Loren Andrus, born in 1816, came to Macomb County from New York State in 1828. He worked as an assistant engineer on the survey of the Clinton-Kalamazoo Canal, but became prominent for agricultural work, especially breeding fine wool sheep, and helped organize both the Macomb County and Michigan Agricultural Societies. Loren and his wife, Lucina, hired his brother-in-law David G. Stewart, a Macomb County builder and architect, to construct an Octagon house, a form popularized by phrenologist Orson Fowler as spacious and beneficial for air circulation and light. Andrus made the bricks himself from local clay, and the house included an elaborate central spiral stairway leading to the cupola. In 1860 he built Michigan’s most elaborate remaining example of the Octagon house form. In 1945 Detroit businessman Albert Schmidt donated money to the Detroit Board of Education to buy the farm, giving city boys practical experience in agricultural studies at Wayne State University. By 1952 the 330-acre self-supporting farm had 90 Holstein cattle and 1,200 hens, and its eggs were sold in green and gold cartons with the slogan “Educated Eggs from the Wayne State University Farm.” Despite the efforts of later owners, the house deteriorated and was damaged by vandals and wildlife. In 1986 a nonprofit formed to save it, and the Friends of the Octagon continued restoring and maintaining the property into the twenty-first century.