When Chase Robinson, director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art, lectures at the Detroit Institute of Arts on June 7, his topic is sure to draw a few quizzical looks. Entitled “Detroit and Charles Lang Freer’s Vision for a National Museum,” the discussion centers on an overlooked Motor City masterpiece, its owner, and his influence on the nation, says William Colburn, director of the Freer House, Wayne State University in the city’s Cultural Center.
“It’s a Detroit story that’s untold,” he says of the house and the little-known facts behind the railroad magnate’s gift to the Smithsonian and the nation. Over the past 15 years as the house’s director, Colburn has aimed to bring that story to light.
“This street is just loaded with history and is unlike any other in the city,” Colburn says of the house’s location on East Ferry Street in the shadow of the DIA. Dating back to the late 19th5 century, the street still includes the best surviving examples of Victorian architecture in Detroit, according to Colburn. Beyond the residences of Charles Lang Freer — whom Colburn calls “a major cultural force” in Detroit at the time — and his friend, business partner Frank J. Hecker, who owned an adjacent house on Ferry and Woodward Avenue, the street is also home to important landmarks of Jewish, African American, and other cultural history.
Shingle-Style Simplicity
Built in 1892, Freer’s house was designed by Philadelphia architect Wilson Eyre Jr. Considered to be Michigan’s most significant remaining example of shingle-style architecture, the house’s design was a collaboration between Freer and architect Eyre. Noted American artists Dwight W. Tryon, Thomas W. Dewing, and Abbott H. Thayer, and Maria Oakey Dewing created original paintings and decorative paint treatments for the house interior. In The Charles L. Freer Residence: The Original Freer Gallery of Art, author Thomas Brunk writes, “Freer orchestrated a union of the highly refined aesthetic paintings and interiors with Eyre’s consummate simplicity of design and love of natural materials to create a home where Freer found refuge from the ugliness of his industrial life as a railroad freight car manufacturer. For Freer art was not an extravagance, but a necessity.”
The Original Freer Gallery of Art
Freer’s early interest in art can be traced to the Detroit Art Loan Exhibition of 1883, which featured works owned by business associates. He made his first recorded art purchase the following year and was later introduced to the etchings of James McNeill Whistler, which would have an important influence on his life and work. His original focus, according to Colburn, was on European prints, but shifted to contemporary American art, and later traditional Asian and Middle Eastern art, reflecting his growing global network and worldly interests.
“He was one of the most cosmopolitan people in Detroit and the nation at the time,” Colburn says.
Freer eventually built one of the world’s best collections of Asian art, including important examples of ceramics, paintings, metalwork, and sculpture, from Japan, China, Korea, India, and the Middle East, as well as American art and biblical manuscripts.
In May 1906, he signed a deed of gift, bequeathing all of it to the Smithsonian upon his death. Now part of the Smithsonian Museum of Asian Art, the Freer Gallery of Art also contains the world’s largest collection of Whistler’s works, including the famed Peacock Room, originally housed with the rest of his collection in the house on Ferry until it was moved to the Smithsonian between 1920 and 1922. The Freer Gallery of Art opened in Washington D.C. in 1923.
People often wonder why Freer didn’t give the collection to the DIA, Colburn says. He traces that to the plans for Washington at the time and the development of a national mall that hoped to integrate the highest ideals of art and architecture.
“Rather than see it as Detroit’s loss, we should see it as Detroit’s gift to the nation and Freer’s gift to the American people,” says Colburn. At the time, the Smithsonian was a science-based institution. “Freer’s gift and vision literally transformed the Smithsonian into an arts institution,” he adds.
The collection essentially turned into the country’s first national art museum, as well as the first art museum to be built on the National Mall.
Continuing Challenges
Why, then, has Freer’s Detroit home — “which he approached as if it were an art object itself,” according to Colburn — been largely forgotten? Colburn traces that to a number of factors. Owned by Wayne State University since 1983, the house has functioned as headquarters of the Merrill Palmer Skillman Institute since 1920. Rooms that once displayed masterpieces of American, Asian, and other art now house desks, conference rooms, and offices, as well as public spaces.
“Merrill Palmer has been a very good and caring steward of the building,” says Colburn. “Wayne State has growing recognition of the significance of the treasure that it owns, but there is still a lot more to do to fulfill its potential.”
Detroit, he adds, also “doesn’t traditionally have a great track record for honoring and recognizing [its] own history.”
Another challenge is that the house is not accessible to the public except during lectures and special events. Although the garden, which was revitalized in 2018, is open to the public for viewing and contains plantings that reflect Freer’s originals and his ideals of harmony, simplicity, and beauty.
On the Horizon
Colburn is hopeful that the celebration of America’s 250th anniversary, Robinson’s upcoming lecture, and a recently received $550,000 in federal funds to support the house’s much-needed roofing and masonry repairs will draw attention back to the building and its ongoing importance to both the city and the country.
As part of the observance, the Freer Gallery of Art, National Museum of Asian Art will also unveil The Making of a Museum in June, which will be on view for more than a year and include recognition and an explanation of Freer’s Detroit roots upon the institution.
“Our museum is what it is because of the extraordinary philanthropy of Mr. Freer,” Robinson says. “The story of Mr. Freer, the Freer House, and Detroit … is a really important story, particularly as we celebrate America’s 250th.”
Things are moving in the right direction, says Colburn, with awareness of Freer’s contributions and the building’s historical importance “finally taking hold within Wayne State, Detroit, and Washington. We’re hoping we can leverage all of it to ensure the house is properly maintained and more accessible, and give more people the chance to see where it all started.”
Chase Robinson’s lecture is scheduled for 2 p.m. on June 7 at the Detroit Institute of Arts. The lecture is free to the public with museum admission. Find more information about the Freer House at mpsi.wayne.edu.
This story originally appeared in the May 2026 issue of Hour Detroit magazine. To read more, pick up a copy of Hour Detroit at a local retail outlet. Click here to get our digital edition.
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