Bloomfield Hills

Bloomfield Hills began humbly enough — Amasa Bagley settled here in 1819, and the crossroads was first called Bagley’s Corners, then Bloomfield Center, before adopting its current name in the 1890s. For a long time it was just farmland. Then wealthy Detroiters started buying up the gently rolling country as a retreat from the city’s heat, and the little community transformed into one of the most affluent enclaves in America — a tiny city of barely 4,500 people, leafy estates, and some of the highest home values in Michigan.

But the reason to come here isn’t the mansions — it’s Cranbrook. In 1904, newspaper magnate George Booth and his wife Ellen Scripps Booth bought a worn-out farm, named it after the Booths’ ancestral English town, and slowly turned it into something extraordinary: the Cranbrook Educational Community, a 319-acre National Historic Landmark of schools, an art academy, an art museum, and a science institute with a planetarium. Much of it was designed by the great Finnish architect Eliel Saarinen, and Cranbrook became one of the most influential design schools in the country — a cradle of American mid-century modern style. The best part? It’s open to the public. You don’t need an estate to walk the gardens, tour the art museum, or catch a planetarium show.

Bloomfield Hills has produced or housed a surprising number of famous faces: comedy legend Robin Williams lived here as a teen, actress Selma Blair grew up here, Chad Smith of the Red Hot Chili Peppers graduated from local Lahser High, and the area has long drawn business titans like racing magnate Roger Penske and ill-fated carmaker John DeLorean. But the most influential “residents” might be the artists and designers shaped by Cranbrook — a campus whose graduates quietly redefined how mid-century America looked.