Learned, Charles G., House - Port Austin, MI - U.S. National Register of Historic Places on Waymarking.com

From the State of Michigan historical marker located at the Inn:
A native of New York, contractor Charles G. Learned helped build New York City's waterworks system and the Erie Canal. Around 1857, Learned and his brother-in-law purchased several thousand acres of pine land in Michigan's Thumb area. Two years later, Learned and his wife, Maria Raymond, came to Port Austin and bought a house and three acres at this site. Learned's cutover pine land became a 2,000-acre farm where he prospered as an agriculturalist and dairy farmer. With profits from his lumbering and farming enterprises Learned enlarged and updated this house in the French Second Empire style. In the 1860s, Ohio congressman, later president, James A. Garfield, a family friend, was a frequent guest here. From 1931 to 1979 the house served as the Mayes Inn and Tower Hotel. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1984.

Located in Huron County at the tip of Michigan's Thum:O, the Village of Port Austin is an old lumbering community of about 900 residents that today serves an area focused on agriculture and tourism. The Charles G. Learned House stands three blocks south o£ the Lake Huron/Saginaw Bay shoreline on the major north-south road into town; the home's three-and- one-half-story height makes it a prominent feature on the landscape. Upon first glance, the house seems easily reco9'nized as a French Second Empire-styled home that is unique to its small, rural community and an architectural highlight of the Thumb Region. Upon clos-er physical inspection, however, the home is seen to have several generations of construction and styling and an evolution that can only be approximately- understood. The earliest components of the home probably were on the Learned property when Charles and his wife arrivedin Port Austin around 1859. Physical evidence does not clearly document whether one or both of the low, eastern sections of the home were extant at that time. To these modest one-and-one-half-story wood-framed and clapboarded components, however, the Learneds added a major addition around the time of their arrival and probably before 1866 when James A. Gar£ield, a family friend, visited Port Austin. This new two-and-one-half-story wood-framed and clapboard-sheathed addition provided twin sitting rooms and a front parlor on the first floor level and bedrooms on the second level. Probably detailed with the tall double hung sash, brackets, and hipped roofs of the popular Italianate styles, the home reflected the wealth and commercial success of the family. In the early 1870s when Charles Learned went into farming full time and became the region's outstanding agriculturalist, the home was further elaborated with a tower and, probably, a rich overlay of mansard roofs, brackets, and bay windows appropriate to French Second Empire styling. Maria and Charles Learned's son, Jonas, lived in the home with his family until 1931 and most likely added some additional decorative touches to the residence. After the home was sold, various property owners over the years used the residence as a tourist home, restaurant, and bar. While these adaptive reuses resulted in the installation of bathrooms, the addition of linoleum flooring, the refinishing of the bedrooms, and outside, the demolition of ancillary buildings and the use of asbestos siding on the main structure, the home remains visually intact today as an architecturally significant reminder of an important Port Austin Family. - NRHP Nomination Form

Street address: 8544 Lake St. Port Austin, MI USA 48467 County / Borough / Parish: Huron County Year listed: 1984 Historic (Areas of) Significance: Architecture, Industry, Commerce, Agriculture Periods of significance: 1875-1899, 1850-1874, 1825-1849 Historic function: Domestic Current function: Vacant/Not in Use Privately owned?: yes Primary Web Site: [Web Link] Secondary Website 1: [Web Link] Season start / Season finish: Not listed Hours of operation: Not listed Secondary Website 2: Not listed National Historic Landmark Link: Not listed

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Date Logged Log User Rating   05/31/2024 wildernessmama visited it