Every Michigan governor since 1945 has had a summer house on Mackinac Island, and the state got it in the way most things on the island seem to happen: because of a party.
The house is on the West Bluff, above the Grand Hotel, three stories of shingle and clapboard with a deep porch and a stone foundation, looking down over the harbor and, since 1957, the bridge. A Chicago attorney named Lawrence Andrew Young had it built in 1901 to a design by the architect Frederick W. Perkins, with a local contractor, Patrick Doud, doing the work. It cost about $15,000. It has around 7,100 square feet on 1.6 acres, and it is a big house by any standard: five bedrooms and four bathrooms on the second floor, a playroom, and a third floor built for four servants.
For four decades it was a private cottage. Then in 1944 Governor Harry Kelly had a problem. The annual national governors’ conference was coming to Mackinac Island in July 1945, and Michigan’s governor had nowhere on the island to receive anyone. When governors came to Mackinac before that, they stayed in the modest officers’ quarters at Fort Mackinac.
So the Mackinac Island State Park Commission, with a park commissioner named Wilfrid Doyle doing the arranging, bought the Young cottage. The legislature appropriated $15,000, which is to say the state paid in 1944 what the house had cost to build in 1901. Repairs and updating were done with prison labor. The house was ready in time for the Thirty-Seventh Annual Governors’ Conference, July 1 to 4, 1945, and Kelly was the first governor to use it.
He was not the last to leave a mark. G. Mennen Williams, “Soapy,” used it through 1960 and liked the island enough to buy his own cottage there later. John Swainson, who came home from the Second World War disabled, had an elevator put in in 1961. Helen Milliken redesigned the gardens during her husband William Milliken’s fourteen years in office. And in 1983 James and Paula Blanchard did the thing that made it a public building rather than a perk: they opened it for weekly tours.
For most of the years since, that has meant a free walk through the main floor on Wednesday mornings in the summer, with the second floor kept private. The tours were suspended for 2026, so anyone planning a visit should check with the state park before counting on it.
Presidents have stayed there. Truman, Ford and the first Bush are all on the guest list. The house has been renovated more than once, in the Engler years and again in 2011 and 2012, and it went on the National Register of Historic Places in November 1997.
What is worth noticing is how modest the whole transaction was. Michigan did not build a governor’s mansion. It bought a lawyer’s summer place, at his 1901 price, and fixed the roof with prison crews, because a governor needed a respectable porch to stand on for four days in July. Eighty years later it is still the porch.
More worth reading
Sources, credits, and reporting details
Sources & accountability
How this story was reported
Editorial methodArchival synthesis
Last verifiedAug. 15, 2026
Corrections statusNo material correction note is recorded on this article.
Verification note: Drafted 2026-08-15 from the Michigan State Capitol Commission's history of the residence, Mackinac State Historic Parks and the Mackinac Island Tourism Bureau. Room totals and the longer presidential guest list vary by source and are kept out; tours are suspended for 2026 per the tourism bureau.
Primary sources
-
The Governor's Summer Residence — Michigan State Capitol Commission
Accessed Aug. 15, 2026.
-
When you can tour the Michigan Governor's Summer Residence on Mackinac Island — Mackinac Island Tourism Bureau
Accessed Aug. 15, 2026.
Additional reporting
-
Michigan Governor's Summer Residence (Wikipedia) — Wikipedia contributors
Accessed Aug. 15, 2026.
Pointer; the state sources confirm cost, size and the NRHP date.
Photo and media credits
-
Governors Summer Cottage Mackinac Island Lawrence Andrew Young Cottage.jpg (featured image) — Royalbroil, via Wikimedia Commons
Featured image record. Published Aug. 26, 2011. Accessed Aug. 15, 2026. CC BY-SA 3.0.
Original 3888×2592, cropped 16:9 (box 0,202,3888,2389), resized to 1600×900 q85. Attachment 2422.
Yooper Hub community
The conversation
Real neighbors, real names. A Yooper Hub editor reads your first comment before it appears; after that you’re a known neighbor and your comments post right away. No account required. Community guidelines
No comments yet. Yours can start the conversation.