Historic Bloomfield Hills mansion with modern updates lists for $3.5M

An “enchanting” century-old Bloomfield Hills mansion — built as a summer getaway in the country for a prominent Grosse Pointe family — is back on the market with an asking price of $3.5 million.

With more than 11,500 square feet near the intersection of Kensington and Long Lake roads in the tony metro Detroit suburb, the Tudor-style estate on nearly 2.5 acres combines old-time touches such as an English cast-iron stove and Italianate fireplaces with all manner of modern conveniences, including a basement theater and a spa room.

With only two people living there for the last many years, the size of the home may seem overwhelming, but therein lies the rub, said homeowners Alison and Subhash Kapur.

“I love history,” Alison Kapur told Crain’s. “And the fact that you can walk into a space that is exactly as it was 100 years ago. It’s warm, inviting, it’s large enough where I’ve had my two siblings, their families, my parents, all under the same roof for holidays. And now, only the two of us live here, (but) it never feels like we’re lost in a big house.”

Listed by Dan Gutfreund with the Birmingham office of Signature Sotheby’s International Realty, the two-wing house with five bedrooms and six full bathrooms and the larger property represents a unique opportunity for a relatively small pool of affluent buyers, particularly those who might seek a “change of scenery” from the historic mansion-heavy area of Grosse Pointe.

“This is truly a turnkey opportunity for anyone coming in the door,” Gutfreund said. “The one thing I think that is unique about this home is the setting. It’s private, it’s set back. (With) 2.5 acres, there’s not a lot of properties of the size … There’s just so much that checks the boxes for this home.”

A home with history

Built between 1922 and 1924 for the Hammond family of Grosse Pointe — which, according to a history of the estate by the Bloomfield Historical Society “made a fortune at the end of the 19th century with refrigerated train cars for transporting meat from Chicago to the east coast” — the property sits in what was countryside and served as a summer retreat for the family.

The property is also adjacent to what would become the Bloomfield Open Hunt Club. The Hammond family used the property, in part, as a place to ride horses. The current owners, the Kapurs, have a photo in the entryway of the Hammonds on horseback, as well as the original blueprints of the home, which was designed by Robert O. Derrick, the architect behind the Henry Ford Museum.

Another Derrick-designed mansion is also on the market in Grosse Pointe Park, as Crain’s recently reported.

The Kapurs are also in possession of a book of history on the home, which has been passed down from owner to owner since the Hammond family.

“What we need for this house today is someone that appreciates the vintage, the architecture and the living style, and that is obviously a very small market,” Gutfreund said. “Younger buyers are looking for ‘new, new, new.’ We need that person that has kind of like an old soul, (and) there are people out there.”

The Kapurs say they’ve invested around $1 million into maintenance and renovations during their decade of ownership of the home. The couple previously worked in health care and now primarily do real estate investments.

Among the changes made by the Kapurs is a full finish of the large basement, which contains a full theater as well as two vaults, one of which has been converted into a small bar, and another — previously used to store the Hammond’s silver — is now a media room with records and DVDs.

The doors to both safes were completely “rusted out,” said Subhash Kapur, so he had them refinished with “Detroit Safe Co.” etched onto each.

The basement also includes a non-working centralized vacuum cleaner, considered a “state-of the-art” technology in the 1920s that would clean corners of the house via a motor.

An avid baker, Alison Kapur had an Aga cast iron stove installed in the main kitchen. The home also has an adjacent prep kitchen. Kapur said the range system was historically used in England to cook all manner of dishes, and the stove emits heat when used during the colder months.

The couple has already purchased another historic home in the Grosse Pointe area, one that they said is well set up to take care of aging family members. Alison Kapur said the existing Aga stove will remain with the house upon a sale, but she is on the lookout to buy a used version to install in their next home.

“I’ve already told Subhash, it’s non-negotiable,” she said. “We are putting an Aga in forever.”

Used versions of the range system sell on e-commerce site Ebay for as much as $20,000.

The Kapurs said they still have a list of “wants” for the house in terms of aesthetic changes, but said there are no “needs.”

“It’s in better shape now than it was when we bought it,” Subhash Kapur said of the state of the home. “We both are kind of anal about it. Anything that goes wrong, we want to get it done yesterday.”

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Historic Bloomfield Hills mansion with modern updates lists for $3.5M

A home with history

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