Meadow Brook Hall is a 110-room Tudor Revival landmark

Meadow Brook Hall looks enough like an English manor that people often call it a castle. The more precise description is an 88,000-square-foot, 110-room Tudor Revival country house. Matilda Dodge Wilson and her second husband, Alfred Wilson, built it on their Meadow Brook estate between 1926 and 1929.

Matilda had worked as a secretary for Dodge Brothers and married company cofounder John Dodge in 1907. He died in 1920. When Dodge Brothers was sold in 1925, the recorded $146 million was the price of the company, not a personal check that should be assigned entirely to Matilda. Later that year she married Alfred, a lumber broker. Their new home cost about $4 million to build.

Architect William E. Kapp of Smith, Hinchman & Grylls designed the house with English precedents but almost entirely American materials and craftsmanship. Inside are 24 fireplaces, 39 individually designed chimneys, carved wood and plaster, leaded glass, and rooms made for both family life and large parties. The spectacle is real; it does not need a floating inflation conversion or an unsourced wealth ranking to carry it.

Its landmark status is about more than size. MiPlace calls the property an outstanding and unusually intact example of a 1920s American country estate, including the house, farm buildings, gardens, and landscape. It became a National Historic Landmark in 2012.

The estate also became the foundation of a public university. In 1957 the Wilsons’ gift to Michigan State included Meadow Brook Hall, about 1,400 acres, and $2 million for the school that became Oakland University. The hall is now a public museum on the Rochester Hills side of the campus, with tours offered through the year.