John M. Wheeler House, 1859

Year
1859
1020 West Huron Street
John M. Wheeler House, 1859
When local historian and school teacher Lela Duff first encountered this house, it piqued her curiosity because it was so different from the others in the area. She noted that it seemed "closed and aloof" with its gray paint, sharply pointed gables, and fancy mill work around the eaves, reminding her of Nathaniel Hawthorne's House of Seven Gables. People remembered its grounds surrounded by a low picket fence with a deep wooded ravine at the back and a mysterious Dutch windmill. (In the late 1930s the West Side Women's Club voted to restore this windmill but, for reasons unknown, never did so.) By the time Duff wrote an article about the house for The Ann Arbor News in 1960, the house was "teeming with apartments" and had lost its fence and windmill. A bulldozer was working nearby, busy subdividing the grounds.
The house was probably built in 1859 for attorney John M. Wheeler. Noted architectural historian Fiske Kimball believed the house was designed by Gordon W. Lloyd, well known Gothic Revival architect in Michigan. Wheeler was admitted to the bar in Indiana in 1843 and practiced there for 15 years before settling in Ann Arbor. After retiring from his legal practice, he became Treasurer of the Univesity of Michigan in 1872.
The house was once a fine example of Gothic Revival, a style rare in Ann Arbor. It is often compared with the Douglass House, as both houses are stucco over brick. Early photographs show the elaborate porch entry with its Gothic clustered columns and quatrefoil balustrade, features which appeared on the former porte cochere. These distinctive Gothic style details were unfortunately destroyed in the 20th century. Hints of the former grandeur still remain, however, in the ornamental "gingerbread" or barge boards under the eaves.