A Frank Lloyd Wright house that its original owners helped construct with their own hands has returned to the real estate market in Galesburg, Michigan, priced at $2.1 million. The Samuel and Dorothy Eppstein House, finished in 1953, is listed through Signature Sotheby’s International Realty.
The single-story residence sits inside The Acres, a cluster of homes Wright designed for a group of scientists who worked together at the pharmaceutical company Upjohn and were also friends. Samuel and Dorothy Eppstein were among them: both worked as researchers, and Dorothy had earlier served as a Women Airforce Service Pilot flying military aircraft during World War II.
Inside the Eppstein House
The house follows the compact, horizontal logic typical of Wright’s Usonian houses. A cantilevered roof extends over walls of hand-cast concrete block, and mahogany-framed windows and doors open the interior toward the wooded lot, the same reach for landscape that drives Fallingwater. Cherokee red concrete floors, laid over radiant heating, run through the home’s in-line plan, with the same block construction carried onto interior walls.
Built-in furniture is part of the architecture throughout, and several Wright-designed pieces have remained in the house. The current listing puts the home at 2,500 square feet, with three bedrooms and two bathrooms, on a two-acre parcel.
What sets the Eppstein House apart even among Wright’s projects is the degree of hands-on involvement from its first owners. Samuel and Dorothy took part in fabricating roughly 3,000 concrete blocks that went into the walls, and they also negotiated changes to Wright’s design, successfully requesting larger bedrooms for their children and a bigger kitchen with a window.
The Acres and Wright’s Usonian community near Kalamazoo
Wright planned The Acres across roughly 70 acres outside Kalamazoo, arranging homesites in circular plots surrounded by shared open land. Of the 21 houses envisioned for the site, only four were ever built to Wright’s designs, including the Eppstein House.
The Eppstein House had fallen into disrepair before Marika Broere and Tony Hillebrandt bought it in 2016. They completed a restoration the following year, replacing the roof and building systems and repairing the original concrete floors and mahogany woodwork.
The property is now listed for sale at $2.1 million, with no timeline given for when a sale might close.
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