his work in Detroit listed on the National Register is the Women's City Club. The west elevation of the Stearns Building rear factory portion clearly demonstrates Stratton's masterful sense of massing and composition and foreshadows his more mature work of the 1920s. In addition to its significant place in the evolution of the work of a master architect and the development of an important, but short-lived, vernacular architectural style, the Stearns Building is notable for its role in the growth of the pharmaceutical industry in Detroit. Frederick Stearns of Lockport, New York, moved to Detroit in 1855 and opened a retail drug store. He was soon manufacturing his own medicines in a back room and introduced the revolutionary concept of labeling the bottle with the ingredients. By 1877 he had a separate lab at Sixth and Woodbridge Streets connected by telephone - the city's first commercial telephone service - with his Woodward Avenue drugstore. In 1882 he built a factory at 21st and Marquette streets to manufacture drugs using steam driven extracting and milling machinery. He was succeeded in business in 1887 by his son, Frederick K. Stearns, under whose proprietorship the company became a major pharmaceutical concern. It was Frederick K. who erected the Stearns Plant on Jefferson Avenue in 1899. The company grew rapidly in the early twentieth century, eventually employing over 2000 people. In 1944 the old firm was sold to New York based Sterling Drug Company, who closed the Jefferson Avenue plant. It has been used as a warehouse since that time. The Stearns family were generous philanthropists who contributed to the Detroit College of Medicine (now part of Wayne State University) which Frederick, Sr. had helped found. Both of the Stearns were also patrons of education and the arts. In addition to being a curator of the Detroit Scientific Association, Stearns Sr. donated his collection of Musical instruments to the University of Michigan and his gifts became the core of the Detroit Institute of Art's collection of Oriental art.

The Stearns Building is located at the corner of Jefferson and Bellevue avenues about 2~ miles east of downtown Detroit. The structure is situated adjacent to a major railroad spur line across the street from a large industrial facility, the Detroit plant of the Uniroyal Rubber Company. Jefferson Avenue itself is a commercial and retail strip although the surrounding area contains deteriorated turn-of-the-century houses. The original three-story Frederick Stearns & Company building was constructed in 1899 (Permit #564) on 3~ acres of land, originally part of the Beaufait Farm, at a projected cost of $85,000. The U-shaped parmaceutical building measures approximately 1641 X 327•. The building permit was applied for by the architectural firm of Stratton and Baldwin. The style of the building could be characterized as Arts and Crafts/Jacobean, for which the firm was known. The current brick and stone-trimmed building has four floors, the top-story being an addition. The addition which matches the original building, appears to have been done by the same architectural firm. The facade is thirteen bays wide, with projecting pavilions in the center and at either end, topped with Jacobean gables, each mounted with a finial. The central bay contains a recessed arched stone entrance, with carved stone decoration, surmounted by an oriel window at the second floor. At the third floor, a triple window is topped with a circular opening containing a clock (extant but inoperative). Above the fourth floor triple window unit, the cornice line rises to an arch, penetrated by an ocular opening topped with a finial identical to those on the end bays. Flanking the entrance pavilion on either side are six bays of single, double and triple, one-over-one, sash windows symmetrically arranged. The windows are graduated in height with the tall first-floor windows having transoms. All of the windows have limestone surrounds. The office building portion of the factory is five bays deep, beyond which the flat-roofed, brick manufacturing structure begins. This part of the building is of a different character than the attached Jacobean style office block. It was originally three-stories tall, but a fourth story was added above the corbelled cornice at the same time the top story was added to the front section. The west elevation is divided into three parts with a flat slightly projecting center pavilion flanked by three bays of arcaded fenestration on the south and five bays of arcaded fenestration on the north. The arcaded portions are formally treated with grouped windows divided into triple bays by slightly projecting brick pilaster strips that terminate in arches enframing the arcaded third-story windows. The flat central portion is interestingly patterned by the varied window arrangements on each livel. The fourth story above the decorative brick courses of the original cornice treatment, is different in character than the lower stories. Its large, steel, industrial windows, which contrast with the small separate window units of the lower floors, add a dramatic element to the intentionally abstract composition of this elevation. The east elevation is less interesting. It is composed of thirteen triple bays of arcaded fenestration similar to the end bays on the west elevation. There is no flat projecting central section as on the west side. Rising from the center of the complex is an eight-story, reinforced concrete, flat-roofed structure with large banks of steel industrial windows. Although it does not appear to be part of the structure and is not architecturally related, the tower was constructed in 1919 to the designs of Albert Kahn in the courtyard of the plant to provide needed space and is physically connected with the older building.