Orson Everitt House

The Orson Everitt House is architecturally significant as an intact, Queen Anne pattern book cottage. Its handsome setting and fine outbuildings enhance its importance in rural Wayne County where few such structures have preserved their architectural integrity. It is historically significant for its associations with an old Wayne County family and as a reminder of nineteenth century farm life in a rapidly urbanizing region. The Everitt family settled on the original 314 acre farm in 1830.

Within a few years the simple clapboarded house just to the east of the Orson Everitt House was erected. The family prospered and probably in the 1860s or 1870s the present carriage house and shed were constructed. The Everitt Farm eventually included seven barns and produced a full range of crops and vegetables. The subject of this nomination was erected by Orson Everitt about 1899 in the former carriage yard to the west of the old family homestead.

Orson was a member of the third generation of the Everitt family on the farm. The property remained in his wife’s possession after his death until 1918, when the farm was sold out of the family. In later years the property was divided and the two houses were sold separately. The design for the Orson Everitt House was probably selected from one of the many house plan books available at the time.

A similar design, for example, was published in Herbert C. Chivers’ Artistic Homes. This popular catalogue of house designs went through several editions and was widely circulated in the midwest in the late 1890s and early 1900s. It cannot be asserted that this particular book was the source of the Everitt House design, since similar plans can be found in other publications of the period.

In succeeding years the house was well maintained as a residence. In 1979 it was purchased by the present owners and converted to office use. A restoration architect was employed and the house was thoroughly restored. No substantial changes were made in the floor plan and all of the period detailing was retained.

The rehabilitation of the house and the layout of the parking on the grounds were accomplished so sympathetically that today the property still maintains outwardly the appearance of a turn-of-the-century farmstead. The owners have applied for historic designation as a recognition of the buildings' historic and architectural value.

The Orson Everitt House is located in a rural section of Wayne County about twenty miles northwest of downtown Detroit. It occupies a well landscaped site with mature trees and shrubs and grassy lawns. Across the driveway on the east side of the house is an older clapboarded farmhouse that was the original Everitt family homestead. Behind the house, to the north, is a large pond with wooded banks surrounding the property, the former farmland is grown over with shrubs and trees.

The house is a one-and-one-half-story, hip-roofed, narrow-clapboarded, Queen Anne cottage. The basically boxy shape is articulated with shallow, projecting, gabled pavilions on the two sides and a Tuscan-columned porch extending across the front. The expanse of the tall hip roof is broken by various gables and a semi-octagonal conically roofed dormer turret. The fenestration includes various combinations of one-over-one sash windows as well as several large fixed-glass cottage windows with leaded, diamond quarrelled transoms.

The principle decorative feature of the exterior is the broad porch extending across the front with its turned balusters, panelled frieze, and circular turret on the west end. The interior consists of four main rooms symmetrically arranged on either side of a central stair hall with a kitchen, bath, pantry, and basement stairs located in a rear wing. The second floor is divided into four small bedrooms and a bath opening from a central hall. The entrance with leaded glass diamond quarrelled sidelights leads into the main hall.

Flanking the entrance, five-panel pocket doors lead into the former parlor on the west and the library on the east. The U-shaped staircase, like the rest of the woodwork, is finished in a dark stain and varnished. It has a panelled square newell post and closely-spaced, turned balusters. The former parlor, the dining room behind it, the library or living room, and the bedroom are all simply finished with dark oak woodwork and plastered walls and ceilings.

The dining room has a corner fireplace with a plain, monolithic marble facing replacing the original mantel. Originally there was a plate rail around the walls of the parlor and dining room which has been removed. The rear of the house and the bedrooms are simply finished with the same woodwork and doors as the main rooms. Throughout the structure are polished hardwood floors.

To the rear of the house are a two-story carriage house and a matching one-story shed. These structures were probably erected in the 1870s and were originally associated with the older farmhouse still standing to the east. They are both gable-roofed, board-and-batten buildings with six-over-six sash windows, plain frieze boards at the eaves and small cupola ventilators with scrollsaw brackets and filigree ornamented finials. Unlike the house, which has cut-stone, these buildings have randomly-laid, field stone foundations.

Both the carriage house and the shed have been somewhat altered by the addition of twentieth-century garage doors, but otherwise remain in original condition.