Hugh Tallman Keyes (1888 – 1963) was a noted early to mid-20th-century American architect.
He designed grand estates for "the great and the wealthy of the Detroit area" (such as Ford, Fisher, Bugas, Scherer, Stroh, Knudsen, Pingree and indirectly Taubman, Hermelin, and Caldwell), and "his work appeared in national magazines for decades." He is considered "one of the most prolific and versatile architects of the period," and significant in the Art Deco and mid-century modern architectural movement in Detroit.
Personal Keyes was married to Faye Elizabeth Keyes, and had two daughters and two sons. He lived most of his adult life in Birmingham, Michigan, and was "a life member of the Detroit Boat Club."
Career
Keyes studied architecture at Harvard University (where his drawings won an honorable mention in the "Intercollegiate Architecture Competition, the most important event in the collegiate architecture world") and subsequently worked under architect C. Howard CraneAmerican Architects Directory. R.R. Bowker (American Institute of Architects). First edition, 1956. and was an associate of Albert Kahn ("the foremost industrial architect of the United States")—where he worked on Kahn's "signature project" the Neo-Renaissance Detroit Athletic Club. Keyes also graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy and served as an ensign in the Navy during World War I and as a major in the Army during World War II.
He travelled extensively in England, France, Italy, and Switzerland, all of which influenced the development of his architectural style.
Keyes opened his own office in Detroit in 1921, and his career spanned the Roaring Twenties, the Great Depression, and into the post war boom mid-century modern period. Keyes's style ranged from Tudor Revival (the most ubiquitous style in the early 20th-century metropolitan area) to rustic Swiss chalets, but he is most noted for the Georgian/Palladian and symmetrical bow-fronted wings, wrought iron balconies, and hipped roofs (often with parapets or mansards) of the related Regency style of architecture.
Keyes's houses were known for being "built for the ages" (typically of "concrete and steel construction") and devoid of frills or affectation, his "free use of classical forms" done "without trickery or ostentation." He was particularly influential in the Art Deco movement for which Detroit would become renowned, and was at the forefront in the area in introducing the streamline moderne designs of the movement in the 1930s.
Keyes's designs often included glass-walled conservatories, exploiting natural light from hillsides or lakesides. He was one of the Detroit architects that frequently employed architectural sculptor Corrado Parducci to embellish his designs.Kvaran & Lockey, A Field Guide to Architectural Sculpture in America, unpublished manuscript
By the end of his life, Keyes's works were considered some of the most significant in the area. One of his most notable works, the Bugas House (or Woodland, see below), was featured by the Detroit Free Press in 1966 as "Wonder number one" of its "Wonders of Bloomfield Hills"—along with Frank Lloyd Wright's Gregor S. Affleck House and George Booth's Cranbrook. Several of Keyes's designs (specifically the Bugas/Taubman, Knudsen/Hermelin, and Harris houses) have made lists of the most expensive homes in Michigan.
Keyes played an active role in the creation of the Cranbrook Institute of Science in 1933 (in the vicinity of which he would create many residences), and was one of its original honorary members.
Commenting on the technological and aesthetic trend in modern architecture, Keyes observed:
Principal works At the end of his career, Keyes identified his "principal works" as the John Bugas residence (Woodland), the Louis Goad residence, the Max Fisher residence, and the Benson Ford residence (Woodley Green).American Architects Directory. R.R. Bowker (American Institute of Architects). Second edition, 1962. Also considered significant among his works are the Robert Scherer residence, the Robert Hudson Tannahill residence, the Semon Knudsen residence, the Charles Welch residence, and the Lloyd Buhs residence.
Woodland
Vaughan Rd., Bloomfield Hills (1959)
Client: John S. Bugas
Style: Regency, Second Empire
Secluded far beyond its high split-stone walls, groves of spruce and birch, and private winding drive, WoodlandF&ES working paper, Issues 7-10. Yale University School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. 1978. is one of the last and the most published of Keyes's houses. The Regency manor house features French (Second Empire) elements such as a copper hipped and mansard roofline and Keyes's signature symmetrical bow-fronted wings and wrought iron balconies. Pedimented gables and extending portico-connected wings also evoke the Palladian style, while the house's elegant mansard, white painted brick construction, leaded oval glass front windows and soaring central window interrupting the roofline are distinctive markers of the more French-influenced Regency Moderne style (or Hollywood Regency style). The south side of the house features Keyes's natural light-filled garden room (conservatory), open living room, and library. It sits on a wooded knoll overlooking the country estate's expansive ornamental gardens and orchards and adjacent Eliel Saarinen-designed Cranbrook Kingswood (called by The New York Times "one of the greatest campuses ever created anywhere in the world"). A list of renowned designers have contributed to Woodland's "pedigreed architecture": Eliel's son Eero Saarinen was at the time renovating his own Victorian house nearby on Vaughan Road and worked informally with Keyes; French designer Andrée Putman—"the doyenne of contemporary French design" who created hotels and homes (though "Putman rarely accept[ed] commissions for private residences except for very close friends, such as Karl Lagerfeld [and the Taubmans]") in Paris, New York, Brussels, and Monte Carlo (as well as designed the Air France Concorde interior)—designed seven of Woodland's bathrooms and added an enormous spa with antique Italian glass mosaic tiles and a domed ceiling with a "luminous cornice" ("Putman's baths are legendary," according to Architectural Digest, what she called "the core of a home"); and William Hodgins, "one of the deans of American interior decoration," later made additional and notable Regency interior modifications. Woodland has been the home of a succession of prominent Michigan businessmen: John S. BugasMichigan Historical Collections. Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan. Retrieved on February 3, 2013. (local FBI head and second in command at Ford Motor Company behind Henry Ford II—hence the Ford-built, detached industrial power house serving the main house, similar to those of Henry's and Edsel's houses), for whom it was originally designed by Keyes; (real estate heir) Robert S. Taubman, whose extensive renovations were featured in Vogue magazine (Woodland is also known as the Taubman House); and (hedge fund manager) Mark W. Spitznagel, its present owner.
