Dow Chemical put Midland on the map, but architect and local scion Alden B. Dow made it the most modern town in Michigan. Dow’s masterpiece is undoubtedly his home and studio in Midland. Designed in 1933 to be built in stages, the sprawling manse seems to rise out of a pond, its green copper roof and bright-white, geometric form seemingly birthed by the landscape. It’s a nearly perfect evocation of a guiding Dow dictum, “Gardens never end, and buildings never begin.”
