Charles Lang Freer Home
Merrill-Palmer Institute of Human Development and Family Life
Wayne State University
71 East Ferry Street in Detroit’s Cultural Center and the
East
Ferry Historic District
Henry Ford was, perhaps, the most accomplished but puzzling
and difficult-to-understand man who capitalized upon opportunities in Detroit
to not only become extremely wealthy, but make a lasting contribution to
the nation through
his philanthropic endeavors. If you were compiling a list of such Detroit
individuals, Charles Lang Freer might rank close to Henry Ford with regard
to wealth, idiosyncrasies and contributions to our nation.
Freer was born in Kingston, New York in 1854 or 1856 to a modest family.
Instead of finishing high school, he went to work as a clerk for a business
in the city of his birth. Fortunately for him, the building also housed the
offices of a local railroad managed by Frank J.
Hecker. Hecker saw promise
in Freer and hired him as a bookkeeper for the railroad. In the 1870s, a
group of Detroit investors sought to build a railroad—called the
Eel River Railroad—near Logansport, Indiana and hired Hecker as their
manager. I believe these Detroit investors intended to finance a line that
would extend
from Detroit to Logansport and then on to Illinois and, perhaps, St. Louis.
In the early and middledecades of the Nineteenth Century, most railroads
were short lines connecting two small cities since they lacked capital, but
by the mid-1870s, investors such as Russell Sage and Jay Gould saw the advantages
of buying local railroads as cheaply as possible and then weaving them into
major interstate lines such as the New York Central. Hecker recruited Charles
Lang Freer to work with him on the Eel River line, but in 1878, the Wabash
Railroad purchased the road. Detroit investors were pleased with the work
of Hecker and Freer and encouraged them to move to Detroit when the Eel River
line was merged out of existence. Using some of their own funds and capital
raised in Detroit, Hecker and Freer founded the Peninsular Car Company to
build rail cars. By the mid 1880s, Frank Hecker and Charles Freer were extremely
prosperous.
Michigan’s white pine, the iron foundries in Detroit and the skills
of capitalists such as Hecker and Freer made Detroit the center of the rail
car
industry in that era. One of the large competing firms in the city was the Michigan
Car Company run by James McMillan. In 1892, Hecker and Freer’s Peninsular
Car Company merged with Michigan Car Company to become the Michigan-Peninsular
Car Company. Seven years later, this firm and 12 other rail car manufacturers
merged to form American Car and Foundry, a company that continues to build rail
cars under the name ACF Industries. Alas, they now have no factory in Detroit.
Apparently Charles Freer was diagnosed in the 1880s or 1890s as suffering from
neurasthenia. This was a century before the invention of Prozac, Celexa or Zoloft.
A common treatment for rich sufferers at that time was to encourage them to think
less about the competitive industrial world and to concentrate upon the bucolic
or the arts. Freer apparently selected art as his cure so, by 1886, he began
using his wealth to collect American masters, including the impressionist painters
of that era. Early in his extensive collective career, he met and then helped
to popularize the works of James Whistler. Indeed, he was Whistler’s major
patron. He moved on to purchase a tremendous collection of Nineteenth Century
American works, including many paintings by Homes, Melchers, Ryder and Sergeant.
He then purchased great paintings from Europe. His artistic advisors—especially
Whistler—apparently told him that he could not purchase enough of them
to develop a collection exceeding that found in the great galleries of European
metropolises.
They suggested to Freer that he become this nation’s leading collector
of great Asian art.
In 1899, when he was about 44, Freer began to disengage from the rail car business
by gradually selling his stocks and bonds while using the proceeds to purchase
art works. Indeed, he devoted the remaining two decades of his life to collecting
art. He traveled several times to Japan, Korea and China seeking the best art,
then bringing it back to Detroit. By the early years of the Twentieth Century,
perhaps no gallery in the United States had a collection comparable to Freer’s.
Freer ranks among the nation’s greatest individual art collector.
There is no reliable way to answer the question of which home in the city of
Detroit is the most beautiful, striking or impressive. I doubt that anyone can
propose two side-by-side homes as consequential and impressive as those of the
car-building business partners, Colonel Hecker with
his French Renaissance style chateau at East Ferry and Woodward designed by Louis
Kemper and Charles Lang 
Freer’s next-door home. By the late 1880s, Freer had traveled to the locations
where the nation’s rich spent their summers in the days before air conditioning.
