Grinnell Sister's Sherwood Forest Home Wants $500K

For a half million dollar ask price, a home's listings really ought to show you what you're getting. This 6-bedroom, 5-bath Sherwood Forest mansion has a great pedigree. Its original owners had ties to a famous old Detroit business. Gladys Grinnell Meginnity, sister of Detroit's famed piano-making Grinnell Brothers, married Grinnell's vice president, Robert Meginnity, and lived in the home on Berkeley Street for many years. This 1933 house has history, but comes with just three tantalizing photographs. Is it enough to go on? Perhaps.

This Georgian revival demands attention with its stern facade and tall roof with the style's trademark dormer windows. Inside, the house has a dramatic elliptical stair, lit by an original crystal chandelier. The stairs curve gracefully, supported by white wainscoting that follows them as they bend through a round opening in the ceiling to the second floor landing. According to the listing agent, the Meginnitys insisted on this stair so their daughter could someday pose on it in her wedding gown.

While there aren't any pix to prove it really happened, the listing describes all manner of amenities for this house including "meticulous renovation," a "magnificent new kitchen," a re-built sunroom and new mechanicals including the HVAC (boiler, AC and furnace). If this place is "perfection," as the listing suggests, is $500K a good ask? Given that the best comps in the neighborhood are getting $100K less, probably not. Then again, it comes with an original Grinnell, or even the nice baby grand in the sole picture of the living room, $500K might not seem so steep.

·19310 Berkeley Rd [Zillow]
·Henry Ford Opens Boutique Clinic in Old Grinnell Bros Space [Curbed Detroit]
·Grinnell Brothers Music House [Historic Detroit]