Elmwood (Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan) Elmwood to Charles T. Harvey, who supervised the construction of the first Soo Locks while living in the house. Sault Ste. Marie merchant and businessman Peter Barbeau purchased the building in 1874 when the government sold it. Around the 1880s, substantial Queen Anne-style alterations were done to the building, diminishing the "classical elegance" of the original design. Around 1900, the building, along with a swath of the surrounding shoreline, was sold to the Michigan Lake Superior Power Company. It was used as an office building, then lay vacant for decades wnile owned by Union Carbide. It was used in the
Sault Ste. Marie language resolution the controversy. The resolution was struck down by a court ruling in 1994, and ceased to have legal effect. In 2010, John Rowswell, a subsequent mayor of Sault Ste. Marie, apologized to French Canadians across the country for the resolution. Sault Ste. Marie was founded by French-speaking missionaries in 1623 but had become overwhelmingly English-speaking by the twentieth century. In response to a French-language education controversy which began in 1987 when a group of Franco-Ontarian families lobbied to have a new French school opened in the city, the Sault Alliance for the Preservation of English Language Rights (SAPELR) was formed