Grosse Pointe -- Backus Garden

Beginning around 1928, Fletcher Steele worked over a period of years designing a garden for Standish and Dorothy Backus at their new home in Grosse Pointe Shores. Featuring architectural work by Ralph Adams Cram and Robert O. Derrick, the entire estate, including the gardens, reflected its owners' love of English Gothic-Tudor design elements. Yet the natural setting allowed Steele to incorporate such elements as broad lawns and a view leading to Lake St. Clair. A wild garden, terraces, formal gardens, and courtyards were accented by a variety of balustrades, obelisks, and other ornaments, including an endpost featuring relief portraits of Steele, Cram, and Derrick. Some of Steele's proposals were never realized, and following the death of Dorothy Backus in the 1960s (Standish Backus had died in 1943) the estate was sold, the house razed, and the gardens destroyed. Most of the images have been taken from published sources, although those sources often reproduce original documentation. There is also one image of a sketch by Thomas Warren Sears, perhaps an unrealized proposal for the Grosse Pointe Shores property or a design created for an earlier Backus residence.

Persons and firms associated with the garden include Fletcher Steele (landscape architect, 1928-1941); Thomas Warren Sears (landscape architect, ca. 1930-1940); Ralph Adams Cram (architect, ca. 1930); Robert O. Derrick (architect, ca. 1930); Standish Backus (former owner, 1928-1943); and Dorothy Backus (former owner, 1928-ca. 1966).