Matilda Dodge Wilson Building Plans and Drawings collection

Matilda Rausch was born in Walkerton, Canada in 1883 of German immigrant parents. One year later her parents moved to Detroit where her father owned and operated a saloon and her mother ran a boarding house. In 1902, she found employment as a secretary to John and Horace Dodge in their automotive parts company. Five years later, Matilda married John Dodge, with whom she had 3 children. For 13 years they lived in a large home on Boston Boulevard in Detroit. After John Dodge passed away in 1920, Matilda married again – to Alfred Wilson, in June 1925. Together they developed Meadow Brook Farms in Rochester and built a new home, Meadow Brook Hall.

75 Boston Boulevard (Arden Park)

This house was constructed for John Dodge in 1906. At the time, John and his brother Horace Dodge had grown wealthy as a maker of automobile parts. John Dodge was also a vice-president and partner in the Ford Motor Company. Following his divorce and remarriage to his secretary, Matilda Rausch, he moved into the home in 1907. In 1913, the Dodge brothers separated from Ford, founding the Dodge Brothers Motor Car Company. John and Matilda lived in the home with their three children, Frances, Daniel, and Anna Margaret, until John’s death in 1920.

The Elizabethan (Tudor) style house was designed by Smith, Hinchman & Grylls. Started in 1855 by Sheldon Smith, this Detroit architectural firm became Field, Hinchman & Smith in 1903 and Smith, Hinchman & Grylls in 1906. It thrived in the booming Detroit region and was one of the first to include both architects and engineers.

Meadowbrook Farm

In 1907 John Dodge purchased 320 wooded acres near Rochester as a summer retreat for his new family. He would later purchase eight other farms in this area, eventually creating the 1400-acre Meadowbrook Farm. (Tonnancour p. 127)

223 Lake Shore, Grosse Pointe Farms

In 1918, John Dodge commissioned Smith, Hinchman & Grylls to build what was intended to be the largest residence in the Detroit Area on an 11 acre lot along Lake Saint Clair in Grosse Pointe Farms. This would bring his family closer to that of his brother Horace’s Rose Terrace. The enormous house was intended to have 110 rooms and 24 bathrooms. It would also have a great garden, to be designed by renowned landscape architect Charles Wellford Leavitt, a large swimming pool, green houses, and a boat well on the other side of Lake Shore Road, connected to the main house by a tunnel.

John Dodge died of complications from pneumonia in January 1920, followed by his brother Horace in December of the same year; both were buried in a mausoleum in Woodlawn Cemetery in Detroit. In 1923 Matilda sold the Boston Boulevard house to move into a 3-story house near her sister-in-law’s Rose Terrace. The John Dodge house was never completed. Only the greenhouse became fully operational and was later sold to her head gardener (Tonnancour, p. 128).

Meadow Brook Hall, Rochester

In June 1925, Matilda Dodge married again. She and her new husband, Alfred Wilson, began planning their own home, to be built at Meadow Brook Farm. They again commissioned Smith, Hinchman & Grylls to design a 110-room, 88,000 square-foot house in the Tudor revival style. Groundbreaking ceremonies for Meadow Brook Hall were held on October 19, 1926 – Matilda’s 43rd birthday. The nearly $4 million Hall was completed in 1929. The new house incorporated many details that were removed from the unfinished Lake Shore building, which remained abandoned until it was dismantled in 1941.