On Saturday, the cities of Galion and Detroit are going to be joined in a way that hasn’t happened in over 120 years.

Representatives of Preserving Galion, Inc., the owner and restorer of the Bloomer and Nellie Gill House at 342 Harding Way West, will be making the two hour trip north to make a presentation at an event hosted by Preservation Detroit, Inc.. The talk will focus on the history of the house and its architect Louis Kamper.

Kamper was one of the leading architects of the early 20th century and was trained in one of the most important architectural firms of the period – McKim, Mead & White in New York City. The architect designed a handful of Neoclassical houses across the country, each patterned after his well-known Michigan Building at the 1901 Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo. After 120 years, the Gill House is the last such house which remains.

The Gill House has many of Kamper’s well-known design motifs, such as an oval dining room with corner china cabinet.

As of Wednesday of this week the event was all but sold out. It will be held at Kamper’s Rooftop Lounge, a venue in the Book Tower, Kamper’s 38 story masterpiece along Detroit’s Washington Boulevard that just underwent a $300 million renovation project (photo above). Attendees will be able to view the city’s skyline and several skyscrapers designed by Kamper.

Photos of the lounge can be viewed here.

The architect was retained by Bloomer Gill as he traveled o Detroit with his work with one of the largest buggy wheel manufacturers in the United States, located in Uptowne Galion. Detroit is where he met an up-and-coming entrepreneur who started a car company the year after the Gill House was constructed – a man by the name of Henry Ford. Ford later became a visitor to Galion and was one of the first to operate an automobile here according to Gill family descendants.

Photo: Creative Commons License