Austin and Roxanna Lilly, who came in 1832 to Dover Township, now Westlake, from Ashfield, Massachusetts, built this rare sandstone house about 1844 on a lot formerly owned by Ozias and Hiram Smith and lived here until 1867. The house was constructed with sandstone blocks two feet thick, finely tooled and dressed in the front and less elaborately on the sides and rear, with a basement of massive rectangular stone blocks and thick hewn timbers supporting the roof structure; a brick wing was added to the east side about 1850. After 1867 the property passed through several owners, including George Weston, James Beardsley, and August Trudel, before Alice Ladanyi, the great-granddaughter of George Weston, deeded it to the city of Westlake for use as a museum. The sandstone came from a local quarry, probably near Porter Road, and although the area had immense sandstone deposits, such stone was rarely used for houses because extracting, transporting, and assembling the massive blocks required immense labor, so wood and brick were more common. Local sandstone also supplied the Canadian Parliament Buildings, public buildings in Toronto, and sidewalks, curbs, and buildings throughout Ohio, and several nearby sandstone houses survive, including examples farther west on this road, at Schwartz and Nagel roads, and at Stone Eagle Farm on Detroit Road, while nearby Amherst, home to the world's largest sandstone quarry, preserves a collection of early stone buildings.