FRESH TAKE

A family turns to Lily Dierkes to help update their vintage 1970s house on the shore of Lake Michigan

ELIZABETH FAZZARE

On a westward-facing shore of Lake Michigan, a gabled roof appears to rise out of the dunes. Upon approach, a door, painted Benjamin Moore’s Million Dollar Red, is set back in a large front notch. Enter it, and the house underneath this cedar-shingled pitch slowly reveals a spectacular blue vista just out the back. Built in the early 1970s by local architect William Henry Kessler for Detroit stockbroker Walter O. Briggs III, son of the Detroit Tigers owner, this late-modernist vacation home was intended to be a good neighbor to nature; its roofline “echo[es] the profile of the landscape which sweeps up from the water’s edge to the tall trees behind,” described the 1977 Architectural Record Book of Vacation Houses, which featured the retreat on its cover. The lowest level…

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Architectural Digest (Digital) - 1 Issue, November 2024

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