Goad House
Lone Pine Rd., Bloomfield Hills (1955)
Client: Louis Clifford Goad
Style: Regency, Georgian
As the center of industrial wealth in the region shifted from Grosse Pointe to Bloomfield Hills, so too did Keyes's projects. Keyes had already been working in Bloomfield Hills (starting in the 1930s—see Welch and Lake Park House below) when Louis Clifford Goad (Executive Vice President of General Motors Company) hired him to design his estate there. Goad House was featured in Fortune magazine in 1955 (alongside projects of Philip Johnson, Edward Durell Stone, and David Adler) as an example of the first resurgence of Americans "building big expensive houses again" since the Great Depression (with reference to Keyes designing several at the time). Goad House is privately nestled off of evergreen-lined Lone Pine Road, within view of historic Christ Church and down the road from Albert Kahn's Cranbrook House. The twelve-room house incorporates Keyes's signature symmetrical bow-fronted wings, clean white brick façade and wrought iron railings, and includes contrasting French shutters and a Palladian, Ionic colonnaded and pedimented front portico with spiral volutes. Fortune said that "Mrs. Goad's desire for southern-style pillars and white-painted brick was gratified by architect Hugh Keyes. As in many other big houses, the formal living room and dining room are seldom used; the family lives in the library or on the porch (conservatory), usually eats in the breakfast room. The house has an ultra-mechanized kitchen installed by G.M." The integrated conservatory overlooks the south sloping grounds, with an unusual oval, stone, and "terraced garden and wooded section which lead to a stream," a tributary of the River Rouge. The exterior of the house was a filming location in the 2013 film The Ides of March, as the senator's mansion. (Keyes's McLouth House, a block away, was used as the formal interior of the house in the film.)Complete list of filming locations for George Clooney’s ‘Ides of March’. OLV. Retrieved April 20, 2015. Goad died in the house in 1979.
Fisher House
Fairway Hills Dr., Franklin (1955)
Client: Max M. Fisher
Style: Regency, Georgian
Fisher House is "a white-brick Georgian with a sprawling garden that borders the eighth fairway of the Franklin Hills Country Club." The gracious and understated mansion is a fraternal twin to Keyes's Goad House, from its clean white brick façade to its front pillars, layout and proportions. Over the Tuscan-colonnaded and entablatured front portico is Keyes's central triangular pediment with ornate cornices. A tall, iron-railed transom window tops the front door. The house's simple symmetry and proportions are broken up by a large garage to one side. Low lanterned walls of matching construction to the house frame the front of the property. It was built for Max M. Fisher (Forbes 400 member and "oil and real estate magnate") as his main residence. (Fisher was a very close friend of fellow Keyes-client John Bugas.At John Bugas’ Ranch. The Max M. Fisher Archives. Retrieved December 10, 2014.) The house contains another Keyes-signature "glass-walled garden room" where Fisher conducted his business at home, overlooking the pool and golf course to the south. Fisher was a major supporter of Israel (its "most successful fund raiser" and "the single most important lay person in the American Jewish community") and close Middle East advisor to Republican Presidents Nixon, Ford, Reagan, G.H.W. Bush, and G.W. Bush—and for many years the estate was guarded by a White House security detail. Fisher died in his house in 2005.
Scherer House
Lake Shore Rd., Grosse Pointe Shores (1951)
Client: Robert Pauli Scherer
Style: Regency
Scherer House is a rambling, split-level design of white brick construction. The house forms a crescent (typical to the Regency style), with a dramatic open floor plan with walls of glass facing Lake St. Clair. In the center of the house is a sweeping staircase and soaring two-story window. The extensive gardens and grounds are elevated and tiered down to the lake. The estate was designed by Keyes for Robert Pauli Scherer. (Scherer—at the age of 24 in 1930—invented the rotary die encapsulation process, which revolutionized the pharmaceutical world and helped raise worldwide health and nutritional standards. He created a multibillion-dollar company around his invention, and his experimental machine ended up in the Smithsonian Institution in 1955.) The house contained a fully equipped metalworking and woodworking shop in the basement. Scherer House was later razed by a new owner—a very rare occurrence for a Keyes house.
Hudson Tannahill House
Lee Gate Ln., Grosse Pointe Farms (1947)
Client: Robert Hudson Tannahill
Style: Regency, Georgian