The Kimball House on Chicago's Prairie Avenue

On Sunday June 9, 2013, Glessner House Museum will hold its 16^th annual fundraiser, A Walk Through Time.  This walking tour explores the interiors of the privately owned historic mansions in the Prairie Avenue Historic District.  Featured are seven residences built between 1870 and 1894, in addition to the Glessner and Clarke house museums, and Second Presbyterian Church with its significant collection of Tiffany windows.  The tour runs from 1:00 to 4:00pm and costs $50 per person.  For more information or to make reservations, call 312.326.1480.  Limited tickets will also be available at the door.

One of the featured properties on the tour is the William W. Kimball house at 1801 S. Prairie Avenue.  When the Glessners moved into their new home across the street in December 1887, the Kimball lot was empty.  This view, taken by George Glessner from his bedroom window, shows the lot with a path cutting across it diagonally toward 18^th Street, an Illinois Central train behind, and the coach house of the George M. Pullman mansion at the far left. 

The proximity of the Pullman house is an important part of how Kimball came to live on Prairie Avenue.  It is well known that Pullman did not like the appearance of the Glessner house.  He was once quoted as saying “I don’t know what I have ever done to have that thing staring me in the face every time I go out of my door.”  Another time he said “I don’t like it and wish it was not there.”  As the story goes, Pullman wanted to ensure that whatever was built on the empty lot would be something he would enjoy looking at when he walked out his door.  He convinced his friend William W. Kimball to purchase the lot and build a residence.  Pullman even went one step further; he suggested what architect Kimball should use.  The architect was none other than Solon S. Beman, the architect of Pullman’s world famous town south of Chicago.  However, the appearance of the Kimball house bears no resemblance to the brick Queen Anne style homes of Pullman’s employees.  For the Kimball house, Beman turned to the French Chateauesque style, using the 12^th century Chateau Du Josselin in Brittany as inspiration for the gray Bedford stone mansion.  The exterior features an abundance of carved stone decoration, in addition to turrets, elaborate chimneys, a slate roof, and detailed copper cresting. 

The Kimball house was completed in 1892 after two years of construction and was reported to cost $1,000,000 to build, which possibly also included furnishings.  William W. Kimball, founder of the piano and organ company that bore his name, moved into the house with his wife Evaline (Cone) Kimball and a staff of approximately twelve servants.  The Kimballs had no children. 

The interior of the house is quite as elaborate as the exterior.  Although many of the original 29 rooms have been subdivided, most of the major rooms remain intact, and the flavor of the original house has been preserved.  Rooms on the first floor have ceilings 13’4” high, those on the second floor are one foot lower.

Upon entering the house, visitors pass through the great double entrance doors into a small entrance foyer, the walls of which are sheathed in Mexican onyx.  An inner set of double doors leads into the Great Hall which is two stories high and features an elaborate staircase illuminated by three huge leaded glass windows.

The fireplace in the Hall is made of Caen stone, a stone derived from Normandy that was used in the building of many cathedrals.  Four rooms enter off of the hall – the library which faces Prairie Avenue; the drawing room; a huge dining room featuring carved oak, a massive fireplace, and a built-in sideboard which originally housed Mrs. Kimball’s extensive collection of antique silver; and Mr. Kimball’s home office to the east of the main staircase. 

Mrs. Kimball also enjoyed collecting paintings by the Old Masters and others, and the paneled walls of the Great Hall would have featured many of these works including:

“The Bather” by Millet

“A Field of Flowers” by Monet

“Portrait of His Father” by Rembrandt

“Bathing Nymph and Child” by Corot

“Beata Beatrix” by Rosetti

“Dutch Fishing Boats” by Turner

“Stoke by Nayland” by Constable

“The Countess of Bristol” by Gainsborough

“Lady Sarah Bunbury Sacrificing to the Gods” by Reynolds

The Kimball collection of 24 paintings was bequeathed to the Art Institute of Chicago where they can be seen today.

William Wallace Kimball, a native of Maine, was born in 1828 and had come to Chicago shortly before the Panic of 1857.  He purchased four pianos from a bankrupt dealer and although he knew nothing about pianos, managed to sell them for a nice profit.  By 1864 he had established an elegant shop and warehouse in the newly built Crosby’s opera house.  His pianos were especially popular with the huge numbers of German and Scandinavian immigrants flooding into the city.  When his store and warehouse were destroyed in the Chicago Fire of 1871, he was back in business just two days later, operating out of the billiard room of his house at 1641 S. Michigan Avenue.  In 1886, the Kimball piano and organ factory was built, and the next year, the first Kimball piano was built.  By the turn of the century, the Kimball Piano and Organ Co. was world famous and the largest organization of its kind in the world.  Kimball died in 1904 at the age of 76.

