Herman Miller’s Home: Marigold Lodge

If you’re a customer of ours, it’s possible you’ve been to–or stayed at–Marigold Lodge, poised on the north side of Lake Macatawa in Holland, Michigan. Part of our heritage since 1978, the lodge has an interesting history that makes it a very special place.

Picture yourself in 1912, when steamships carried tourists from Chicago to the resort areas along the shores of Lake Macatawa and Lake Michigan. This is when the Gold family arrived at Superior Point, the small peninsula that Marigold Lodge resides upon. Egbert Gold purchased the land and, by the next year the icehouse was built. Eventually other buildings were added.

Gold’s avocation was horticulture, and he recorded many of the details about the development of the lawns and gardens, fruits and importations, temperatures, and arrival of birds. His journals also recorded the step-by-step building of Marigold, which was named to honor both his wife, Margaret, and daughter, Mary Jayne. He called this place, “my only source of pleasure and interest outside of my family and business activities.”

Gold died 15 years later. When Margaret died in 1969, Mary Jayne presented the estate to Hope College. But the college was unable to keep the house in good repair. In 1977, Herman Miller signed a 30-year lease on the property and began restoring the lodge. The Learning Center was completed in 1978. The Marigold complex was so immediately synonymous with Herman Miller’s corporate culture that we purchased it the same year.

Since then we’ve restored and refined, converted and added–improving the property for our guests, who not only include our customers, but also our employees.

It’s a place to host seminars, meetings, development events, and research symposiums. Marigold belongs to the entire company and is often a popular venue for retirement dinners.

Marigold has become Herman Miller’s unique expression of “home,” as we have grafted our own traditions of design and purpose onto the enduring buildings and grounds of Superior Point.

Interested in seeing more? Check out the the slide show “Inside Marigold Lodge.”

By Marcia Davis

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