22 NEW PHOTOS OF HARRY BENNETT'S LODGE

One of my long time readers, Mark Richards of Grand Rapids, visited the Harry Bennett Lodge and sent these photos to me! I love this stuff don't you?

Mark and chatted via phone and he told me he was stunned by how run down the Lodge is now.  Well it has to be really expensive to maintain and who would for have the money for that?

Thank you MARK!!  Grand Rapids folks who need a home inspection visit Mark's website. click on the logo or HERE

Harry Herbert Bennett (January 17, 1892 – January 4, 1979), a former boxer and ex-Navy sailor, was an executive at Ford Motor Company during the 1930s and 1940s. He was best known as the head of Ford’s Service Department, or Internal Security.

LOST LAKE

While working for Ford, his union busting tactics, of which the Battle of the Overpass was a prime example, made him a foe of the United Auto Workers. He was fired in 1945 by Henry Ford II, and died in Los Gatos, California, on January 4, 1979, of an undisclosed cause.

He had various residences in Michigan, including Bennett's Lodge near Farwell, a log cabin style house in East Tawas, and Bennett's Castle located on the Huron River in Ypsilanti.

Bennett had a lodge built for him in Freeman Township, Michigan, on Lost Lake. The house is constructed of brick and concrete block with concrete siding fashioned to make it look like a log cabin.

It has wooden floors and wall paneling, a 128-foot (39 m) long porch, and a stone fireplace. Chairs and sofas for the house were custom made by the finest craftsmen and upholstered using the highest grade of leather that Ford acquired for use in their most luxurious automobiles of the era.

The swimming pool beside the house provided more than the usual entertainment to Bennett and his guests: The pool was constructed with a viewing room (complete with wet bar) adjacent to the pool.

LODGE PORCH INLAY "WOODEN" TILES

A glass window looked into the pool under water, so Harry and company could enjoy watching their female guests swim. (creepy)

READ MORE ON HARRY'S LODGE CLICK HERE

Since Bennett was always paranoid of being under attack, he included many security features in the lodge. The lodge was surrounded by a moat full of pointed posts.

The bridge over the moat was kept loaded with dynamite. The lodge itself has many custom features. Hidden behind a hinged bookcase in the study is a secret passageway which leads to the dock. Every step of the staircase in the passageway is a different height from the others to make tripping pursuers more likely.

Bennett would practice running down the steps so that he memorized their spacing to give him a head start if pursued. There is also a hidden room which was home to a central point in the ventilation system, where conversations from multiple rooms could be clearly overheard.

The roof of the building featured a guard station parapet at one end, complete with a fireplace to keep Bennett's men warm while on 24-hour armed watch when Bennett was at the lodge in colder months.

Bennett also had a private airfield with an airplane at the other end of Lost Lake. In the event of an attack, Bennett could take the secret passageway, emerge by the dock, take a boat across the lake, and escape by airplane. The attack never came.

The lodge and property was purchased by the Boy Scouts of America, Clinton Valley Council in 1964. Lost Lake Scout Reservation now stands on the site. The lodge is abandoned, as the reservation is now closed. Much of the furniture remains, but the pool has fallen into disrepair. Trees have been planted on the airfield.  The Lodge has since been abandoned and it is 90% in ruins.

READ ALL MY HARRY BENNETT STORIES HERE

HARRY BENNETT PHOTOS SENT TO ME AS A GIFT PART 2

Harry Bennett and bodyguard enjoy the circus

Bennett and his longtime driver/ bodyguard Frank Witmire enjoy a circus performance in Detroit, c. 1940. Few pastimes gave Bennett more pleasure than the spectacle and thrill of the circus. Bennett befriended wild animal tamers Clyde Beatty and Allen King.

It was from Beatty that Bennett received several sets of lion cubs which he raised during the mid-1930s. Once they grew to half size at five-six months old he traded them for cubs.

The cats provided a handy prop for Bennett's risky practical jokes. He often flipped off the lights at parties and quietly unchained a lion that brushed against people's legs, triggering panicked screams. He also locked unsuspecting guests in the darkened tunnel that contained the lion's cages.

He peered through peep holes to watch the terrified reactions when the guest reached the cages, unaware that bars protected them from the lions. However, the danger the lions posed outweighed the fun and Bennett gave up the hobby after several escapes and the injury of a guest.

