Location: Midland, Michigan Architect: Alden B. Dow Designed in 1961 for Alden B. Dow’s niece, Margaret Towsley Riecker, her husband John, and their two children, the Riecker residence is one of the architect’s most distinctive designs. The 6,800 square-foot house...
Location: Midland, Michigan Architect: Alden B. Dow Music was always an important part of Josephine Ashmun’s life. At age 11, she became a church organist, a position she would hold for over 40 years. Her mother, Helen, was the sister of Herbert H. Dow, founder of...
Location: Midland, Michigan Architect: Alden B. Dow Leo B. Grant was the manager of the Dow Chemical Company’s Dow Metal (magnesium) division. In the spring of 1940 he approached Alden B. Dow about the prospect of designing a home for his family. By early June,...
Location: Petoskey, Michigan Architect: Alden B. Dow A. W. Hodgkiss and H. W. Douma were business partners in an engineering and construction firm in Petoskey, Michigan. They lived close to one another in homes designed by Alden B. Dow that overlook Little...
Location: Grosse Point, Michigan Architect: Alden B. Dow Mrs. Clark T. Wells expressed her wishes for a home for her husband and family in a letter to Alden B. Dow on December 3, 1939. “We have decided to abandon the idea of a one-story house. We feel that perhaps...
Location: Kalamazoo, Michigan Architect: Alden B. Dow In the seven years after Alden B. Dow opened his practice in Midland, he built 13 houses using unit blocks, which became a kind of trademark. In the interest of flexibility and economy, he began exploring the...
Location: Saginaw, Michigan Architect: Alden B. Dow In 1936 Miss Mary Dow asked her nephew, Alden B. Dow, to design a retirement home for her in Saginaw, Michigan. She had purchased a narrow, sloping lot next to the First Congregational Church and just down the...
Location: East Grand Rapids, Michigan Architect: Alden B. Dow The Miner S. Keeler house in East Grand Rapids was designed by Alden B. Dow in 1958. Situated on a wooded, wedge-shaped lot on the shore of a lake, the house is oriented toward the water and the...
Location: Midland, Michigan Architect: Alden B. Dow Joseph Cavanagh worked in the agricultural chemicals sales department of the Dow Chemical Company for his entire career, at a time when the company would become one of the nation’s foremost producers of...
Location: Bay City, Michigan Architect: Alden B. Dow Thomas Defoe was the president of Defoe Shipbuilding, a major manufacturer of sea-going vessels of every description, from fishing skiffs and pleasure crafts to Navy torpedo chasers and palatial yachts. He...
Robert Myers was a successful dairy farmer turned editor and publisher of the Lapeer, Michigan, County Press. In May of 1950, he approached Alden B. Dow with an idea to build an unconventional farm house on his 400-acre farm. Myers used the words of Henry David...
As President of the Herbert H. and Grace A. Dow Foundation, Alden B. Dow wrote a letter to Midland’s city manager in 1950 expressing the Foundation’s wish to finance the design and construction of a new public library to be situated in what then was the family’s...