Thursday we decided to go back into Grand Rapids and see the Meyer May House. The architect of the house was the famed Frank Lloyd Wright. This was his first commission in Michigan. The owner of the home owned a clothing store downtown. Meyer May, his wife and 2 adopted children built the home. Sadly the wife died 2 years later. Meyer remarried and his new wife had 2 children. The house was only 3800 square feet with 3 bedrooms, 2 baths and 1 bedroom for the maid. An addition was made to the home at this time. All the homes that surrounded this new home were built in the Victorian style, making this home really stand out. This house was built in the prairie style, which Wright as famous for. As was customary, not only did Wright design the home, but he also designed all of the furniture, rugs, light fixtures, etc for the home, scaling the furniture to Meyer May's height. Mr. May was very short so when you walked near the wall scones you had to be careful because they were hung lower than normal.
The house was built in 1908, Meyer May lived in the home until his death in 1936, and the house was used a private residence until 1985. At that point it was in horrible disrepair so in 1986, Steelcase, Inc. (a local office furniture company), made the decision to restore the home. It took approximately 2 years for the home to be totally restored. The addition that had been added had to be removed so it could be restored identical to how it was originally built. Before we toured the home they showed a video on how the reconstruction and reproduction was accomplished. You would be amazed at the amount of work and research was done to bring this home back to its original splendor. Most of the furniture was missing from the home, as were the rugs, which were perfectly reproduced from the research done.
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