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The Charles Warren Pickell House, located at 120 Virginia Park St, Detroit, MI 48202, is one of the oldest surviving residences in the Virginia Park Historic District, a stunning Colonial Revival style home built in 1895 for prominent insurance executive Charles Warren Pickell by the design firm Tuller & Van Husan – the designers behind some of Virginia Park’s finest commissions, whose partner Lew Tuller would later gain prominence as one of Detroit’s top hotel magnates.
One of the very first high-style homes in a district that would soon be considered one of Detroit’s top elite residential enclaves, the Charles Warren Pickell House’s unique story mirrors the professional ambition and civic prominence of its earliest resident.
A native of New York who would later be raised in Michigan, Charles Warren Pickell graduated from Michigan State Normal College in 1879 and then jumped right into the hustle and bustle of the insurance world as district manager for Penn Mutual in Grand Rapids.
Pickell also had a stint in education, becoming a public-school principal and later superintendent of schools in Middleville, Bronson, and Ludington.
That said, it wasn’t until 1891 that he settled down in Detroit, where he quickly rose to prominence as associate manager (then general manager) of the Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Company, a position where he would go on to write over $15 million in insurance, an extraordinary feat for the era that led him to penning several groundbreakings texts on the industry, including Plain Hints, aka “the insurance men’s bible.”
As for the Charles Warren Pickell house at 120 Virginia Park, it was one of three grand homes built on Virginia Park by Tuller & Van Husan, a project that ran $18,000 (an impressive sum in 1895) and would later serve as an excellent example of Colonial Revival grandeur thanks to defining features like:
- Sophisticated façade and three-quarter circular porch
- Recessed first story (creating a rusticated aesthetic)
- Fluted Ionic columns
- A modillioned and denticulated cornic
- Leaded glass sidelights
- Paired sash windows
- Gabled bays featuring porthole windows
- Flat-topped hipped roof
- Second-story central Palladian windows
- Swan’s-neck pediment
- Thin fluted pilasters
- And a richly detailed entrance
- Adamesque detailing
Today, the Charles Warren Pickell House stands as one of the top architectural landmarks within the Virginia Park Historic District — a richly ornamented residence that perfectly embodies the ambition, refinement, and prestige of one of Detroit in its early days.