The Motown Mansion at 918 West Boston Boulevard was the home of Berry Gordy Jr., who owned it from the late 1960s until 2002. Nels Michelson, a Danish immigrant who made his money in lumber, built the house in 1917 on about 2.2 acres in what is now the Boston-Edison Historic District. A later owner, Leonard Young, added a separate athletic building with a swimming pool, a bowling alley, a gymnasium and a billiard room. The house has gone by several names over its life, among them the Michelson Mansion, the L.A. Young Estate and Gordy Manor. Boston-Edison was the neighbourhood the first motor fortunes chose. Henry Ford moved into a new house at Edison and Second in 1908 and lived there until he left for Fair Lane, and his early partners James Couzens and Horace Rackham built close by, while John Dodge and Alexander Malcomson lived next door in Arden Park. Half a century later the district's most famous address belonged to the man who had applied the logic of the assembly line to pop music, a former line worker at Lincoln-Mercury who built his label a mile and a half south on West Grand Boulevard. Gordy bought the house before his company left Detroit, and he kept it for thirty years after the headquarters moved to Los Angeles in 1972. He sold it in 2002 to the attorney Cynthia Reaves.
Getting there
42.3851, -83.0931
Locations are approximate and may be inaccurate, on private land, or otherwise inaccessible. Check before you travel.
Hear it from the road
Whistlestop is an audio tour guide app that tells you this story automatically when you drive past. No searching, no tapping, nothing to ask.
