Saving Mackinac Island’s Brigadoon After a Devastating Fire

This article first appeared in Traverse Northern Michigan. Find this story and more when you explore our magazine library. Want Traverse delivered to your door or inbox monthly? View our print subscription and digital subscription options.

For nearly 125 years, Brigadoon, a lovely cream-colored home on Main Street with a signature domed turret, has been a treasured piece of the island landscape—a setting accented with historic treasures, including dozens of other Victorian cottages, Fort Mackinac and the elegant Grand Hotel. At four stories and 20 rooms, all loaded with ornately carved oak woodwork, the Queen Anne–style Brigadoon is a veritable monument to the wealth of the man who had it built: George Arnold, founder of the Arnold Line ferry (now owned by Mackinac Island Ferry Company).

In 1989, Jay and Janet Stingel purchased Brigadoon turnkey from the home’s previous owners. Though virtually the entire house was original to Arnold’s era, Brigadoon had become a bit tattered over the century. The Stingels’ loving restoration included new wiring and refinishing the beautiful woodwork and furnishings throughout the home. For the next 32 years, the couple spent glorious summers relaxing on Brigadoon’s veranda, basking in the breezes off the Straits of Mackinac while watching horses clip-clop and bicyclists mosey past—motorized vehicles having been banned on the island since the year before Brigadoon was built.

In their 1989 redo of the home, the Stingels had chosen Victorian-inspired shades of rose for the furnishings. This time, working with Sharon Grzech of Petoskey-based Pumco Interiors, the couple opted on a blue and pale-green palette to reflect the island’s woods and water.

The parlor table and ornate chair are original to the home, as is the piano. The new drapes “puddle” at the bottom—a style in Victorian homes used to help keep drafts out. The water-damaged oak woodwork, including the ionic columns, were restored to their former beauty.

At around 6 p.m. on May 30, 2021, that blissful lifestyle went up in flames. The evening was just chilly enough for a fire in the living room hearth where the Stingels were enjoying a glass of wine when they noticed strangers racing up to their porch yelling that the roof was on fire. Not really believing, the couple ran up to the home’s third floor and as they rounded the corner in the hallway Janet recalls hearing crackling in the walls. “I knew then that we were in trouble,” she says. The couple grabbed their two dogs and some random belongings and fled outside to see a terrifying blaze devouring the cedar shingles along the main roof gable—flames that were headed for that signature dome.

Within minutes, Mackinac Island’s fire department, including their two fire trucks—motorized emergency vehicles are permitted on the island—screamed to the site, and additional firefighters were immediately dispatched from St. Ignace and Mackinaw City, the closest cities across the water. The crews worked furiously for 90 minutes and amazingly had the fire put out by 7:30 p.m.

Related Read: Take a Rare Look Inside Mackinac Island’s Historic Cottages.

Landscaper Jack Barnwell recreated the original landscaping that had been largely destroyed in the process of putting out the fire and by the heavy equipment used for reconstruction.

It didn’t take the Stingels long to count their blessings: no one (or animal) had been hurt. The wind was quiet that evening so the fire didn’t spread as it could have along the close-packed line of historical buildings on Main Street. And given that the fire broke out over the primary bedroom, it was beyond fortunate that the couple wasn’t asleep when it happened. Then there were the heroic Mackinac Island firefighters who, well versed in the importance of saving historic island artifacts, carried out valuable paintings, an antique chandelier and other heirlooms.

Still, the devastation was staggering. The entire roof—dome included— and third floor were a total loss, and water damage from the hundreds of thousands of gallons sprayed on the home had ruined the interior. The renovation would cost more than a million dollars. Cost aside, the logistics of rebuilding a historical home on an island where supplies are moved from the ferry to the site by horse and dray were mind-boggling. Nevertheless, the Stingels were determined to restore Brigadoon—and did so by pulling together a team of contractors and craftsmen that was consummately tailored to the needs of their restoration.

Related Read: Best Things to Do on Mackinac Island in 1 Day.

Job one was to hire a crew ASAP to get a roof on the home before winter set in. That issue was solved when a friend, Steve Seibert (then the vice president of construction for the Saginaw-based contracting company Wolgast Corporation), called the Stingels and offered assistance. “We have a restoration division,” Seibert explained. “We do this on a daily business.”

That said, Wolgast had never done a project on the island with all its logistical complications, but the company was game. Beyond having to barge all of the heavy equipment and supplies across the Straits, every move had to be planned minutely so that the work didn’t block the daylong crowds on Main Street. “We had to work on island time,” Seibert explains. “Even the trash had to be picked up early in the morning before tourists were on the street.”

Fortunately, enough of the dome remained intact after the fire for it to be replicated. Jay figured correctly that the wooden boatbuilders at Mertaugh Boat Works, the Hessel-based company where the Stingels keep their two vintage boats, had the needed skills to build a new one. “A dome is more like a boat than a house,” explains Geoff Hamilton, Mertaugh’s general manager. “Everything on a boat is curved.”

Refinished after the fire, the gracious stairway made it through the blaze. ServPro of Gaylord—fire and water damage specialists—transported dozens of antiques, including the dainty Eastlake Victorian chair in the lower right of the photo, to Hensler Furniture Restoration in Saginaw for refinishing.

Working with a small team, Mertaugh’s master craftsperson, John Fehner, constructed the 2,450-pound dome that measures 12 feet in diameter. To assure that the dome was as historically accurate as possible, it was fabricated from custom-cut, rough-sawn cedar from the Upper Peninsula. “It’s not off-the-shelf lumber from Home Depot,” Hamilton says.

To place the dome atop the turret, the Stingels hired Midwest Helicopter Airways of Willowbrook, Illinois. On an October day five months after the fire, pilot Kurt Hanneman transported the dome from St. Ignace (where it had been trucked from Hessel) and laid it neatly on top of the turret—a process that took just 15 minutes from start to finish. The restoration was far from complete, but the turret was on and the crew from Wolgast was closing in on the completion of the roof. Brigadoon’s interior would be protected from the elements through the long winter while work continued.

On a May night in 2022, almost a year to date after the fire, the Stingels lit a fire in their living room fireplace, confident that the home’s two chimneys—both re-built by a Straits-area mason—were safe and sound. Nevertheless, as they poured themselves glasses of wine, Jay called the Mackinac Island fire chief and joked: “Don’t drink tonight, we’re starting a fire.”

Related Read: Look Inside a Modern Masterpiece in the Big Woods.

Brigadoon Cottage Building Resources