Reuther, Walter P. and May Wolf, House National Register of Historic Places Listing

Walter Reuther lived under fire. After assassins blasted a shotgun through his Detroit kitchen window in 1948, shattering his right arm, the United Auto Workers president knew he needed a sanctuary that could double as a fortress. So he and his wife, May Wolf, built this home along Paint Creek in Rochester Hills. Modernist architect Oscar Stonorov drafted the low-slung, glass-and-wood structure. Bulletproof glass lined the windows. Spotlights swept the wooded perimeter, and guards patrolled the isolated gravel driveway to keep the labor boss alive during the height of the mid-century union wars.

This wasn't just a bunker, though. It was a buzzing nerve center. Inside these walls, Reuther hammered out strategy for the landmark 1955 GM contract, hosted foreign dignitaries, and debated civil rights with allies. He fought corporate bosses and mobsters right from his living room. It was deadly work. In 1970, a suspicious plane crash killed both Walter and May. The Rochester Hills estate remains a rare, physical monument to a time when organizing a union carried a literal body count.