Historic Cottages of Mackinac Island

by Lea Ann Sterling, Susan Stites

Historical Cottages of Mackinac Island captures the romance of the cottage community on Mackinac Island, Michigan through insiteful text and stunning photos of seventy-three cottages built between 1870 and 1910. Historic photos of Queen Anne, Shingle Style and Carpenter Gothic architecture are from private collections and the Michigan State Historic Park's archives. The human history of each cottage is as interesting as the its visual detail as Stites and Sterling outline the biographies of the original cottage owners.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Architecture

144 pages, Hardcover

First published June 1, 2001

Reviews

[David Fulmer · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the most comprehensive book you can find on the cottages of Mackinac Island. It covers the East Bluff, the West Bluff, Hubbard’s Annex, and other areas of the island where cottages were built around the turn of the 20th century. It’s basically an encyclopedia of the cottages and their owners and includes a picture of each and usually a page long biography of the person it was built for and sometimes information about the builder, and architect, along with a description of the architectural features and style. Sometimes there are historical photos of the cottage and contemporary newspaper accounts of who stayed there and when. Reading it cover to cover can get a bit tiresome if only because there seems to be one lumber baron or distillery owner from Chicago or Indiana after another but it does give an excellent account of the culture that sprang up on Mackinac Island once the federal government (and later the state government) started leasing public land for the construction of summer homes. The research that was done for this book is very comprehensive and it’s an amazing portrait of a midwestern summer retreat circa 1900, a nostalgic, historical and well-illustrated biography of an island.