Where gardens once grew: The two-story brick house at 1411 Iroquois, which sold for $980,000, is in the Woodbury neighborhood, often described as “Burns Park adjacent.” Built in 1939, the house dates to the forty-five year period when the U-M Botanical Gardens were situated off Iroquois. (They moved to their current location on Dixboro Rd. in 1962.) The old botanical gardens themselves were bulldozed as houses went up, but according to professor A.G. Norman in a 1962 Ann Arbor News article, “many of the trees which later made this area so attractive” were planted about 1916.
Flashback: The Botanical Gardens on Iroquois
Tiny, midsized, and sprawling: 3943 Helen, which sold for $100,000, is a 1200-square-foot-ranch from the seventies that still wears its original porch awning and windows like a badge of honor. 421 Brookside, sold for $312,500, stretches 1933 square feet with roominess not often seen in ranches. And 2958 Shady Ln.—which sold for $116,750 on December 29 and then again on January 29 for $195,000—is, at just over 800 square feet, very compact. What unites them? Lower-than-expected sales prices. Buyers saw something in them, perhaps imagining new potential for these familiar shapes.
A diamond in the woods: 341 Corrie feels like a house that doubles as a viewing platform among the trees. Designed by architect David Osler, the quad-level was shaped around its nearly two-acre, wooded Barton Hills site, with expansive windows and terraces and balconies overlooking the Huron River. This is classic Osler: as UMMA director Joe Rosa told MLive in 2014, “His houses situate you in the landscape and become viewing devices for the landscape.” Described in its listing as “a diamond in the rough,” the home’s architectural pedigree and renovation potential helped drive its January sale at $1.2 million.
Dig These Digs: The house at 1540 Jones, which sold for $665,000, appears to have missed the memo about being built in 1950. In a time marked by practical postwar designs, this 2-bed, 2-bath opted for stone walls, exposed beams, stained glass, and a layout that feels more storybook than suburban. The spaces rise and turn instead of spreading out in the ranch style of its peers, and there are three fireplaces—as if the builder were planning for cozy, tranquil evenings in the long Michigan winters. This house reads less like a product of its era and more like a personal project, indifferent to midcentury trends.