Felt Mansion / Famous Inventor

Location: 138th Avenue, Lake Michigan / Laketown Township

Date: 1925-28

Dorr Felt was one of a number of Chicago millionaires of the 1920s who sought to be a ’gentlemen farmer’ in the Saugatuck area—although Felt was a particularly ingenious one. Making his fortune with the first adding machine, the Comptometer, he turned to restoring the damaged dune-woods of his property into farmland. The thousand-acre estate includes an orchard farm, large restored forest, and a half-mile of Lake Michigan beach, to which Felt built a road for public access. The family sold the property to the St. Augustine Seminary in 1948 which used it until the 1970s at which time it became a State of Michigan medium-security prison. Much of the property is now a part of the Saugatuck Dunes State Park and Shore Acres Township Park. The mansion, a grand Georgian Revival structure complete with a ballroom, is now open to the public and used for public events and is the property of Laketown Township. The architect was F. P. Allen and Sons. Listed on the State Register of Historic Places.