The Hackley and Hume Historic Site preserves two of the most elaborately decorated Victorian houses in Michigan, built side by side in the early 1890s by Charles Hackley and Thomas Hume, the two men most responsible for making Muskegon the lumber capital of the world. Both houses are National Historic Landmarks, and the interiors retain extraordinary original woodwork, stained glass, and decorative painting — the kind of exuberant spending that only happens when men who spent their lives surrounded by timber suddenly have more money than they can spend.
Guided tours run through both houses and explain the lumber industry that built them, Hackley's remarkable philanthropy (he gave the city its library, park, hospital, and several schools), and the social life of a Gilded Age Michigan boomtown. The exterior Queen Anne facades, with their towers, porches, and decorative shingles, are among the most visually striking examples of that style in the Midwest.