Yerkes, Joseph D., House

The Joseph D. Yerkes House is significant as the one-time home of Joseph D. Yerkes, a member of one of Oakland County's pioneer families, and possesses architectural importance as a particularly fine and well-preserved local farmhouse exemplification of High Victorian residential design. By virtue of its unusual towered design and its handsome exterior detailing, the J.D. Yerkes House stands out among the High Victorian dwellings of what was then largely rural Oakland County. The names of neither the designer nor builders of the house are known; however, the use of the ogee-arch motif in the porch is somewhat characteristic of this area.

The Joseph D. Yerkes house is a two-story, hip-roof, basically Italianate structure of somewhat irregular outline, with a projecting mansard roof tower in the center of the facade. The house's broadly projecting eaves display paired brackets and the frieze panels beneath them have centrally positioned rondelle decorations. A modest front porch has Gothic ogee-arch detailing. The Yerkes house is located on the north side of Eight Mile Road and faces south. Located in Novi, a burgeoning residential community at the western edge of the Detroit metropolitan area, the house nevertheless is still largely surrounded by farm lands. The house consists of a squarish front section measuring thirty-four feet by thirty-two feet across the front, a centrally positioned square front tower, and a one-and-one-half-story rear kitchen wing measuring twenty by twenty-one and one-half feet. The main block of the house has a low hip roof, with widely projecting eaves supported by paired brackets with ball finial terminations. The square tower, ten by ten feet in floor plan, projects its full width from the house's front wall. It is three stories in height and is capped by a mansard roof, which is clad in inappropriate wooden shake shingles. The tower contains the main front entrance.