 HB and Max Baer

Heavyweight boxing champ Max Baer and the diminutive Bennett (5' 6") at company headquarters in Dearborn, Jan. 1935.  Bennett hosted other ring champions for lunch in his opulent dining room at the Ford Administration building, including Jack Dempsey, Max Schmeling and Primo Carnera.  An avid sports fan, Bennett found work for such legendary athletes as Jim Thorpe, Jessie Owens, Kid McCoy, Mickey Cochrane and Eddie Cicotte.

Harry Bennett hands Truant to Navy

In 1941, at a ceremony on the quay at the Great Lakes Naval Training Station near Chicago, Bennett, representing the Ford Motor Co., conveys legal title to the yacht Truant, owned by Henry Ford, to the U.S. Navy for training purposes. 

Bennett sold his own yacht to the Coast Guard a year later for wartime patrol duty.

HB on Castle Porch

Harry Bennett, 36, strikes a genial pose in front of the castle's glass-enclosed front door in 1928.  A year later, at the close of a kidnapping case Bennett helped to solve, one of the fugitive kidnappers fired a shotgun blast at Bennett through the plate-glass door as he read a newspaper.  

The clean entrance and exit wound required hospitalization.  Afterwards, Henry Ford assigned a bodyguard to protect Bennett.  Ford also paid to bullet-proof the glass in Bennett's door and install an escape hatch to the Huron River.

Wine Cellar to Castle Tunnel

All seven Bennett homes were constructed with party rooms equipped with bars. Several homes contained wine cellars, like this one. The wine cellars were accessible by trick doors. Additional hidden doors inside led to tunnels. The below-ground cellars, featuring marble shelves, provided ideal refrigeration for wine storage.

Bennett Tunnel

Workmen using pick and shovel burrowed the tunnels beneath Bennett's homes. The floors, walls and arched ceilings are concrete. The tunnels measure approximately 30 inches wide and just under six feet high, and were outfitted with overhead lights. Their distances varied depending on the end point. Some ran 20 to 30 feet, while others extended hundreds of yards; one stretched more than three-quarters of a mile.

The tunnels ran beneath flat terrain, descended hillsides via staircases, and often branched off in different directions. One tunnel dipped beneath a creek and remained watertight for decades.  The mansions of both Henry and Edsel Ford contained subterranean pathways too. Theirs predated Bennett's tunneling.

Bookcase door to tunnel (shown closed & open)

In five of his seven homes, Bennett installed a variety of secret doors that opened to secret passageways and tunnels. Some portals were as simple as hinged storage shelves; others were quite sophisticated, involving hidden buttons and moveable towel racks. Pictured here is a hidden door to a tunnel disguised by floor-to-ceiling shelves.

HB tightrope walk

With a helping hand from Esther, his third wife, Bennett steadies himself as he walks a rope to the deck of his yacht during a party at his East Tawas cabin, c. 1937. Before World War I, Bennett served a four year hitch stoking the coal-fired engines of three U.S. dreadnaughts. Bennett held the rank of Lieutenant Commander in the naval reserve intelligence division for 17 years beginning in 1936.

 HB swims with daughter at Pagoda

A windswept, tattooed Bennett wades with his youngest daughter in the flooded yard of his Pagoda boathouse on Grosse Ile, c. 1941. The unpredictable level of the Detroit River's Trenton Channel periodically flowed into the ground floor of Bennett's summer home, where he moored his yacht in one of two sea-going slips enclosed by roll-up garage doors.

HB with Tris Speaker-Ty Cobb

Retired baseball greats Tris Speaker (left) and Ty Cobb flank Bennett at a Ford-sponsored baseball game in August 1945, one month before Henry Ford II replaced his grandfather as company presidency and pushed Bennett into retirement.  Bennett and Cobb remained friends for years.

HB on horseback after retirement

Bennett rides his pinto horse on the desert floor of his 80 acre ranch near the San Jacinto National Park at Desert Hot Springs, California. In 1946, the Bennetts relocated to the West Coast following Bennett's retirement. The family escaped the sweltering summers by spending June, July and August at their Lost Lake retreat in Michigan for the next ten years.

 In retirement Bennett filled his days by painting oils of the mountain scenery surrounding him, performing home improvement projects, and entertaining out-of-town guests. His family took an active part in community events. 

They frequently dined in Palm Springs, often in the company of Hollywood screen stars. In 1968, at the age of 76, Bennett and his wife moved to Las Vegas. Bennett died in 1979 at a Los Gatos, Calif., convalescent home.

 READ ALL MY STORIES ON HARRY BENNETT HERE