The William C. Boydell House is a double house located at 4614 Cass Avenue in Midtown

Detroit Detroit ( , ; , ) is the largest city in the U.S. state of Michigan. It is also the largest U.S. city on the United States–Canada border, and the seat of government of Wayne County. The City of Detroit had a population of 639,111 at t ...

Michigan Michigan () is a U.S. state, state in the Great Lakes region, Great Lakes region of the Upper Midwest, upper Midwestern United States. With a population of nearly 10.12 million and an area of nearly , Michigan is the List of U.S. states and ...

. It was listed on the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic ...

in 1982.

History

William C. Boydell was born in 1849 in Staffordshire,

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

. His parents soon emigrated to

London, Ontario London (pronounced ) is a city in southwestern Ontario, Canada, along the Quebec City–Windsor Corridor. The city had a population of 422,324 according to the 2021 Canadian census. London is at the confluence of the Thames River, approximate ...

, and five years later moved to Detroit, where Boydell attended school. In 1865 he began work as a clerk in the paint works of James H. Worcester. In 1867 William and his older brother John began their own firm, the Boydell Brothers White Lead and Color Company, with William as vice-president. The firm was owned by the Boydell family until 1959. In 1895, William Boydell constructed this double house, designed by Almon Clother Varney as his home. He lived there until his death in 1902.

Architecture

The William C. Boydell House is a three-story brick and limestone Beaux-Arts double house with a

hip roof A hip roof, hip-roof or hipped roof, is a type of roof where all sides slope downwards to the walls, usually with a fairly gentle slope (although a tented roof by definition is a hipped roof with steeply pitched slopes rising to a peak). Thus, ...

, built to resemble a single-family home. The front façade is lined with a pair of rock-faced terraces, and the front of the two units are unified in appearance by a brick frieze running under the eaves and banded limestone at the first story.

References

{{National Register of Historic Places in Michigan Culture of Detroit Houses on the National Register of Historic Places in Michigan Houses completed in 1895 Houses in Detroit Historic district contributing properties in Michigan National Register of Historic Places in Detroit

History

Architecture

See also

References