For sale in Missouri: ‘African Queen’ home with stuffed lion, glass floor for $8.9M

In 2013, Michael Willhoit paid $545,000 for the house on South Lone Pine Avenue in Springfield with chicken motif wallpaper.

Now, the two-bedroom, two-bath home is listed on Zillow for $8.9 million — because he’s turned it into the African Queen, inspired by the movie.

“I had a mission to make something that’s impeccable,” says Willhoit. “It’s been called a museum. It’s been called one of the most exotic furnished places in the world.”

There’s a mosaic wood floor with 550,000 pieces of oak, walnut and ebony that cost $400,000. Embedded within it is a 17-foot-long figure of a crocodile.

The front doors are from a mausoleum in Goa, India, circa 1820. A needlepoint tapestry is from Italy circa 1780.

There is a copper bathtub and a copper hot tub. Chairs are upholstered in cheetah and elephant hide. Light fixtures are made with ostrich eggs mounted on gemsbok horns.

And there’s a glass floor for watching trout in a creek that runs underneath the house.

The place has been featured in The Wall Street Journal and The Daily Mail.

Everybody, it seems, wants to see the house.

“It just drives us crazy,” Willhoit says. “If the gates are open and the yard man is working people will ask, ‘What time does the museum open?’ ”

But he speaks of the house — and how much it cost him — with pride.

“It’s like having your own little oasis,” Willhoit says. “I’ve got something nobody else has got.”

A 15-foot warrior sculpture in a fountain in the spring-fed creek was $40,000. A stuffed lion also was $40,000. Some of the exotic furniture pieces were $50,000 apiece. The landscaping, plants and waterfalls cost $2 million to $3 million.

Willhoit says all the pieces were bought legally, and that the house is being sold with the furnishings.

“We were lucky enough to have an open checkbook at the time,” said the semi-retired Porsche and Fiat dealer. “Business was good.”

Willhoit spent $500,000 buying lots next door to his house so no one else could build on them. He is disdainful of the $2 million and $3 million houses in Springfield’s upscale Highland Springs.

“They’re just big barns.” Willhoit says. “Could I live in a $1 million house? No. No character.”

Realtor Alex O’Brien of Advanced Realty Group @ HouseKey Flat Fee Realty says Willhoit is ”just one of those guys that if he gets something in his mind he gets it done.”

The African Queen is featured prominently on the website Willhoit Enterprises and is the subject of a YouTube video.

Willhoit and his wife, Lisa, live in the African Queen with their two golden retrievers.

“I put my starched Levi’s on every morning,” Willhoit says. “I sit on the glass floor and watch the trout.”

Lisa Willhoit must share her husband’s enthusiasm, right?

“No,” he says. “I’ve had to fight the whole way. She doesn’t mind living there, though.”

So why, after all that effort and all that money, does Willhoit want to sell the African Queen?

“I can’t do any more to it,” he says, “and I’m a project guy. I’m the kind of guy I’ve got to have a carrot hanging in front of me.”

That carrot is another property in the Springfield area the 65-year-old has his eye on. He wants to transform it into a vision he will call the Serengeti.

“To continue my journey,” Willhoit says. “I don’t want to be normal.”

This story was originally published July 27, 2018 at 11:53 AM.