Restoring the Glory

In 2021, with one son off to college and the other a year away from graduating from high school, Michelle and Pete Eldridge began to plan their lives as empty nesters. So, they did what most empty nesters wouldn’t do — traded in their four-bedroom house in Portage for a historic 6,200-square-foot home in need of restoration.

And not just any historic home but the Tudor house at 516 W. South St., built in 1908 by James and Carrie Gilmore, proprietors of what was then the Gilmore Brothers Department Store. 

“We raised our kids in a neighborhood in Portage, and when our youngest was going to be a senior, we knew we were ready for something different,” recalls Michelle, a partner in Clear Ridge Wealth Management. “I really thought we might move out and have some land, have some space.” 

Michelle began perusing online property listings, but when she’d find places of interest, Peter didn’t share her enthusiasm.

“Pete would say, ‘It’s too far from downtown.’ Then I found a house over by Whites Lake and when we drove by it, he said, ‘Oh my gosh, I can’t even get a trailer pulled around in that driveway. It is way too small,'” Michelle says, referring to the family’s mode of transporting snowmobiles. 

“It was a fluke when I found this house on Zillow. I said, ‘Look at this. It’s right downtown, and it’s got a parking lot,'” she says with a laugh. “It was really kind of a joke. He goes, ‘Wow, that’s really cool. I wouldn’t mind seeing it.’ Not that we really thought we’d buy it, but he loved that it was downtown — we both work downtown (Pete is the zoning administrator for the city of Kalamazoo) — and the walkability.” 

The house also had a bit of unique history. James Gilmore died only a few months after the home’s completion, and Carrie lived in the home for less than a decade before she married her neighbor, William E. Upjohn, president of the Upjohn Co. The house passed to her son, J. Stanley Gilmore, and his family lived in it until after World War II. In the 1950s, it became the Kalamazoo headquarters of the American Red Cross. The Red Cross moved to a new building in Oshtemo Township in 1999, and the house had had two other owners by the time it was purchased in 2012 by comedian Steven Lynch and his wife, Erin Dwight, who lived in it until listing it for sale in 2021.   

Before the Eldridges could tour the house, it went under contract. While they were on spring break in Florida, the real estate agent called, told them the contract had fallen through and asked if they were still interested. 

Upon their return to Kalamazoo, Pete and Michelle toured the house, bringing along Sharon Ferraro, former historic preservation coordinator for the city. “That is probably what made us buy it,” admits Michelle, “because we went through it and Sharon got so excited about all the historic features. And every little flaw we saw, she said, ‘Oh, that’s no big deal. I’ve got a person for that.'” 

A prior inspection of the property was shared with the Eldridges, “so we kind of knew what we were dealing with,” says Pete. “But it was a tough inspection report to digest and clearly the reason that the prior deal fell through.”

The Eldridges were undeterred. Maybe because, as Michelle jokes, “we can turn any snowmobile trailer around in this parking lot.”

“The woodwork was hard to walk away from,” adds Pete.

“What is still intact in this 1908 house is so stunning,” he says. “Everything that was in need of repair seemed fixable. Granted, it’s on very big scale, and we knew it was going to take years to do, but we’re empty nesters. We’ve got a little more time on our hands now. If we’re ever going to tackle something like this, this is the time.”

Tackling the infrastructure

Over the next three years, the Eldridges updated the home’s infrastructure, including replacing its three air conditioning units, trading out a boiler “the size of a golf cart” for a smaller and more efficient model, replacing the roof and repairing the home’s 80-plus windows. They replaced rotting windowsills, fabricated new storm windows and screens, and restored leaded glass windows. 

“That was a big thing for me. I wanted every window operable,” says Michelle. “We could have abandoned the boiler but decided we wanted to keep the radiators and use them. We didn’t want them to just be for looks.”

A broken pipe two months after they moved in resulted in their having to replace most of the house’s plumbing. But before that could occur, asbestos wrapped around the water pipes had to be removed room by room throughout the basement — a lengthy process. 

All this work had to be done before they could even begin “the fun stuff,” says Michelle, referring to “Phase 2” — renovating and decorating the home. The couple wanted a master bedroom suite with a full bathroom, which wasn’t the norm in 1908, and the home’s decor had last been updated in 1999, when it was part of a Symphony House Showcase fundraiser in which each room was decorated by a different designer.  

“Every room had its own theme. Everything was beautiful, but there wasn’t a cohesive plan,” says Michelle. “I had been trying to come up with ideas on my own where every room could stand on its own but with some sort of uniformity. I didn’t want to make a decision on one room without at least having a vision for the rest of it.”

Complicating the process was that each room has unique aspects that aren’t duplicated elsewhere in the house, including stained glass in varying color palettes, different stonework surrounding each of the house’s six fireplaces, and distinctive detailed inlays in the wood floors.

Enter Sondra Phillips, owner of SKP Design. An interior designer with a long list of commercial clients including restaurants, financial institutions and senior living facilities, Phillips and Michelle had been friends for many years when Michelle asked for Phillips’ input on wallpaper she was considering for the house. 

