A 110-Room Tudor Castle Built by One of the Richest Women in the World

Tucked onto the campus of Oakland University in Rochester is a genuine castle — an 88,000-square-foot, 110-room Tudor-revival mansion that ranks among the finest historic homes in America. It’s called Meadow Brook Hall, and the woman who built it has one of the great Michigan rags-to-riches stories.

Her name was Matilda Dodge Wilson. She started as a secretary at the Dodge brothers’ machine shop. She married one of the brothers, John Dodge, who (with his brother Horace) built the Dodge automobile empire. When John died in 1920, and then the brothers’ company was sold in 1925, Matilda and her sister-in-law walked away with around $146 million — making Matilda, at that moment, one of the wealthiest women in the world. She remarried a lumber broker named Alfred Wilson, and together, between 1926 and 1929, they poured roughly $4 million (well over $50 million today) into building Meadow Brook Hall.

And what they built is staggering. The mansion has 110 rooms, 24 fireplaces, 39 chimneys, hand-carved woodwork, a ceiling sculpted like artwork, a secret staircase, and even a beauty parlor built right into the house. It was constructed entirely with American materials and craftsmen, at the absolute height of Gilded Age automotive wealth — and then, remarkably, it was barely changed afterward, so it survives as one of the best-preserved examples of its kind in the country.

Matilda’s final act of generosity is the best part: she and Alfred donated the entire 1,400-acre estate and $2 million to found Oakland University. The castle she built now sits on the campus she created.