The Müller House is a historic house located at 500 North Vail Avenue in Arlington Heights,

Illinois Illinois ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern United States. It borders on Lake Michigan to its northeast, the Mississippi River to its west, and the Wabash River, Wabash and Ohio River, Ohio rivers to its ...

. F.W. Müller built the house for his family and their

soda water Carbonated water is water containing dissolved carbon dioxide gas, either artificially injected under pressure, or occurring due to natural geological processes. Carbonation causes small bubbles to form, giving the water an effervescent quali ...

business in 1882. The Müller business was one of the first commercial establishments in Arlington Heights and was part of the city's early transition from a rural settlement to a large suburb of

Chicago Chicago is the List of municipalities in Illinois, most populous city in the U.S. state of Illinois and in the Midwestern United States. With a population of 2,746,388, as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, it is the List of Unite ...

. The house is also an uncommon blend of architectural styles; while it features a

Greek Revival Greek Revival architecture is a architectural style, style that began in the middle of the 18th century but which particularly flourished in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, predominantly in northern Europe, the United States, and Canada, ...

cornice In architecture, a cornice (from the Italian ''cornice'' meaning "ledge") is generally any horizontal decorative Moulding (decorative), moulding that crowns a building or furniture element—for example, the cornice over a door or window, ar ...

with scrolled

bracket A bracket is either of two tall fore- or back-facing punctuation marks commonly used to isolate a segment of text or data from its surroundings. They come in four main pairs of shapes, as given in the box to the right, which also gives their n ...

s and a symmetrical front facade, the style is not seen elsewhere in the house, which otherwise has a

Victorian Victorian or Victorians may refer to: 19th century * Victorian era, British history during Queen Victoria's 19th-century reign ** Victorian architecture ** Victorian house ** Victorian decorative arts ** Victorian fashion ** Victorian literatur ...

design. The design also combines the functional necessities of the factory with the decorative features of a middle-class home; prominent among the latter is the house's woodwork, which includes a carved

oak An oak is a hardwood tree or shrub in the genus ''Quercus'' of the beech family. They have spirally arranged leaves, often with lobed edges, and a nut called an acorn, borne within a cup. The genus is widely distributed in the Northern Hemisp ...

staircase. The house was added to the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government's official United States National Register of Historic Places listings, list of sites, buildings, structures, Hist ...

on March 26, 1979. It is now part of the Arlington Heights Historical Museum.

Notes

External links

Arlington Heights Historical Museum
Arlington Heights, Illinois Houses on the National Register of Historic Places in Cook County, Illinois Museums in Cook County, Illinois Historic house museums in Illinois 1882 establishments in Illinois {{CookCountyIL-NRHP-stub