Black Cedar Lake HouseEst. 1924 · Marcellus, MI

Heritage

A hundred years ago, this was the lake's hotel.

The story is the building's own. It has been putting people up on this shoreline since the 1920s, and the whole point of the restoration was to let it do that again.

Framed black and white snapshot of the lodge's screened sunporch with a Coca-Cola sign, a child standing at the corner holding a doll
The sunporch and the Coca-Cola sign
Aged black and white photograph of a man in a straw hat and waders holding a stringer of bass
The hotel's first owner-builder with a morning's catch.

From the album

This is what a week at the lake looked like.

A stringer of bass, waders still wet, and the rest of the day ahead of you. In the hotel years people came for exactly this — a room for seven nights, a boat, and water close enough to fish before breakfast.

From the archive

It went by other names before it was a house.

Originally, there was a grocery store in the basement that serviced the lake with blocks of ice stored up from the lake frozen in the winter. Kids came for a Coke and penny candy.

Framed black and white snapshot of the lodge's screened sunporch with a Coca-Cola sign, a child standing at the corner holding a doll
The sunporch and the Coca-Cola sign
Stained calling card reading Martens Lodge, Cedar Lake, boats, cottages, bait, apartments, comfortable rooms, plenty shade, H. Martens, Prop., Marcellus Michigan
Martens Lodge's calling card
Matted black and white postcard of a three-story lodge under heavy trees, hand-lettered Forst Lodge, Cedar Lake, Marcellus Mich.
“Forst Lodge, Cedar Lake, Marcellus, MI.”

  1. The 1920s

    The hotel years

    A week at the lake was something people planned all winter. Families arrived with trunks, took a room for seven nights, and ate together when the dinner bell rang at long tables. The hotel on the lake was the center of the summer for everybody around it.

  2. Mid-century

    Quieter seasons

    Cars got faster and the country got bigger, and the small lake hotels closed one by one. This one became a private house. The rooms stayed, the porch stayed, the view stayed — but the tradition of the whole family coming for a week faded out with the era that made it.

  3. The restoration

    Putting it back into service

    Rather than gut it into something modern and anonymous, we kept what makes it what it is: the wood, the odd-shaped rooms, and the antique dressers that came with the house. New kitchens, updated baths, everything working — the same building doing the job it was built for.

  4. Today

    One family at a time

    It is booked by the week, the way it used to be. Seven bedrooms means that family, cousins, and friends can come too. We are bringing back a hundred-year-old idea: the whole family & friends, one house, one week, on the water.

Green three-story lake house at 91436 with a covered front porch, a long band of sunporch windows above, and mature trees behind
The building todaySame frame, same footprint, same porch. Set the photo of the lodge beside this one and the band of windows across the front lines up — that is the original sunporch, the room where guests waited out the rain and watched the lake. The Coca-Cola sign is gone; the house number still stands.
Bedroom with tan walls, dark wood trim, three sunlit windows and a wooden bed
The Tan Room

What we kept

The furniture stayed. So did the hotel room numbers.

The mirrored dresser, the sewing table, the hotel room numbers — all of it belongs to the house. Guests tend to notice within an hour of arriving, and by the end of the week they have names for the rooms.

If your family has a photograph or a story from the hotel years, we would genuinely like to see it. Send it along with your inquiry.

Take your week.

Same shoreline, same building, same idea it started with.

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