The Restoration of Cranberry Lake Farmhouse

Oakland Township residents love history, and they particularly enjoy preserving the township’s history.

Following the is the restoration of the Cranberry Lake Farm Main House, as well as the completion of the township’s sixteen-acre Cranberry Lake Historic District.

This Friday, the Oakland Township Historic District Commission will host ; the event will include tours of the 2,000 square foot farmhouse and other buildings on the site, light refreshments and a sponsored by the Parks and Recreation Commission.

Members of the Historic District Commission and the Oakland Township
Historical Society will be on hand to answer questions and educate guests about the project, which added, among other things, pathways and accessibility ramps to the farmhouse.

Plans call for the house to be used as a community historical center for meetings, events and exhibits featuring township artifacts. It will be used by both the historical society and the Parks and Recreation Commission.

The ceremony also brings to a close a multi-year project to complete
the township’s only historic district. In addition to the restored farmhouse, the district includes a silo, caretaker house, a carriage barn replica, spring house, greenhouse, hen house, pigeon or apple house, a wild game or turkey brooder and the Flumerfelt barn, which was moved to the location in 2005. The original barn on the property burned down in 1981, yet its foundation is still visible next to the silo.

The historic district is part of , a 213-acre park owned by the township.  

Cranberry Lake Farm is listed on both the state and national register of historic places.

John Axeford settles in

According to research conducted by the historic district
commission, Seymour Fletcher purchased 80 acres of the site from the federal government in 1836; he sold the property a year later to John Axeford. The Axefords were among the earliest settlers of Oakland Township.

Local businessman Axeford and his brother, William, had
dealings in nearby communities and are credited with opening the first store in Clarkston, Michigan.

In An Account of Oakland County, edited by Lillian Drake Avery and George N. Fuller for the Michigan Pioneer and Historical Society, it is written: “In 1842 the Clark brothers platted twenty acres and gave it that name [Clarkston]. The first store had been opened in a rude shanty in 1838 by William and John Axeford, but in 1842 a large frame building was occupied by the store of Nelson W. Clark.”

According to the nomination form for the State Register of
Historic Places, Jacob Kline purchased the farmstead in 1848. He farmed the property until 1925. The property then went into foreclosure – a casualty of the Great Depression.

Initially, a cabin was constructed on the property; it was replaced by the farmhouse in 1840.

Over the years, additions were made to the Greek Revival-style
farmhouse including a porch, an immense interior stone fireplace and a stone-walled pond.

The caretaker house has also been restored and renovated and
is currently occupied.

Howard A. Coffin’s summer retreat

From the 1930s through the 1940s, the farmhouse was used as
a summer home by Howard Aldridge Coffin and his wife, Abbie. The Historic District Commission’s historical account of the farmhouse notes that Coffin “was an oil company executive who lived in Sherwood Forest subdivision near Palmer Park” in Detroit.

From 1946 to 1949, Coffin was a member of the United States
Congress as a representative of the 13th district in Wayne County.

According to the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, Coffin was born in Middleboro, MA, on June 11, 1877, and graduated from Brown University in 1901. His work history included teaching school, representing book publishers Ginn & Company, serving as a controller for Warren Motor Car Company in Detroit, managing Firestone Tire & Rubber Company, acting as vice president and president of White Star Refining Company, and working as general manager of the Socony-Vacuum Oil Company.

Coffin lost a re-election attempt in 1948. He and his second wife, Marie, sold the summer home in 1951. Coffin remained a business
consultant until his retirement in 1954. He died on Feb. 28, 1956, and was interred at Woodlawn Cemetery in Detroit.

Restoration of farmhouse means completion of historic district

Over the next four decades, few changes were made to the
property, which was rented out. In 1996, the township’s Parks and Recreation Commission purchased the land. According to Janine Saputo, a township preservationist and member of the township’s Planning Commission, the property came complete with a
couch and beer bottles on the front lawn.

So many beer bottles, in fact, that the first recycling trip netted $10 in bottle returns.

The purchase of the property led to the creation of the Cranberry Lake Farm Historic District, which was established with the help of a millage passed in 1996.

Soon after, a site survey was conducted to help define the historic
district as a sixteen-acre parcel and included all of the buildings in that
location. In Jan. 1998, Edward Francis – who specializes in historic preservation and has worked on numerous historic theatres and landmarks across the country, including the Wheeler Opera House in Boulder, CO, and the Fox Theater in Detroit – developed the first master plan for the new historic district.

In the early 2000s, the site was listed on both the state and national registers of historic places. A state historic marker was dedicated on the site in the fall of 2002.

In 2005, the 1879 Flumerfelt barn, which had been dismantled at its original location on the former Kern Tree Nursery on Gunn Road, was
moved to the Cranberry Lake Farm Historic District and reassembled in order to preserve it as one of the last remaining township barns from the 19th Century.

The adaptive-reuse and rehabilitation of the property’s farmhouse began in 2010. With its completion, the township’s historic district
is also complete and will serve as a historical center to educate visitors about the township’s history through exhibits, programs and demonstrations.

While the millage helped pay for the preliminary studies and
the early stabilization, clean-up work and restoration, the completion of this impressive project was also due to financial donations and to the hard work and dedication of numerous volunteers, including members of the Historic District Commission, the historical society, the Parks and Recreation Commission, township supporters and residents.

“The commissioners worked long hours volunteering their own time to guarantee the project succeeded with sustainable lower energy use,” said Barb Barber, administrative assistant for the township’s historic district commission. “[They] followed safety and building codes and still retained its historic character for so many future generations to enjoy.”