(mellow music) - [Mark] How you doing?

- [Bill] Retired car executive Mark Reynolds touring Indian Village in his 1965 Chrysler 300 Ragtop just for us.

He moved here from the suburbs in 1997.

- I wasn't sure about it and I asked a manager I worked for who was a lifelong Grosse Pointer what did he think about living in Indian Village?

Is it a good idea?

And he says, "Well, it's always been there."

Okay.

I think this might be the largest house in the neighborhood.

Bingley Fales was the original owner, but it's about 12,000 square feet plus a carriage house.

- [Bill] By the looks of it, Mr. Fales was a success.

- And that's probably built in the '00s.

- [Bill] Fales, an attorney for the Edison Illuminating Company of Detroit, DTE today.

10 years ago, Curbed Detroit called the Fales Mansion a big stupid house, an overpriced, dilapidated mess.

It's a showcase property now.

- This house here on the right with the paint job happening and some window repairs was the Scripps House of Scripps Publishing.

- [Bill] Scripps, the family behind the "Detroit News" and the Detroit Institute of Arts.

- That house still has its ballroom on the third floor.

You can see the row of windows on the third floor.

And it has an elevator, full size passenger elevator.

Up till maybe another 20 or so years ago, you had a lot of people getting these houses 'cause they were really, really cheap and they didn't either have the money or the knowledge to keep them up.

- We've been living here for 33 years and when we bought our house, people thought we were crazy, but it's now worth so much money.

But it is expensive to live here.

It is expensive.

These houses are old and they do require a lot of maintenance, but it's a labor of love.

- [Bill] What's the makeup now?

What are your demographics?

- Definitely middle class because you can't afford to maintain one of these houses if you don't have some amount of money.

They take a lot of work.

It's about 50-50 as far as Black and White.

Recently, we've had some more wealthy people, especially from out of state, move in.

And we've had four or five million dollar sales.

- [Bill] At the turn of the last century, this neighborhood emerged from a Detroit ribbon farm.

Along a strand of property emanating north from the Detroit River, a developer gave us what would be called Indian Village.

- Well the city assigned street names.

As the city was growing, they were looking for every name they could find.

So we got Seminole, Iroquois, and another street adjacent to us is Seneca.

So the realtors sort of gave it a nickname and the nickname stuck.

- We have three blocks, one mile long, and all these beautiful historic homes.

And I have to say that we don't own these homes, they own us, and we're just maintaining them for the next generation, maintain our heritage here in Detroit.

- [Bill] Much of Detroit's heritage, car making.

They call this the Edsel and Eleanor Ford Honeymoon Cottage, 6,000 square feet.

A starter mansion for the son and daughter-in-law of Henry Ford, they later moved to much bigger digs in Grosse Pointe.

Other auto magnates lost to history: The Bobby Hupp House, Hupp Motor Cars, maker of the Hupmobile.

The Hugh Chalmers House, the Chalmers Motor Company, acquired by Chrysler in 1923.

All on the same street, homes with cooks and housekeepers.

- I have call buttons to call the help.

I keep pressing them but nobody comes.

- [Bill] The Mark Reynolds House, more room, more rooms, more choices.

- Where do I wanna sit outside?

I have three different porches, so I take my choice.

- [Bill] He's got a roof like few others in these parts, wood shingles bent to get that certain look.

- American Thatch.

It is wood shingles made to look like thatch from, you know, a house in somewhere in the Cotswolds in England.

They were really expensive in the day and are shockingly expensive to fix now.

- [Bill] Here you can find other varied roof styles: the mansard, the gable, the gambrel.

You'll see eyebrows, dormers, columns, all sorts of columns, and turrets.

- This was a, the Lumber Baron's House we call it.

This has caught fire twice and twice by lightning and has been restored both times because- - [Bill] I don't see any lightning rods on that thing.

- [Mark] I think that ball at the top.

- [Bill] I guess that's a lightning ball.

- [Mark] Yes.

- [Bill] Romanesque revival style this has been called, 1906, designed by Louis Kamper.

He also did the Book Cadillac Hotel downtown.

- Well this is one of the first architectural jobs by Albert Kahn.

He started out doing homes before he became famous for his industrial work.

- [Bill] Albert Kahn, known worldwide as the father of modern factory design, builder of Henry Ford's factories, the General Motors building, the Fisher Building, hundreds of others.

- So there's maybe a dozen or more Albert Kahn houses in Indian Village.

- [Bill] Another Albert Kahn creation, this landmark, the Liggett School.

When Liggett moved to Grosse Pointe, the building turned into a Waldorf School in the 1960s.

- The Detroit Waldorf School is one of the oldest Waldorf Schools in the country.

- [Bill] A private school in the city when others left.

The Waldorf method: experiential learning, embracing art and creativity.

An integrated program here from the start, it continues today.

- I think that people who are from the East Side know about the school and have passed by it, but I don't know if everyone knows about this gem throughout the city.

It just is a beautiful school and most of our children thinks it's magical.

- [Bill] The school, home base for the annual Indian Village Home and Garden Tour, held in early summer.

- This tour has been going on for 48 years.

- [Bill] Walk, ride, take your own self-guided journey.

Maybe check out the community garden and get inside some select homes.

- This home was built in 1914.

This home is designed in the unique Asian-inspired arts and craft style, which you probably didn't notice, but now that I've said that, at the end of the tour, off from the sidewalk turnaround, take another look and I bet you'd say, "Oh yeah, I sort of see that."

- [Bill] That Asian inspiration, the curved awning over the porch.

The tour committee claims 352 homes to this neighborhood, adding up to a national historic district.

- If you wanna do any renovations on the outside of the home, you have to get permission from the Indian Village Historical Society.

- [Bill] Special rules here.

Zoning ordinances prevent Airbnbs and multifamily housing in the cause of preservation, trying to keep what was that we might still have it in the future.

- Indian Village belongs not just here on the East Side of Detroit.

This is our heritage.

This is the heritage of Detroit.

All Detroiters and people who live in and around Detroit should come here and enjoy it.

We're on the mend.

We're coming back.

We got a lot of things to see and do here in Detroit.