This Little Village Is Home to a Conservative Icon's Estate
Russell Kirk helped define the movement in the 20th century, and his home now serves as a retreat for budding intellectuals
Mecosta — Have you ever heard of Mecosta? Probably not. I’m not shaming you; you aren’t terribly deficient in your Michigan geography. Mecosta has about 475 people, a gas station, a Methodist church, a used bookstore, an ice cream shop, and some old houses on a few sleepy little streets.
Mecosta is like a hundred other little towns scattered across the rural north: a little brick island plopped down in a sea of farmland with one gas station and no stop lights. But Mecosta has something else, something very different.
Mecosta is one of the most influential intellectual hubs in American conservatism today. I know that sounds improbable or maybe even impossible. But it’s not.
The village is home to the Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal. Russell Kirk, for those unaware of the intellectual giants of American Conservatism, was a writer, lecturer, thinker, and one of the most influential figures on the American right through the latter part of the 20th century and into the first quarter of our 21st.
Kirk was born in Pontiac in 1918 but spent most of his youth in Mecosta where his great-grandfather, Amos Johnson, was elected the first village president in 1883. Kirk raised a family; wrote countless books, columns, and articles; welcomed too many guests to count; and lived most of his adult life at the home which came to be known later as Piety Hill. He died in 1994, but today his home is the epicenter of American conservatism.
The Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal sits at the corner of West Main and South Franklin. Guarded by a line of tall trees to its north and a collection of beautiful lilacs planted by Kirk in its front. Rising up and out of the dense foliage, Piety Hill stands like a brick beacon over Franklin street.
The inside of Kirk’s home is just as beautiful as the outside, and feels like some kind of much-needed gasp of fresh air in world that’s suffocating in its own vulgarity. I was lucky enough to spend an afternoon there with Kirk’s widow, Annette Kirk; his daughter, Cecilia Nelson; and a group of young brilliant students visiting for the summer.
We sat and had lunch, pie, and coffee together at a long beautiful table in the dining room on a warm day in late May, when the sun is bright and the air is still and sweet. We discussed life, culture, and the future of American society surrounded by all the beautiful things Kirk collected over the years.
The ceiling in the dining room is made of church pews. There’s a mirror in the living room the Kirks bought from a Chinese restaurant in Grand Rapids called Sun Sai Gai. The paneling in the entryway came from old homes by way of Dr. Clifford Nelson’s antique shop and came in quite handy when the Kirks were rebuilding after a fire at their home in 1975. There are lots of old books, beautiful artwork, Victorian-style couches, and old photographs of Kirk and his wife with just about everyone who mattered in American politics on the walls, tables, and bookshelves.
Piety Hill is the heart of the Kirk Center, but its cozy little campus runs all the way down Franklin Street. The center owns a number of houses on the street which serve as lodging for visiting fellows and other guests. An old tall home with white wood siding, a simple brown bungalow with dark green shutters in the shade, a 1940s-era cottage with an old screen door. That one’s very nice. That one, in the quiet afternoon sun and shade, looks like a postcard from another time.
Just south of Moore Street is the Kirk Library. Housed in an old Dutch barn without any elaborate sign or grand entrance, with floors covered in tartan carpet, low ceilings, and over 15,000 books, the library is one of those places I wish I could just sit reading, writing, thinking, and being quiet. Perhaps another time.
The Kirk Center is somehow both meditatively still and rapid-fire busy. Talking with everyone there, it seemed like their schedules were booked weeks in advance. Every week there are more college students, professors, and intellectuals on their way. Last year, the center welcomed more than 1,300 guests. That’s nearly three times the total number of people who live in Mecosta.
The Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal is a very special kind of intellectual oasis. Rarely am I so invigorated when visiting somewhere with people I’ve only just met. Annette Kirk’s hospitality made me feel like I’d known her for years, and anyone else who’s met her will attest to the same. Lunch at Piety Hill was equal parts forum, debate, meeting, eating, and enjoying.
Most in our era are withdrawn, impersonal, and less than welcoming. We inhabit our own little worlds alone, refuse to show each other our homes, and instead meet at an office that looks like a spaceship from a cold planet. The warm hospitality of the Kirks, and now the Kirk Center, is exceedingly rare, extremely special, and a much-needed reminder that people so very much matter in a time that seems to forget it.
They share meals with like-minded individuals, host guests of rare intelligence, and give young brilliant minds a place to grow their ideas. In the library there were two young students quietly sitting in the late afternoon. One at a round table in the center of the room, another slouched in a wooden chair with a book, wearing a navy blazer and blue Oxford shirt. Kirk’s desk sat in the corner, his books lining the walls.
At first it sounds odd that such a place would be hidden in such a small village that no one really knows. But after a while there it starts to make perfect sense. There is something intellectually centering about the small place. The little woods, the small village, the dining room table with pie and coffee, the quiet library with the low ceilings and tartan carpet. In our era of global connectivity and what appears to be an ever-speeding race to the anti-intellectual bottom, the collection of buildings on Franklin Street in Mecosta is a place of something brighter and crucial.
An intellectual oasis, a hub of something higher, a place where one can come to learn, grow, connect, and then go out again and hopefully influence our world for the better.
