Barton Hills

A utility company, an Olmsted plan, and a village

Detroit Edison bought the riverfront land in 1910 for the dam. What the company did with the surrounding acreage was less predictable: under president Alex Dow it laid out a residential community on it, and it hired the Olmsted Brothers to do the planning. The firm's approach — following contours, preserving existing landform and vegetation, keeping roads subordinate to terrain — is the reason Barton Hills reads as landscape with houses in it rather than as a subdivision with trees.

The company stepped back in 1944. Detroit Edison offered residents all of its unsold lots, its equipment, and the right to collect taxes on property already sold, under a $20,000 mortgage arrangement; in exchange, the resident owners took on responsibility for maintaining the community. That transfer is what turned a utility's development into a self-governing place.

The final step came on December 12, 1973, when Barton Hills became the first home rule village in Washtenaw County. The motivation was practical rather than symbolic: residents wanted protection from what they saw as potential incursions by other governments that might have forced difficult and expensive water and sewer connections. The village runs its own water system to this day.

The country club

Barton Hills Country Club was founded in 1919 along with its first nine holes. The clubhouse followed in 1922, together with an extension of the course designed by Donald Ross — among the most significant golf architects in the game's history, and the same hand behind the course at the Dearborn Country Club.

The course has been worked on repeatedly since. William Diddel made changes in 1952, Bill Newcomb and John F. Robinson in 1972, Arthur Hills in 1994, and Ron Prichard in 2012, with further restoration work more recently. That layering is common in courses of this age, and for a resident it means the club has been continuously invested in rather than left to drift.

Club membership is separate from home ownership. Anyone for whom the club is part of the reason to be here should confirm how membership actually works, what it costs, and whether it is available, rather than assuming it comes with an address in the village.

The homes

The housing runs from architect-designed mid-century moderns to substantial traditional houses, most on multi-acre wooded lots that follow the contours of the hills. Development began in the 1920s and continued across the decades, so the village contains several distinct architectural generations rather than one.

That range, combined with lot variation — acreage, grade, tree cover, and any relationship to the pond or the river — means value here is driven by things that do not appear in a bedroom count. Comparable sales require matching on era, architecture, and land, and the small number of transactions in any given year makes that harder rather than easier.

The practical questions follow the architecture. Mid-century houses with flat or low-pitched roofs and large expanses of original glazing need specific attention to roofing systems and window replacement. Older traditional houses ask the ordinary pre-war questions. And across the village, the private water system, septic arrangements where they exist, long private drives, and slope and drainage on contour lots all deserve inspection rather than assumption.

The setting

Barton Pond and the Huron River define the northern edge, and the village sits in wooded hills above them. Winding roads, mature forest, and substantial lot sizes give the place its character, and the Olmsted plan is the reason the topography survived the development rather than being flattened by it.

Just south, the Huron River corridor continues into Ann Arbor — Bird Hills Nature Area, the city's largest natural area, sits between the village and town, and Argo Park and the border-to-border trail are a short distance downstream. Downtown Ann Arbor and the University campuses are minutes away, which is the combination the village has always offered: genuine seclusion at a very short distance from a city.

The dam the village was built beside

Barton Dam went up in 1912 and 1913, the first of six dams Detroit Edison's predecessor built on the Huron River to bring hydroelectric power to Ann Arbor and the surrounding region. The residential community followed the industrial project rather than the other way around, which is why the village sits where it does.

The dam has had a second life. It generated power for Detroit Edison until it was decommissioned in 1963, then sat idle until the City of Ann Arbor bought it and reopened it for generation in 1988. The city owns and maintains the dam and power station today, running a 900-kilowatt turbine that produces roughly 4.2 million kilowatt-hours a year.

Barton Pond, the water the dam creates, does something more consequential than generate electricity: it supplies about 85 percent of Ann Arbor's drinking water, with wells providing the rest. The pond the village looks out over is, in a real sense, the city's reservoir — which is worth knowing both as a piece of context and because it shapes how the water and the shoreline are managed.

Schools

Barton Hills is served by Ann Arbor Public Schools.

Buying or selling in Barton Hills

Transaction volume here is low, which changes the method rather than the principles. With about 140 houses and only a handful of sales in a typical year, there may not be a recent comparable that matches on era, architecture, and lot at once. That means working from a wider time window, adjusting carefully, and understanding the specific attributes that drive value in this village rather than applying a countywide rule.

For buyers, the diligence extends past the house. Establish how the village's water system works and what it costs, what the village government does and does not provide, what any private drive arrangements require, and — separately — what club membership involves if that matters to you. On the house itself, match the review to the architecture: a 1958 modern and a 1929 traditional need different inspections.

For sellers, the specifics are the story. This is a village planned by the Olmsted Brothers on land a utility bought for a dam in 1910, self-governing since residents took it over in 1944 and incorporated in 1973, with a Donald Ross course at its center and its own water system. A house here is a piece of that, and a listing that names the plan, the architecture, and the land does considerably better than one that leans on the address alone.