113-year-old west side Grand Rapids home earns rare historic designation

113-year-old west side Grand Rapids home earns rare historic designation
Built in 1911 for Irving and Olive Dean, the house locally known as Mayflower Place was recently listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Credit: Courtesy of Frank and Melissa Patis

Frank Patis still can’t believe the house he grew up admiring from the sidewalk every day is now his to love and preserve in perpetuity.

Along with his wife, Melissa Patis, Frank bought the Irving Andrew and Olive Crane Kendall Dean House, better known as Mayflower Place, for $395,000 in 2018 from previous owners Brenda Pawl and the late Dr. Lawrence Pawl.

The Michigan State Historic Preservation Office announced Feb. 7 that the four-bedroom home built on Grand Rapids’ west side in 1911 was one of 19 properties successfully listed on the National Register of Historic Places last year.

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The designation came on July 20, after the Patises spent about a year working on the application.

Historical home photo
This historic photo taken in the 1910s shows Mayflower Place when it was new. Credit: Courtesy of Frank and Melissa Patis

Frank Patis, a nurse at Edison Christian Health Center just a few blocks from the house, said he’s been fascinated by Mayflower Place since his childhood in the Westside Connection neighborhood where it sits. He used to walk past it every day on his way to school, and said it’s still “hard to believe” that he owns it now.

“I (toured) the house when I was 16 in high school, and I thought, ‘Boy, this would be nice to live here.’ And then like 50 years later, here we are,” he said.

State Historic Preservation Officer Ryan Schumaker told Crain’s Grand Rapids Business the home earned its spot on the Register for its unicorn status among homes built during the period.

Mayflower Place aerial
The home was listed on the National Register thanks in part to its curious blend of architectural styles: Classical Revival on the outside and Arts and Crafts on the inside. Credit: Courtesy of Bev Boerman

“The bulk of the justification for the nomination was based on the unique blend of the Classical Revival style and Arts and Crafts-style Foursquare,” he said. “That was part of the consideration and part of the narrative for it being elevated to the National Register.”

The home is only the sixth single-family dwelling in Grand Rapids that’s not in a historic district to be added to the National Register.

The others are the Mathias J. Alten House and Studio listed in 2009; the President Gerald R. Ford Jr. Boyhood Home in 1995; the Augustus Paddock House that houses Mangiamo in 1985; and the Eliphalet H. Turner House and Abram W. Pike House in 1970.

Mayflower Place living room
The interior of the house is finished more simply than the outside, in keeping with the Arts and Crafts style popular at the time. Credit: Courtesy of Bev Boerman

An ‘unusual combination’

Fireplace tile
The lone surviving nod to Olive Dean’s ancestors who came over on the Mayflower is this tile above the hearth that depicts the famous English ship. Credit: Courtesy of Frank and Melissa Patis

The home was nicknamed Mayflower Place because original owner Olive Dean’s ancestors sailed to America on the Mayflower in 1620. Proud of her heritage, she had architect Frank Payne Allen include a single ceramic tile in the home’s living room fireplace depicting the ship. The tile and red brick Craftsman surround has survived at least a half-dozen ownership changes since 1911.

The Patises hired historians Valerie van Heest and William Lafferty, of Holland-based Lafferty van Heest & Associates, to gather information on the house and apply for the historic designation.

As they wrote in their application, the house presents one face to the world and another to those who step inside.

The exterior is in keeping with the Classical Revival style, “with a centered portico supported by paired Corinthian columns, symmetrical fenestration and (a) broken pediment front door surround,” they wrote.

But the interior is “finished in simple woodwork, with panel doors and built-in cabinetry” aligning with the tenets of the Arts and Crafts movement that flourished in the U.S. and Europe between 1880 and 1920.

Mayflower Place dining room
The dining room has a built-in, nearly floor-to-ceiling canted china cabinet. Credit: Courtesy of Bev Boerman

“The house, in its unusual combination of exterior and interior design approaches, outwardly reflects the reverence the Deans held for their colonial ancestors while inwardly reflects a dominant form of interior design of the period,” van Veest and Lafferty wrote.

The effect is a place that awes passersby but is cozy and practical for its inhabitants.

“This may not be surprising considering who the Deans were, an upper middle-class couple who may have considered such an interior appropriate as private and entertaining space for their station in life, especially so in Grand Rapids,” which was home to so many Arts and Crafts-style furniture designers and manufacturers, they said in the National Register application.

Mayflower Place owners
All of the Mayflower Place owners over the years have kept these portraits of the home’s original occupants, Irving and Olive Dean. Credit: Courtesy of Frank and Melissa Patis

The people behind the home

Olive and Irving Dean married in 1883, according to van Heest and Lafferty. He worked as an accountant for the Grand Rapids and Indiana Railroad until opening his own accounting firm in 1908. Like so many others in Grand Rapids, Olive Dean came from a family of furniture makers. She also was an active member of the Daughters of the American Revolution.

Olive inherited half of her brother’s estate in 1910, enabling them to hire Allen to design Mayflower Place. Allen was primarily a commercial architect, though he did publish a popular catalog of house plans in the 1890s, and he later designed the Felt Mansion in Laketown Township near Saugatuck, which was listed on the National Register in 1996.

