Inside Detroit's private historic island

Past two private gates, a boulevard opens up to an exclusive island community on Detroit's east riverfront.

The big picture: Small mansions — similar yet not identical — line the street, arranged diagonally across Grayhaven Island , a human-made island from the early 20th century.

• Axios is providing a rare look at the 60-acre island, a source of intrigue with a fascinating history of beauty, wealth and in some time periods, neglect. Grayhaven is inaccessible to the public and features homes priced from $699,000 to more than $1 million in recent years.

Zoom in: Keelson Drive was quiet on a sunny day last week when Axios was invited to take a look at the island. Strolling down the lane feels like a suburban cul-de-sac — but with glimpses of waterfront at every turn.

• Shorepointe Village at Grayhaven includes 41 homes: two rows of 16-18 single-family condo houses, facing two long canals that separate the island from the rest of the city to the east and west.
• At the southern tip of the island, there are seven premier mansions offering stunning views of the Detroit River, Canada and Belle Isle.
• Another development, the Grayhaven Marina Village Apartments and Townhomes, lies to the north, at the top tip of Grayhaven.

Map: Axios Visuals

The latest: The island, once overgrown , now has just one large empty segment remaining and it is expected to fill in soon with boutique new homes. The development will be the city's first single-family waterfront housing project in two dozen years, according to the Free Press .

• But, more on that later. First, tracking how we got here.

Flashback: In the late 1990s, a construction team broke ground to build luxury river- and canal-side condo homes on the island, selling for $450,000-$650,000, according to Free Press archives, with riverfront homes built at 4,000 square feet.

• They were built by Pulte Homes, the largest U.S. homebuilder at the time, with the Blake Co. and lawyer-developer Charles Brown.
• People camped overnight in 1997 to "get first shot at Detroit's highest-priced housing ever," the Free Press reported then.

Without the water in view, it's hard to tell one is on an island.

Before that, in the 1980s, Brown built a first phase of residences on the island, Grayhaven Marina Village, billed as an oasis for high-earning Detroit boaters with 100 townhouses and 90 apartments.

Going back even further in Detroit's history, we find the island's first developer — Edward Gray, a former Ford chief engineer.

• He planned out more than 100 homes to be built on the island, which he created around 1913 by hauling in dirt, dredging and filling in, according to city historic designation board documents and Free Press archives.
• The development was sold as "magnificent" and compared with Venice, dubbed in a Freep headline as "Detroit's Handsome Venetian Colony."

Houses and their docks along Grayhaven's canal.

The intrigue: According to the newspaper, Gray's former employer, Henry Ford, called the community plan "without parallel anywhere in the world."

Yes, but: Only some of the mansions in the planned private community ended up getting built, with work stymied by the Great Depression.

• They included a historic, more than 40-room home built for millionaire inventor and boat racing legend Gar Wood at the tip of the island.
• By the 1960s on Grayhaven, the Free Press wrote at the time, "some of Detroit's most beautiful homes" sat amid "a virtual wasteland of scrub brush."

The Gar Wood mansion later became infamous for its commune-like occupants, hosting parties, concerts and then a destructive weeklong motorcycle gang run in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

• The famous home was in shambles. Then a fire destroyed it after it was struck by lightning.
• Now, there are just three historic homes left on the island.

New construction work on the island.

What's next: Work has started on 10 more homes — rare new waterfront construction in the city — planned for Grayhaven's Shorepointe Village .

• Two models on offer are either 1,550 or 1,850 square feet, with prices starting at $499,900 or $569,900, according to the Free Press .
• "I haven't seen anything like this in Metro Detroit. Being on the waterfront makes this a truly special development," Jimmy Saros of Jim Saros Real Estate Services, one of the project's leaders, told the Free Press.

While much of this old mansion isn't visible from the street, it's still a grand place, dating back to the 1920s. Another view of the island's interior.