The Hexagon House

On a quiet street in Harbor Springs, tucked between tall pines and the cold breath of Lake Michigan, stands a house with six sides, no corners, and more history than square footage. It doesn’t shout for attention. But it gets it anyway.

This is the Shay Hexagon House—a private residence built in 1888 by Ephraim Shay, the mechanical mind behind the famous Shay locomotive. A man of industry. A man of invention. A man who believed that if something could be done differently—it probably should be.  And that’s exactly what he did.  Where others built boxes, Shay built a hexagon. Where others used wood, he used steel and stamped metal. The roof, the walls, the design—nothing about this home followed tradition. It was experimental. Efficient. A prototype of progress. Even the rooms flowed outward like spokes on a wheel, each one catching the light differently, each one connected to a central idea: innovation.

It’s a house that asks a question simply by existing: Why not?

Inside, the hexagonal shape bends the rules of space. There's no obvious front, no predictable layout—only balance, symmetry, and the quiet echo of a time when people weren’t afraid to try something strange.  And after more than 135 years, it’s still lived in. Still standing. Still saying something.

Locals pass it often, sometimes forgetting what makes it so unusual until they stop and look. Tourists occasionally stumble upon it and whisper things like “Is that a lighthouse?” or “Who built that?”  But for Harbor Springs, the answer is simple. That’s Shay’s house.  And like the locomotives he invented, it was built to move things forward.

This is not a house that fits a mold. It’s a house that broke one. A six-sided piece of living history. Quiet. Strong. Unapologetically different.  And still—after all these years—very much alive.