DETROIT, MI - The 21,000-square-foot, French Renaissance-style Hecker-Smiley Mansion in Midtown Detroit has been sold, a real estate agent confirmed Wednesday. It had been on the market for seven years, and was listed for as much as $2.79 million.

Wayne State University bought the building for $2.3 million, according to the Detroit Free Press.

Principal Associates took over the marketing for the mansion in December and, shortly after closing the sale on Wednesday afternoon, proudly displayed a "sold" sign in four different languages on the property, similar to a multilingual "for sale" sign it had put up last winter.

"When we originally put the sign up it was part of the statement of what was going on in Detroit," Principal Associates agent Matthew Schiffman told MLive on Wednesday. "It's just such a multicultural city, and Midtown is such a cultural and happening place."

Though situated next to a gas station on Woodward Avenue, the Hecker-Smiley Mansion, could just as well be in the Loire Valley of France.

The French Renaissance-style home, built in 1891 and modeled after the Château de Chenonceau in western France, had just two owners before attorney Douglas Peters led the purchase of the home for the Charfoos & Christensen law firm in 1991.

The law firm bought the 21,000-square-foot home and its accompanying, 6,000-square-foot carriage house for $620,000. The firm then enlisted 28 different contractors to put $1.2 million into restoring it as close to its original glory as possible. That effort landed it a Historic Rehabilitation Excellence Award from the National Park Service in 1994.

The ornate details of the home, carved from mahogany and oak, marble and onyx, to go along with meticulously laid parquet floor designs, underscore the kind of Herculean task this rehab must have been.

Peters told MLive in February that the firm is selling the 11-bath, 13-fireplace mansion because it had become too large for the 12 employees of Charfoos & Christensen, which employed more than 30 people when it moved into the 49-room house about two decades ago.

Peters had been assembling a book he planned to publish on the estate's history and extensive renovation.

Schiffman said a key component of the sale was a "passing of the torch," with the seller desiring a buyer who would have an equal amount of emotional investment in the property.

"This is the first time that an owner of the property has sold the building their lifetime," Schiffman said.

MLive Detroit news director Dustin Block contributed to this report

David Muller is the automotive and business reporter for MLive Media Group in Detroit. Email him at dmuller@mlive.com or follow him on Twitter