Hugh T. Keyes

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." ) and subsequently worked under architect C. Howard Crane 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

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.

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:

Ridgeland

Lewiston Rd., Grosse Pointe (1924)

Client: Charles A. Dean

Style: Italianate

On a sloping ridge surrounded by giant oak trees lies Ridgeland, a rambling country villa in the Italianate style made of tawny bricks (rather than Italian stucco). "Designed by Keyes during the height of the roaring twenties, it provided a dramatic setting for large parties the wealthy Charles Dean (its original owner) was famous for hosting." The house informally sprawls backward asymmetrically down the hillside, folding back on itself so that "the house becomes part of the view from its own windows." With its expansive brick walls, outbuildings, and potting shed, "the house feels like its own enclosed community." (It is thought that a secret underground passageway exists from the main house to the garage.) The variously scaled rooms open up through French doors to slate patios, intimate gardens and stretches of lawn. Ridgeland's Italianate style is Keyes's first significant experiment with Palladianism, synthesized with picturesque aesthetics: low-pitched and hipped tile roofs, stained glass windows, arched doors and ceilings, loggias and balconies with wrought iron railings, a tower, and walls and beams painted with elaborate 14th-century Florentine motifs. (Ridgeland is also known as the Charles A. Dean House.)