The Deans never had children, and Irving died in 1927. According to former homeowner Brenda Pawl, when Olive died in 1929, she left the home not to a relative, but to a neighbor.

“When Mrs. Dean took ill, her neighbor, Mrs. (Leonard J.) Ritzema took care of her. And it was my understanding that the house was deeded to her family because of that,” Pawl said.

Leonard Ritzema was then owner of the former Ritzema Department Store. Though further details are murky, the house appears to have changed hands a couple more times until the late Dr. Lawrence Pawl, former medical director of Hospice Grand Rapids (later absorbed by Hospice of Michigan), bought it in 1993.

He married Brenda Pawl at the house in January 1996, and they happily spent the next 22 years there. 

Gated entryway
The house is set on 2.5 acres and is surrounded by mature non-native trees and plants, which lends extra privacy and peace. Credit: Courtesy of Bev Boerman

 

Pawl said she felt an instant connection to the place. “That property is so sacred, it’s so special,” she said, noting that the gated driveway opens onto 2.5 acres that feel “magical” and private, despite being located along busy Leonard Street.

That’s partly because the Deans, who were globetrotters, brought home nonnative trees and plants from all over the world to create a lush, sheltered oasis surrounding the house. 

During her years at Mayflower Place, Pawl cared for the gardens and installed a seven-circuit flagstone labyrinth in the yard that she walked as part of her mindfulness practice. She also kept beehives onsite.

Home labyrinth
One of former owner Brenda Pawl’s contributions to the property is this seven-circuit labyrinth she used for mindfulness practice. Credit: Courtesy of Bev Boerman

As her husband’s heart condition worsened, and he could no longer climb stairs, they were forced to sell.

Enter Frank and Melissa Patis. They were about to buy another home, but when the longtime west side residents heard Mayflower Place was on the market, they pivoted to buy Frank’s dream home.

Dr. Pawl, who went by Larry, was a history lover until his death in 2020, and he wanted to make sure Mayflower Place would go to someone who would promise to preserve the home as he and Brenda had.

“We wrote a letter when we were trying to buy the house about why we liked the house, and he picked our letter because he knew that we would care about the property as he did,” Frank Patis said.

Mayflower Place home features
Mayflower Place is full of artistic details, from stained glass to woodwork and more. Credit: Courtesy of Bev Boerman

‘Special’ characteristics of the home

The Patises and Brenda Pawl were grateful the Deans left behind a photo album in the house that documents their travels and sheds light on who they were. Previous owners also passed along the two framed black-and-white portraits of Irving and Olive that hang in the front stairway, and Allen’s original blueprints for the home.

Many of the original features remain, like the woodwork, hardwood floors, doors, panels, built-in cabinets, fireplace, and stained-glass windows.

Upstairs floor plan
The main staircase curves around a second-floor hallway that overlooks the lower floor. Credit: Courtesy of Frank and Melissa Patis

“What makes it special is the design, the architecture outside, with the Greek Revival pillars and the stucco (sheathed exterior), and if you go inside the home, there’s a lot of Arts and Crafts woodwork,” Frank Patis said.

His favorite room is the entryway, which features the main staircase with an oak “swirl” newel and original railed bannister that continues up to a landing and a second set of stairs and curves around a second-floor hallway that overlooks the lower floor.

Both the Patises and Pawl love that the main staircase is one of two.

“The back stairs area was fun when kids and the grandkids would come over — they would run all the way up the front steps and then they’d run down through the back stairway, where there’s a dumbwaiter,” Pawl said.

Melissa Patis, who’s a graphic designer for Meijer Inc., said her favorite part of the home is the dining room, which has a built-in, nearly floor-to-ceiling canted china cabinet and a small butler’s pantry that connects the dining room to the kitchen.

“I keep my arts and crafts supplies there,” she said. “And then we also have a couple of stained glass windows that are pretty: upstairs, one in the bathroom, and then one that’s in the front of the house.”

Butler’s pantry
A small butler’s pantry connects the dining room to the kitchen. Credit: Courtesy of Bev Boerman

Future possibilities

Schumaker, at the State Historic Preservation Office, said getting a home listed on the National Register is an “honorific designation” that does not come with any requirements for preservation of specific elements, unlike for homes that are located in historic districts like Grand Rapids’ Heritage Hill, Cherry Hill, Fairmount Square, Wealthy Theatre and Heartside.

But he said it does ensure a stronger likelihood of protection against demolition if the federal government were to undertake a project in the neighborhood. And in order for a future owner to demolish the home, they would need to get it delisted from the National Register.

Schumaker said other than prestige, the biggest benefit to listing a home on the Register in Michigan is the opportunity to apply for state historic tax credits to offset the cost of restoring the home, if needed.

“There is a category within that program that allows for owner-occupied properties to access a 25% income tax credit toward qualified rehabilitation expenses,” he said.

For Frank and Melissa Patis, the home is practically perfect, and they don’t envision major changes other than paint colors.

“We’re caretakers for the next owner,” Frank Patis said, “whoever that may be.”

Mayflower Place
Credit: Courtesy of Frank and Melissa Patis

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