Vreeken said that upon selling the house, his goal is to “right-size” into a smaller home in the area and spend more time at a home the family owns in Traverse City.
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A French Colonial-style mansion just off Lake St. Clair and designed by the architect behind the Henry Ford Museum is for sale and asking $2.25 million.
The century-old Grosse Pointe Park property comes in at more than 8,500 square feet with six bedrooms and six bathrooms. The house has undergone extensive renovations in recent years including a new kitchen and upgrades to the in-house elevator, according to the listing, as well as significant upgrades to the home’s heating and cooling systems.
You have this old-school house with a very cool kitchen,” homeowner Steven Vreeken said. “We of course had to repaint almost everything … It used to be every color of the pastel. We’ve since made it more of a white-and-black type (color scheme).”
While having done substantial updating, Vreeken said he’s left many original features, such as doors and chandeliers.
Vreeken is a partner at real estate-focused family office and investment firm Tribus LLC in Grosse Pointe Farms, which recently became the sole owner of the 211 West Fort Street office tower in downtown Detroit.
Vreeken’s home is listed by Kathy Young with the Grosse Pointe office of Real Estate One.
The home, built in 1925, was designed by architect Robert O. Derrick, who was commissioned by auto pioneer Henry Ford in 1928 to design his eponymous museum in Dearborn, according to an official history by the Henry Ford Museum.
The history notes that Derrick was predominantly “interested in 18th century Georgian architecture and the related Colonial Revival styles, which were at the peak of their popularity in the 1920s.”
The Vreeken home was built by Derrick for the family of Edwin Hewitt Brown, an executive at several industrial companies around metro Detroit in the 1920s, according to a history from Higbie Maxon Agney, a Grosse Pointe-area real estate brokerage. The agency called the home “arguably one of (Derrick’s) most impactful residences in Grosse Pointe.”
The home’s size, as well as the overall property on more than an acre of land about 150 feet inland from Lake St. Clair makes for an ideal entertaining spot, according to Vreeken. Gatherings of 50 people in the large living room feel far from cramped, he said, adding that wedding ceremonies have been performed in the yard.
Vreeken bought the home in late 2019 for $1.5 million, according to property records. Various renovation projects have been largely ongoing since that time, including a “down to studs” rehab of an apartment above the garage that created a modern living space.
The upgrades to the heating and cooling to the home — which Vreeken said was originally heated by a boiler — have brought utility bills down from more than $2,700 per month when he first bought the house to around $1,000 a month.
“That’s still atrocious, but it’s a lot better than it was when I first bought it,” Vreeken said.
Some potential projects remain, such as updating the original boiler and maintenance to copper gutters, Vreeken said.
The homeowner did not have a firm estimate of how much money he has put into the property, noting that his career in real estate allowed him to use in-house contractors for much of the work. Retail prices for the renovations would likely have exceeded $1 million, he said.
All told, managing the overall property amounts to a “full-time job,” according to Vreeken, adding that he maintains a list of contractors able to perform the work and would provide that to a buyer.
The buyer pool for such a house is quite shallow, and the sale process is likely to stretch into the spring, according to Young, the listing agent with Real Estate One.
“Generally speaking, the market is picking back up right now,” Young said, noting that seasonality and declining interest rates are helping to fuel that uptick.
“People that have been through (Vreeken’s house) have been generally favorable with their comments, so that’s a good sign,” Young added. “In the spring it will probably sell, that’s just my guess. It’s beautifully seen at that time.”
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