Museum recreates groundbreaking of 125 years ago

On Wednesday June 1, 2011, over ninety members, friends, and volunteers of Glessner House Museum gathered in the coach house to launch the 18-month celebration to commemorate the 125^th anniversary of the building of Glessner House.  A highlight of the evening was the recreation of the groundbreaking ceremony which the Glessner family held on June 1, 1886.

From John Glessner’s The Story of a House, written for his children George and Frances (Fanny), we know the following regarding the events of that day:

“The house was built in 1886.  On the morning of June 1st of that year, I sent word from my office to your mother that wheelbarrows, spades and picks had just then been sent to the site of our proposed new home, that digging would begin at one o’clock, and if she would take Frances and nurse, etc. in the carriage, and let George drive my horse and buggy and stop at the office for me, and all of us reach the site soon after twelve o’clock, you two children — George then fourteen and a half years and Frances a little more than eight years old — might throw the first soil from the foundation trenches.  And that we did.”

A highlight of the recreation of this ceremony was to have the Glessners’ eldest great-grandchild, John Maxim Lee (pictured above), now 84, participate by turning the soil, just as his grandmother and great-uncle did 125 years ago.  John Maxim Lee and his wife Rosalie traveled from their home in Connecticut for the event.

Two Madame Alfred Carriere white climbing roses will be planted in the two holes dug by John Lee during the ceremony to represent John and Frances Glessner and to commemorate the 125^th anniversary.  This particular rose was chosen because it was developed in 1879, and would have been available at the time the house was built.

The event also marked the official launch of the museum’s 125^th anniversary fundraising campaign, the goal of which is to raise $125,000 for restoration projects by December 2012.  By the end of the evening, $21,000 in pledges had been received, a glorious and encouraging beginning to the campaign.

The unveiling of the reprint of Glessner’s The Story of a House and two exhibits – one on H. H. Richardson, and one showcasing architecture and design books from the Glessners’ library - provided an exciting sequence of events.  The evening closed with a presentation from museum director and curator Bill Tyre, who provided a fascinating look at events in the world, the nation, Chicago, and Prairie Avenue in 1886, placing the building of the Glessner House into its proper context.

Museum Launches 125th Anniversary June 1

On Wednesday June 1, 2011, the museum will launch an 18-month celebration commemorating the building of Glessner House.  A full evening of events is scheduled beginning at 6:00pm.  A summary of the festivities is found below.

6:00pm – Reception in the coach house

6:30pm – Welcome and recreation of the Glessners’ groundbreaking ceremony (which took place June 1, 1886).  Official launch of the 125^th Anniversary Fund, the goal of which is to raise $125,000 during the anniversary period to complete numerous restoration projects around the museum.

6:45pm – Presentation of the new reprint of John Glessner’s 1923 The Story of a House, funded by the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts.  This reprint includes the full text and contains over 60 historic images.  Copies will be available for purchase at the event and the original leather-bound copy presented to the Glessners’ daughter Frances Glessner Lee in 1923 will be on display.

7:00pm – Unveiling of the new permanent exhibit on Henry Hobson Richardson, written by Richardson scholar James F. O’Gorman.   This exhibit, on display in the tour center, explores Richardson’s life, major works, impact on Chicago architecture, and his design for the Glessner house.  A companion booklet with expanded text by the author will be available for sale.

7:00pm – Viewing of the temporary exhibit “The Story of a House” showcasing selected books on architecture and design from the library of John and Frances Glessner.  This exhibit is part of the city-wide celebration “Festival of the Architecture Book, 1511-2011.”  Visit http://www.1511-2011.org/ for further information on events throughout the city.

7:30pm – Presentation by Bill Tyre, Executive Director and Curator of Glessner House Museum, “1886: A Year to Remember.”  A look at events in the lives of the Glessner family as well as events in Chicago, the nation, and the world – as the Glessners started construction on their controversial

Prairie Avenue

home.

For more information on the June 1 anniversary celebration, visit http://www.glessnerhouse.org/Events.htm or call 312-326-1480.  The cost of the event is $15 per person, $10 for museum members.  Advanced reservations are suggested.

The Story of a House

On Wednesday June 1, 2011, as part of the event launching the 125^th anniversary celebration of the building of Glessner house, the museum will unveil the first full reprint of John Glessner’s The Story of a House.  The reprint, which will cost $14.95, was funded by a generous grant from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts.

In 1923, John J. Glessner, then 80 years of age, wrote The Story of a House, a loving and personal reminiscence of the house at 1800 South Prairie Avenue in Chicago that he and his wife Frances had called home since 1887.  The title comes from a book written in 1874 by the French architect and theorist Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc, a copy of which the Glessners owned. 

John Glessner was fully aware of the significance of his home and the architect who designed it.  But The Story of a House was not written as a scholarly monograph about H. H. Richardson or his impact on American architecture.  The Story of a House was written by a father for his two children – John George Macbeth Glessner and Frances Glessner Lee.  It was intended as an intimate story of the house as a family home, and as a record of its furnishings, its occupants and visitors, and some of the important events that shaped the lives of the family members.

This is the first reprint of The Story of a House to include the complete text and all photographs (taken by the prominent architectural photography firm of Kaufman and Fabry).  A few small errors have been fixed – these have been indicated by placing the corrected word in [brackets].  Otherwise, the manuscript reads exactly as John Glessner wrote it, his personal style clearly reflected in the elegant prose that transports us back to the era that he knew and was attempting to preserve.

The timing of The Story of a House coincided with enormous change that was taking place on and around Prairie Avenue.  Just a few months after presenting the story to his children, John Glessner wrote to them stating, in part, “Your Mother and I may have to leave our house 1800 Prairie Ave. after a while – how soon can’t be told.  The Pullman and McBirney houses on the corners of 18^th Street have been torn down and the Henderson house, the Kimball house and the Otis-Jenkins house are high class rooming houses, and nearly all the others are business, though of very satisfactory and unobjectionable kind.  In this state of transition of course we cannot tell how soon something may happen to make our place unsatisfactory.  We have hoped we could live here as long as we needed a house at all, and perhaps we can, who knows.  At any rate we shall not move until we have to.”  John Glessner wrote The Story of a House because he realized that the house itself might soon disappear, and his story would be the only tangible reminder of all it meant to his family.

The Glessners were able to remain in their beloved home until their deaths – Frances Glessner in October 1932 and John Glessner in January 1936.  For the next thirty years, the house was occupied first by the Armour Institute and then by the Lithographic Technical Foundation, which set up printing presses in the once elegant rooms.  When that company moved to Pittsburgh in the 1960s, demolition seemed imminent.  A small group of preservationists, determined to rescue Richardson’s masterpiece of urban residential design, banded together and saved the house in 1966.  Since that time it has been extensively restored, and descendants have returned most of the original furnishings.  Today visitors to Glessner House Museum, now a National Historic Landmark, can experience the home just as John Glessner preserved it in The Story of a House.

For more information on the June 1 anniversary celebration, visit http://www.glessnerhouse.org/Events.htm

The cost of the event is $15 per person, $10 for museum members.  Advanced reservations are suggested.