One of their favorite spots was Newport, Rhode Island. When visiting there, Freer
was impressed by the shingle style summer cottages of the elite. In truth they
were massive homes. Freer was an extremely systematic man, so he investigated
carefully and determined that architect Wilson Eyre of Philadelphia was the most
accomplished designers of such homes. In 1890, Freer contracted with Eyre to
design the home that you see in the picture above. It was completed in 1892.
The Freer residence remains one of the most distinguished homes in the city,
worthy of a detour if you are traveling from the Big Apple to San Francisco or
Peking. You will see Eyre’s very careful stone work on the first floor
using coursed hard blue limestone from New York State. Over the last century,
the blue limestone had pretty much turned black, thanks to the city’s industrial
activities. Despite this, there is a very warm and graceful feeling emanating
from this home. Note the prominent use of shingles—darkly stained Michigan
oak shakes that are extremely closely spaced. These shingles might overemphasize
the horizontal along East Ferry were it not for the protrusion with its traditional
windows. The triangular third-story gable is appealing and varied windows and
the dormers interrupt the roof. Two tall chimneys guard the west and east
ends of Freer’s home. There are stucco porches at the ends of the first
floor. In the original design, there were open air porches, apparently done in
something other than stucco. Freer had landscapers use Asian flora for the grounds,
but subsequent remodeling pretty much destroyed the original landscaping and
setting for this home. William's Freer’s brother—Frederick Freer—built
a Queen Anne style home to the immediate east of the shingle style house
you
see, but this was torn down so that the Merrill Palmer Institute could construct
the building that is now located there.
Eyre designed this residence to assist Freer in displaying his immense collection
of art. In 1906, an art gallery was added above the stable with Eyre as the architect.
In the early 1900s, Freer’s James Whistler received a commission from Frederick
Leyland in London to design a Peacock Room for his home. Leyland was not happy
with Whistler’s design and, after his death in 1904, his widow sold the
Peacock Room to William Lang Freer. Freer had Wilson Eyre design a suitable room
so Whistler’s Peacock Room was moved from London to East Ferry Street in
Detroit.
Freer was extremely proud of his art works and apparently knew that he had one
of the nation’s most outstanding collections. It probably was the largest
private collection in the country since it contained more than 30,000 pieces.
Freer kept most or all of his art in the home you see. He was a private man and,
apparently, invited only a few people to view his collection. Only rarely did
he allow his art works to be publically displayed. Apparently, art galleries
found him difficult to work with since he was reluctant to have them display
his art and, when they did so, he specified exactly how it was to be shown.
Realizing the value of his collection and the potential for theft, Freer had
tactfully designed iron grating for many of the windows in his home, grating
that remains to this day.
Why did he not leave his art to the city of Detroit or to a Michigan institution?
There is no concise answer. Apparently in the 1890s, Freer proposed that the
city build a magnificent art gallery, but received little encouragement from
his fellow Detroit millionaires. Freer helped lead a group of prominent Detroit
residents
in a commemoration of the city’s bicentennial. They commissioned one of
the nation’s leading architects, Sanford White, to design a magnificent
monument for the south end of Belle Isle where the James
Scott
Fountain now stands.
White proposed a massive bicentennial monument that looked much like the Washington
Monument located south of the Ellipse on the National Mall. Freer found that other
Detroit entrepreneurs were unwilling to part with the monies needed for this
monument so it was never built.
Fortunately, we can see the structure that White designed for Detroit’s
bi-centennial. White’s design—with few changes—was used
for the Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry Victory and International Peace Memorial
then erected on Put-In-Bay, Ohio. This commemorates Commodore Perry’s defeat
of British ships in the Battle of Lake Erie on September 10, 1813, a victory
for the United States that hastened the truce that ended the War of 1812.
As early as 1905, Freer decided that he should give his art works to a nation’s
capitol. James McMillan, the owner of the Michigan Car Company that merged with
Freer’s firm in 1892, was active in the state’s Republican Party.
Indeed, the Michigan legislature appointed him to the US Senate in 1889 and he
represented the state in Washington until his death in 1902. McMillan and Freer
became friends. In the Senate, McMillan championed the idea of making Washington
into a beautiful capital city worthy of a major nation. McMillan was inspired,
perhaps, by the city-beautiful movement. At the time, Washington was an unattractive,
dirty city and Pierre L’Enfant’s elegant plans for a glorious capitol
rivaling Paris had been forgotten. The Mall between the Capitol Building and
the present location of the Lincoln Memorial was crossed by many rail lines and
housed small unattractive buildings. The Department of Agriculture had plans
to put modest gardens in that area, but little came of those intentions. McMillan
had more ambitious plans and used his power to get rid of the rail lines and
eyesores. His aide, Charles Moore from Ypsilanti, was his spokesperson and assisted
in creating a modern, beautiful Washington with elegant governmental building.
