Inside, red brick fireplaces warm the dining room on the north end and the parlor on the south end. Two chimneys rise from each end of the house. The two-story Log Cabin is built from oak logs (with the bark still on!) on a brick foundation. 'On the outside, the Log Cabin looks like a substantial, genuine log house,' Crocket McElroy wrote in 'Souvenir History of Palmer Park.' 'On the inside it comes pretty near being a good modern house.' (Rice later married the Palmer's adopted daughter Grace.)

Mason and Zachariah Rice, was completed in 1887. The Cabin, designed by upstart architecture partners George D. In 1885, Thomas Palmer gave his wife a present: plans for a rustic log cabin, just like they used to see in the old days, built to her specifications, suitable for summering and entertaining. He kept an orchard and raised herds of cattle and Percheron horses. He had inherited it from his grandfather James Witherell, a Supreme Court judge of the Michigan Territory, and had ''played with it'' since the 1860s, growing his holdings and farming the land. Palmer, had plenty of land – a few hundred acres of it along Woodward Avenue in what was then considered the country. It just so happened that her husband, Sen. She longed for a retreat, a place where she could live as people had in the early days: simply, peacefully and on plenty of land.

Lizzie Merrill Palmer was growing weary of the traffic, noise and crowds of the city.

Log cabin bar