A little over two decades ago, Rex Martin was so busy at work that his wife, Alice, announced she was taking the kids to the southwest Michigan lake shoreline for two weeks and he could join them if he had time.

Pretty quickly the whole family fell in thrall with the beaches and woods of the area around Lakeside, Mich., about 50 miles northwest of their home in Elkhart, Ind. So much so that after just a couple years’ vacations, the Martins decided “we wanted to build a home up there,” says Rex Martin, chairman of Nibco, an Elkhart pipe and valve manufacturing firm his grandfather founded.

Three years later, in 2006, construction was finished on the Martins’ nine-bedroom, 11,100-square-foot house on a wooded bluff-top site overlooking Lake Michigan. The property includes a guesthouse, a swimming pool, extensive fine finishes and, according to Martin, places to gaze at the sunset, launch a paddleboard into the lake and watch fireworks.

Alice Martin died a few years ago, and with the children grown up, Rex Martin, who’s 71, said the home is simply too large for him now. The house, on 1.13 acres about 76 miles from downtown Chicago, is coming on the market Oct. 5.

Represented by Will Schauble of @properties Christie’s International Real Estate, it's priced at $9.45 million, the highest current asking price for a home in southwest Michigan's Harbor Country. 

“We built as close to the bluff as possible” to maximize the view and sound of Lake Michigan down below, Martin says. The siting also has the effect of putting the house at a pleasant remove from the neighbors, so that it becomes “our own hidden resort,” he says.

Midway down the bluff stairs is a round landing, placed there for the express purpose of “having a glass of wine at sunset,” Martin says. 

  “If you don’t like the beach, there’s the pool,” Martin says, “and if you don’t like the pool, there’s the beach.”

At the far end of the pool, just off the lip of the bluff, is a spa.   

Setting the house back at the end of a long driveway enhances the sense of separation from the rest of the world.

The columns and big triangular pediment may suggest a Greek Revival style, but the truth is this house is Georgian—as in Georgia the country in Eastern Europe.

“We went to see a friend in Tbilisi, in Georgia, and my wife fell in love with the architecture,” Martin recalls. The style is formal and “very symmetrical,” he says. They worked with Elkhart architect Tom Borger to import the style to their Michigan site. Borger, who designed many prominent buildings in Elkhart, died in 2017. 

The lake is a constant presence in the windows.

Sometimes from this vantage point, “you can see big black storms coming in across the lake,” Martin says. “You can see it coming without the weatherman telling you.”  

The formal style of the main rooms lends itself to entertaining large groups or small family gatherings, Martin says.

The dining room has views of the outdoors on opposite ends, with French doors to a patio on the lake side and windows framing views of the wooded setting on the inland side.

Objects from the Martins’ travels fill the house, including a pair of replicas of China’s famed two-millennia-old terra cotta warriors.   

  The kitchen has views of both the lake, seen through the windows in the background of this photo, and the pool, off the right edge of the photo.   

An office is trimmed with rich wood paneling and a stone fireplace mantel.

The primary bedroom suite includes a lake-facing sunroom, seen through the French doors, and two full bathrooms.

This suite is at one end of the floor, separated by the grand staircase from the other bedrooms, sitting rooms and home gym that are on its level. 

The guest house is a separate structure from the main house that incorporates one of the small, tumbledown old cottages that stood on the site when the Martins bought it in 2003.

It has four bedrooms and baths and its own kitchen, as well as an underground tunnel for crossing over to the main house in bad weather.   

Inside the guest house, “we went less formal, more beach house,” Martin says. 

This round patio with a built-in fire pit is one of several spots designed for basking in the view over the water. For Martin, it’s a reminder that “my wife and I had the same dream of spending time up here looking at the lake and the sunsets and enjoying it all.”   

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