At some point, Freer proposed donating funds for an attractive building on the
Mall that would house the art that he would give to the nation upon his death.
It is not easy to make donations to the federal government. The Smithsonian was,
by this time, a major institution displaying important artifacts from the nation’s
history. Freer approached the Smithsonian and proposed building an art gallery
for his collection. Samuel P. Langley more or less turned down this idea. Langley
knew little about art, but from a bureaucratic perspective, he feared that the
Smithsonian would be burdened with the upkeep of the gallery that Freer would
donate. In addition, Freer specified that only his art might be displayed in
his building and mandated that it be displayed in a manner consistent with his
wishes
and the wishes of the artists.
Using political connections, Freer apparently approached President Theodore Roosevelt
with his offer to give what was, arguably, the nation’s most sophisticated
art collection to the government along with a building to house it. The President
apparently treated this in a normal bureaucratic manner and turned the matter
over to assistants. Perhaps to move the process along, William Lang Freer commissioned
Gari Melchers to paint a portrait of President Roosevelt. This is a very flattering
study showing a powerful and competent President Roosevelt with a large crop
in his left hand. Indeed, it looks much like the Big Stick that President Roosevelt
mentioned in his often repeated axiom: speak softly but carry a big stick. It
is now displayed in the Freer Gallery.
Fortunately, for William Lang Freer, President Roosevelt’s wife—Edith—was
something of an art collector and visited east coast galleries from time
to time.
The art world knew of Freer’s fabulous offer and the unwillingness of the
federal government to accept it. Mrs. Roosevelt informed her husband of the importance
of Freer’s collection and his desire to fund a magnificent structure to
display it. This moved the President to action. Roosevelt wrote several tactful
but terse letters that more or less mandated that the Smithsonian accept Freer’s
gifts on Freer’s terms. This moved the Smithsonian to action.
In 1916, construction began on the Italianate building designed by Charles A.
Platt that we know as the Freer Gallery. Freer originally presumed that $500,000
would be sufficient for the construction of the building, but the cost escalated
to one million. Freer paid that sum. Building was delayed by World War I and
the galley was not formally opened until 1923. Freer died in 1919 and left much
of his collection to the federal government. Some components of Freer’s
collection may have been given to other galleries but Freer did not establish
a foundation. He had no spouse or children. Despite their substantial contributions
to our nation, there are, so far as I know, no authoritative biographies of William
Lang Freer or Senator James McMillan.
In 1918, Detroit resident, Lizzie Pitts Merrill Palmer donated three million
dollars to establish a school for motherhood training. I believe her intent was
to provide specific training to poor women so that they could be competent mothers.
The nonprofit Merrill-Palmer Institute was founded and, in 1923, purchased the
Freer Home to serve as their headquarters. Over the years, the Merrill-Palmer
Institute developed into an advanced school dedicated to studying human development
and improving family life. By the post-World War II period, I believe they offered
formal collegiate training to certify elementary and secondary school teachers.
The institute continued to use the endowment for their programs, but began to
run short of money in the 1970s. In 1981 Wayne State University subsumed the
Merrill Palmer Institute and took control of the marvelous Charles Lang Freer
home. More recently, the Skillman Foundation donated funds so that the organization
may now be known as the Merrill Palmer Skillman Institute. I believe they support
psychological research about early childhood development and the Freer home is
used as their office space.
When you next visit the impressive Freer Galley with its collection of Asian
art in Washington, remember the Michigan pine forests, the iron foundries of
Detroit and the artistic interests of a depressed but dedicated entrepreneur
who made such a tremendous gift to the people of this country.
Architect: Wilson Eyre, Jr.
Date of Construction: 1887
City of Detroit Local Historic District: Listed February 17, 1981.
State of Michigan Registry of Historic Sites: P 25121, Listed November
6, 1970
State of Michigan Marker: Erected: October 5, 2003
National Register of Historic Sites: # 71000426, Listed April 16, 1971
Support organization: Friends of the Freer House, 71 East Ferry, Detroit
Book: The Charles L. Freer Residence: The Original Gallery of Art, by
Thomas W. Brunk. (I do not know the publisher but this book is sold by
the Friends of the Freer House organization.
Use in 2007: Merrill Palmer Skillman Institute of Wayne State University
Web site for Merrill Palmer Institute: www.mpi.wayne.edu/
Photo: Ren Farley, 2003
Description: Revised April, 2007
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