The Haven began as an English Tudor Revival-style country estate built for Detroit industrialist Fred M. Shinnick and his wife, Lillian, on the former Manwaring farm along Walton Boulevard, then known as Perry Road. In 1927, the Shinnick family moved into the 33,000 square-foot, 40-room home, which included twelve baths, four fireplaces, and a glass-enclosed atrium. Fred Shinnick, born in Detroit in 1877, worked for Briggs Manufacturing Co. in Hamtramck around 1910 and rose to become its secretary and treasurer when it was the world's largest supplier of automobile bodies and other car parts, later worked for Parsons Manufacturing and Central Iron Foundry, and also served locally as vice president of the Avon Township Library and donated a house at 134 W. Fifth Street, now University Drive, to the Women's Club of Rochester in 1925 for use as a community house. Lillian Graham Shinnick, born in Ontario, Canada, in 1883, designed the estate's English-style landscaping with imported yews, lilies, and irises and belonged to several area garden clubs. In 1932, the Shinnicks converted the residence into The Haven Sanitarium, a private hospital for patients with alcohol and drug dependency, depression, and other illnesses, and they personally managed it as it developed a world-wide reputation for its amenities and treatments for mental illness. Among its notable physicians was Dr. Leo Bartemeier, a world-renowned psychiatrist and psychoanalyst who served as director of professional staff from 1942 to 1954, during which time the sanitarium became a leading psychiatric hospital for patients from across the country and a training center for medical students from around the world. The introduction of prescription medication for depression in the 1950s sharply reduced hospitalizations, and declining patient numbers along with changing fire and safety regulations led to the hospital's closure and sale in 1968. The property then deteriorated from neglect and vandalism, and after a fire destroyed the building on the night of November 2, 1973, with the cause remaining uncertain, new owners platted the land into 142 home sites in 1977 for a subdivision called Grosse Pines, whose first model homes opened in June 1978. Rumors that Hollywood celebrities and notable Detroit figures sought treatment there have never been verified because the staff maintained strict confidentiality.