“I came over, and she had about a hundred wallpaper samples,” Phillips says, laughing. “Picking the paint and wallpaper is, like, the easy thing, but there were so many renovation things to consider too, especially when it came to functionality and logistics.”

‘A holistic approach’

For the first five months of working together “we didn’t even look at wallpaper,” says Phillips. “We were figuring everything else out.”

The Eldridges had been considering converting two bedrooms on the home’s east side into a large master suite because of their proximity to one of the house’s two full bathrooms. Instead, Phillips proposed that a master bedroom with an en suite bath and closet be constructed out of an existing bedroom on the home’s west side that had an adjacent but unused dressing room. That option would allow them to keep the house’s original six bedrooms intact.   

On the main floor, the house’s conservatory — a bright room located between the parlor and dining room — had an intricate mosaic tile floor with missing and damaged tiles. Phillips suggested replacing a large stand-alone cabinet in the room with a built-in wet bar and salvaging tile removed during the renovation to make repairs to the floor.

In addition, Phillips proposed remodeling the home’s existing bathrooms and adding a laundry room on the second floor as well as restoring original light fixtures, replacing others, and adding new furniture, rugs, paint and wallpaper.  

Phillips’ involvement was an inspired infusion for Pete, who  admits that after spearheading the infrastructure work for three years, his enthusiasm for the project was flagging.  

“I was focused on the infrastructure and the building envelope (exterior work) but struggled with how our interior renovations were going to tie together from one room to the next and make this house more functional for us,” he says. “The renovation plan devised by SKP Design and her general contractor, Russell Construction, was a holistic approach to complete revitalization that has really brought back the charm and my drive to switch gears to interior work.”

With plans nailed down, the renovations started in May 2025 and took nine months to complete.

Phillips says she struck a “delicate balance between the house’s existing elements and new elements in paying homage to the house’s original beauty and color schemes while tying the design of the entire house together. My biggest discovery,” she says, “was the passion that we all became wrapped up in for restoring this home and mixing historic details with modern elements along the way to create a ‘happy’ space.” 

And while “normal remodel tweaks” became necessary during the project, one happy surprise was that “we were unexpectedly able to salvage hexagon tile from the floor of the upstairs dressing room area and reuse it,” Phillips says. “The color, size and shape of the tiles tied in beautifully with what we already had selected for the conservatory bar design.”

A collective effort

Anyone who has seen the movie The Money Pit, about a couple embarking on the restoration of a mansion, can imagine the strain such a large-scale effort might put on a marriage. But that was not true for the Eldridges. 

“One of the biggest surprises for me was Michelle was all in on restoring this home. It was not just an interest but a drive to bring this home back to its days of glory,” says Pete. “We both understood the history of the Gilmore family and the Gilmore Brothers Department Store, which was a regional mercantile giant by 1890. The funds available to James and Carrie Gilmore to build this house meant it received many unique embellishments, from stained glass imported from France, many leaded, clear-glass windows of several different designs, six fireplaces, and the oak-trimmed foyer and grand staircase.

“Prioritizing projects kept us sane and in sync,” he adds. 

“It has really been a fun project, and we’ve partnered really well,” Michelle says. “There have been times when we haven’t agreed on a design direction, but we’ve always compromised. For instance, Pete didn’t care for one of the wallpapers that Sondra and I selected, so we let him choose the wallpaper for that room. And I love it!”

Flexibility, on the part of not only the owners but also the many contractors doing the work, was key to the project’s success, says Michelle.

“Our contractors were so flexible as we added additional rooms for painting and wallpapering, additional lighting for replacement, movement of electrical outlets, etc.,” she says. “One example, our son Mitchell’s bedroom, with all of its beautiful woodwork, was not on our list to address. But once we saw all the improvements in the rooms around it, we decided to patch and paint the ceiling, replace the wallpaper and add new bedding. That room also had four original stained glass pendant lights which were inoperable. We took them to The Heritage Company and had them rewired, and Pete was able to procure stained glass to replace three chipped pieces that looks almost identical to the original.  It turned out beautifully.”

The Eldridges are hesitant to attach a price tag to the work thus far, noting that Phase 3 will involve redoing the kitchen later this year. To help control costs, Michelle made good use of Facebook Marketplace to find bargains on furniture and decorative elements, while Pete took on many infrastructure improvements himself, including taking a class so he could safely remove asbestos.

Michelle admits that the house is “an entertainer’s dream.” In addition to the expansive first floor, the house’s third-floor ballroom has become a popular place to host parties and for their sons to hang out with friends when home from school.

“Pete and I love to entertain and feel that we’re not only improving the house for our use, but we want to share it with our friends and family. We’ve already hosted three celebrations of life, three church Christmas parties with 70-plus people each time, and one house concert, in addition to many family and friends’ parties,” she says. 

In addition to making it a family home, the couple sees their work on the home as contributing something lasting for the community. 

“Pete and I are both from the Kalamazoo area, both have degrees from WMU,” Michelle says. “We both work downtown and have a love for Kalamazoo. We love that the house is in a historical district, as we know that the exteriors of all of these houses on South Street will be preserved in their historical nature. South Street is one of the gateways to the downtown, and we’re completely aligned with the city’s intention to preserve these beautiful historic structures.”