Modern Day Butler

Friday, November 11, 2011

The International Guild of Professional Butlers estimates that there are a more than a million professional butlers in the world today… with a surge in the past 10 years. Detroit may seem like an unlikely place to employ a butler… but one particular mansion in the neighborhood known as Boston Edison still needs a house manager to administer the sprawling estate.

“Mark once you do that just do a sweep through to make sure we have all of the dishes…fill the and take a look at glasses… Thanks.

Meet Drew Esslinger. He’s in charge of making sure an afternoon social event for more than two hundred guests runs smoothly.

We need to look at all the trays in there cuz it is starting to get low quick… I have a dessert tray that has to be filled it's going quickly… they're getting anxious for chocolate… and they need some chocolate.

Esslinger’s job as house manager requires knowledge of social etiquette, protocol, and familiarity of fine dining equipment. He regularly receives and entertains guests. But when he’s not entertaining… his main responsibility is the maintenance of the house.

Basically my job is the house manager so in quote “a Modern day Butler, I run the home.

And this is no ordinary home.

Charles Fisher who built the house was one of a number of brothers who founded and got into the auto industry by building car body’s. The Fishers probably were amongst the richest people in America at the time.

That’s William Worden. For almost 30 years he was the Director of Historic Designation for the city of Detroit. He says the Fisher house remains a testament to a once wealthy city.

“The library is wood paneled…walnut in an early English Renaissance manor. The library ceiling is divided into sections and within the panels there are elaborate painting in which is sometimes called grotesque style. It has an antique fireplace in it from the fifteenth century. You have a large and elaborate stair hall in Tudor Elizabethan style, carved stair case, lions sitting on top of the newel posts. Hand carved mantle piece and over mantle in the manor of Grinling Gibbons.

The workmanship and rich architectural details are scattered through every corner of the home. The Charles T. Fisher mansion is the largest home in Boston Edison. The 18 thousand square foot residence built in 1922, has 12 bedrooms, 17 bathrooms, a chapel, a marble ball room, a gymnasium and servants quarters. Esslinger’s love of Detroit and the possibility of restoring the historical land mark is what compelled him to take the job. He says he fell in love with the house the moment he saw it.

I’m coming up to the house and it’s just huge…amazing…mammoth. I come through the front door, get into the foyer…and I’m in awe! It was just incredible… the staircase, the woodwork, the carvings…

Michael Fisher, a distant cousin of the home’s original owner, bought the estate in foreclosure in 2007. A member of the Fisher Family last lived in the house in 1974. Since then several people owned the Fisher house but couldn’t financially keep up with needs of the sprawling mansion. Days after taking the job as the home’s butler… Esslinger says he was daunted by the amount of restoration the structure needed.

I’m thinking… oh my gosh what am I getting into…now I’m starting to look a little closer and I’m seeing all the work that has to be done. From plaster to wood repair we had trees…you couldn’t even see the first floor of the house and then the porch had caved in.

Esslinger is a horticulturist by degree but fell in love with preservation. He started his own company called Harvard Restoration, which took him to New York where he worked for Stew Rockefeller. He says he revels in details but the list of things to fix in the Fisher House is endless…like up-dating the phone system from 1922.

“OK, let’s check and see if I can call in on it and see if it rings… perfect… awesome…another old phone fixed.”

Esslinger’s restoration business went under during the recession but he says he’s found happiness with the way things turned out.

Did I ever think that I would be a house manager? Did I ever think that I would be living downtown in a mansion? Never….never.

Like many Detroiters, Esslinger found a new way to make a living, and re-invent himself. He says Reinvention isn’t always a bad thing. He’s enjoying his new life as a modern day butler. Last month he ran for and was elected President of the Domestic Estate Managers Association of Michigan.

I’m Martina Guzman WDET news