1 April 2025
Today, we start the trek back home, but before we sit in the car for far too many hours, we decided to tour a Frank Lloyd Wright house here in Grand Rapids, MI- the Meyer May House:
Built in 1908/09, the house was meticulously restored back in the 80s and you can now tour it! The only external thing they changed was adding those columns to the porch on the left- without them, the overhang sagged too much and would eventually undo all the hard work they put in (even the main roof is reenforced with metal beams). Also, fun fact, all of Frank Lloyd Wright’s houses had leaky roofs. He also had a thing against downspouts (they interrupted the horizontal flow he had going), so instead the house had these random openings with concrete drainage pads underneath:
Moving inside, Mr. May was a short guy, 5’6″ or so, so everything in the house was built to his scale:
(yes, they had a fire going, and yes, that’s where I parked myself while our guide talked- despite the sun, today is also chilly!)
There’s a desk behind me that’s supposed to align with the carpet, but it kinda dominates the room that way… unfortunately, that’s kinda how Mr. Wright designs his houses- everything down to the furniture has a place and, from the stories they told, if he visited a house he built and the occupants had moved something, he’d put it back where he thought it should be.
Huh.
For as much as the guides raved about him and his designs, he seems like a control freak and little quirks like that honestly just annoyed me.
The glasswork was pretty cool- that skylight also has a light in it so it can be a “skylight” regardless of if the sun is up or not:
Also, again because Mr. May was short, the crossbeam of the windows and the sconces were at about eye level for me- he could walk under them, but anyone taller would bump their heads (or have their view obstructed if they tried to look out the window).
Dining room table within the prescribed margins of the carpet:
Out on the patio:
The roof was so low!
Anyway, we got to tour upstairs too and someone mentioned there was a piece of furniture that looked out of place (and it did- totally didn’t match anything else in the house)- turns out that was the one thing Mr. Wright allowed Mr. May to bring with him into the new house.
Like I said, control freak.
Matt and I quickly learned house tours are not our thing. I felt bad, because the guides were super enthusiastic and were talking up other Frank Lloyd Wright buildings we could visit! But honestly, we have no interest.
Sorry.
To make up for the less-than-satifying morning, we visited this blue bridge:
It had snails!
Though one was missing 🙁
One of these snails is not like the others…
On the other side, I found this fish friend:
I thought this would make a cool picture only to realize the bridge is asymmetrical:
Much better!
One last picture with the lone snail:
before starting the long trek home.
Unfortunately, there was an accident around Gary, IN that we opted to route around (which probably actually added time to the trip, but we were able to keep moving so that felt better) and traffic through Chicago was quite heavy:
Probably something to do with all these lane closures…
We actually routed off the freeway and through parts of Chicago to get around it:
Again, maybe not the wisest choice- I think we came out about even time-wise here, but what should have been a 4.5-ish hour trip turned into closer to 6… ugh. Not my favorite travel day ever, but we made it back to my parents’, safe and sound, to spend the night before making the final trek home in the morning.
Overall nice, low-key birthday/anniversary trip!