GROSSE POINTE, Mich. (AP) - Leslie Ann Kaye’s enthusiasm bursts through the telephone receiver even half a world away.
The 51-year-old psychologist and New Baltimore native has traveled the world, performed a one-woman play about Zelda Fitzgerald and lived on a boat at the Detroit Yacht Club.
And this year, she expects to add owner of the historic Cadieux Farmhouse in Grosse Pointe to her resume.
“I like to do interesting things with my life, and this little house captured my imagination … kind of lit my fire,” she told the Detroit Free Press ( https://on.freep.com/1g2DHDV ) while traveling in Africa last month.
Kaye is expected to take up residence in the farmhouse later this year, after it is moved in April or May from its current location to a lot Kaye purchased a block and a half away in the city of Grosse Pointe.
She was working in California when a relative told her Beaumont Hospital in Grosse Pointe was trying to give away the farmhouse. She decided it was the right time to return to Michigan.
The arrangement solves a problem for Beaumont, which had been struggling to relocate the house to make room for a parking expansion. It also resolves concerns about the fate of what is believed to be one of the oldest and last remaining examples of French frame architecture from the ribbon-farm era in the Detroit and Grosse Pointe areas.
Michael Hoeflein, program leader on the project for Beaumont Health System, said officials received about 100 inquiries after they announced they would give the house away and pay up to $150,000 to relocate it.
An effort to move the house to Grosse Pointe Park, a few blocks west, fizzled in September when the Grosse Pointe Park City Council rejected the proposal over concerns about zoning and fears it could be used as a rental.
After that roadblock, word spread of the hospital’s dilemma, and Hoeflein said inquiries poured in from across the country. In one possible scenario, an Amish group would have moved the building piece by piece to a location Downriver. But moving a historic house poses special challenges, and hospital officials wanted to limit the distance of the move as well as keep the building close to its roots.
“Our goal has always been to keep it in the Pointes here,” Hoeflein said.
There also was the issue of land. Many of those who asked about the farmhouse did not realize they needed to have land available.
Although the hospital will be transferring ownership of the house as part of the arrangement, officials were seeking someone who would be able to invest some money into it, too. Kaye was selected from about a half-dozen finalists.
The two-story farmhouse has been updated but still has many original elements, including most of the Michigan pine floors, a narrow staircase with handhewn balusters and fireplace, according to Elizabeth Vogel, a member of the Grosse Pointe Historical Society’s board of trustees.
It was built by Isadore Cadieux in the 1850s in Detroit and floated by barge to the foot of Bishop Road in Grosse Pointe Park. It was moved to its current spot in 1870 and purchased by Beaumont for an undisclosed price in 2011.
The hospital is moving the farmhouse and plans to demolish others it owns to make way for a reconfiguration of its loading dock and an additional 420 parking spots on two levels that would mirror the current deck and lower-level parking setup.
Officials hope to present the plan at the city’s April 14 meeting. The $10-million to $12-million project is expected to be completed next year, Hoeflein said.
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Information from: Detroit Free Press, https://www.freep.com
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