Oakland County Michigan (Page 2) has 38 places on the National Register of Historic Places including 2 places of National significance and 8 places of Statewide significance. Significant places include Reuther, Walter P. and May Wolf, House, Scripps, William Edmund and Nina A. Downey, Estate, Meadow Brook Farms, Modern Housing Corporation Addition Historic District and Myrick-Palmer House.
Many famous people are associated with these Oakland County historic places including Walter Phillip Reuther, William Edmund Scripps, Joseph Sumner Rogers, Stephen Mack, Moses Wisner and Catherine (Kittie) C. McCoy.
Some of the country's most noteable architects helped create the Oakland County places including Oskar Stonorov, Walter Phillip Reuther, Bryant Fleming, Clarence E. Day, Frank Lloyd Wright, William Kapp, Hinchman & Grylls Smith, Judson N. Churchill, Charles A. Fisher and William J. Fisher. Prominent architectural styles found in Oakland Country are Greek Revival, Gothic and Tudor Revival.
Historic Significance:
Person
Historic Person:
Reuther, Walter Phillip
Area of Significance:
Social History
Period of Significance:
1950-1974
Historic Function:
Domestic
Historic Sub-function:
Single Dwelling
Current Function:
Domestic
Current Sub-function:
Single Dwelling
Walter Reuther lived under fire. After assassins blasted a shotgun through his Detroit kitchen window in 1948, shattering his right arm, the United Auto Workers president knew he needed a sanctuary that could double as a fortress. So he and his wife, May Wolf, built this home along Paint Creek in Rochester Hills. Modernist architect Oscar Stonorov drafted the low-slung, glass-and-wood structure. Bulletproof glass lined the windows. Spotlights swept the wooded perimeter, and guards patrolled the isolated gravel driveway to keep the labor boss alive during the height of the mid-century union wars.
This wasn't just a bunker, though. It was a buzzing nerve center. Inside these walls, Reuther hammered out strategy for the landmark 1955 GM contract, hosted foreign dignitaries, and debated civil rights with allies. He fought corporate bosses and mobsters right from his living room. It was deadly work. In 1970, a suspicious plane crash killed both Walter and May. The Rochester Hills estate remains a rare, physical monument to a time when organizing a union carried a literal body count.
