The Pointes: five towns on one famous shore
The Grosse Pointes share Lake St. Clair's most storied shoreline — Lake Shore Road, the Edsel and Eleanor Ford House, and a century of lakefront civic life.
The drive up Lake Shore Road is one of Michigan’s signature miles — water on one side, hundred-year trees and great lawns on the other. It belongs to the five small cities that share the name Grosse Pointe. French farmers named this “fat point” of land three centuries ago. Detroit’s auto aristocracy made it famous, building estates along the lake. The crown survivor is the Edsel and Eleanor Ford House in Grosse Pointe Shores. It’s a National Historic Landmark designed like a Cotswold village, open to everyone for tours, lakeside dining, and concerts on the lawn.
What keeps the Pointes more livable than precious is the civic equipment. The cities run their own lakefront parks with pools and marinas. The War Memorial hosts everything from lectures to sailing camp in a lakeside mansion. And the walkable shopping villages — the Hill, the Village, Kercheval in the Park — work like small-town main streets stacked along one shore. Harper Woods tucks in behind as the approachable doorway to it all. Old money built it. Ordinary daily life is what it’s for now.