After Mrs. Kimball died in 1921, the house was converted to a boarding house.  In 1924, the Chicago Chapter of the American Institute of Architects approached John J. Glessner about acquiring his house at 1800 S. Prairie Avenue for use as their headquarters.  He agreed but stipulated that until the house became available following his death, the AIA must acquire and use the Kimball house for a club.  This was done and the Architects Club of Chicago was operating in the house by 1925, through the generosity of 100 Chicago architects who each gave $1,000 for the purpose.  Unfortunately, the club failed during the Depression and closed its doors in 1937.  For several years following, they leased the building to Miss Daisy Hull who ran a school for “backward” children.  In 1943 she purchased the house for just $8,000, less than 1% of what the Kimballs paid to build the house 50 years earlier.  Four years later the publishing firm, Domestic Engineering Company, acquired the house and the adjacent Coleman house at 1811 S. Prairie Avenue.  The two houses were acquired by R. R. Donnelley in 1973 who in turn donated them to the Chicago Architecture Foundation in 1991.  They leased and then sold the properties to the U. S. Soccer Federation for use as their national headquarters, which is how the buildings are used today.

NOTE:  Film buffs will note that the house was used as the setting for the 1996 movie “Primal Fear,” starring Richard Gere, Laura Linney, and Edward Norton.

North side of the entrance porch.  Note how the wrought iron fence is constructed to curve underneath the projecting extension.

Elaborate stone carving over the porch.

Cast plaster ceiling.

Dining room fireplace.

Wheeler Mansion featured on annual tour A Walk Through Time on June 10

On Sunday June 10, 2012, Glessner House Museum will hold its 15^th annual fundraiser, A Walk Through Time.  This walking tour explores the interiors of the historic mansions in the Prairie Avenue Historic District.  Featured are eight privately owned buildings, in addition to the Glessner and Clarke house museums, and Second Presbyterian Church, with its significant collection of Tiffany windows.  The tour runs from 1:00 to 4:00pm and costs $50 per person.  For more information or to make reservations, call 312.326.1480.

One of the featured properties on the tour is the Calvin T. Wheeler House at 2020 S. Calumet Avenue.  The brick Second Empire style house was built for Wheeler, a banker and member of the Chicago Board of Trade in 1870.  It was designed by architect Otis T. Wheelock.  In 1874, Wheeler sold the house to Joseph Kohn, a prominent Jewish wholesale clothier.  When his family sold in the early 1900s, the house was acquired by a publishing company and converted to offices.  Later, it was purchased by the Murphy Butter & Egg Company for use as a warehouse.  By the 1900s, it was sitting vacant, deteriorated, and threatened with demolition.  The current owner, Debra Seger, acquired the property in 1997 for just $10,000 and spent the next eighteen months renovating and restoring the building.  In 1999, she opened the house as the Wheeler Mansion, a boutique hotel with eleven guest rooms and suites.  It is the last surviving mansion on Calumet Avenue and was designated a Chicago landmark in 1998.

The house is an excellent example of the Second Empire style, with its trademark third-story mansard roof.  The elaborate brackets and cornice at the roof line were recreated during the restoration based on a historic photograph.  The two-storey copper bay window was not original to the house and was probably added by the Kohns in the 1880s.

Upon entering the house, guests would have seen the elegant entry vestibule, which still retains both its original mosaic tile floor and beautiful beamed ceiling with Lincrusta panels set in between.

The first floor features a gracious center hall plan which would have provided beautiful cross-ventilation in the days when the Lake Michigan shoreline was just a few hundred feet to the east.  The tall ceilings and heavy mouldings are typical of the style.  The most dramatic feature of the hall is the original ceiling which was meticulously stripped of multiple layers of paint and restored to its original colors.  The flat sections are Lincrusta, the deeper trim portions are cast plaster.  To the north of the hall is the staircase with its original hand rail in the Aesthetic style, influenced by Japanese design.  The stairway is illuminated by a large skylight filled with beautiful leaded glass added during the restoration.

The parlor features an antique mantel from England that is much older than the Wheeler house itself.  Pocket doors separate the room from the adjacent dining room, and would have been used by the live in staff to close off the dining room while it was being set before dinner and cleared after the meal was complete. 

The dining room features an intricate beamed ceiling with Lincrusta panels at the four corners.  The wallpaper is not original but is appropriate to the period.  During the time the house was used by Murphy Butter & Egg, a large loading dock surrounded this part of the house, eliminating all the windows.  Across the hall from the dining room is the current hotel office which originally served as the butler’s pantry where food would have been brought up from the basement kitchen by way of a dumbwaiter.

The grounds have been extensively landscaped providing a beautiful and unexpected oasis of green so close to downtown and McCormick Place.  Starting June 6 and continuing every Wednesday through October 31, the yard will be the site of the weekly Wheeler Mansion Market, a vibrant European-style gathering of local farmers, artisan food producers, and independently owned and operated businesses including an artfully curated selection of jewelry, furniture, art, and handcrafted products by local designers.  The Market will also feature live entertainment and prepared food vendors.  Glessner House Museum will be offering complimentary “twilight tours” of Prairie Avenue and the Museum at 5:00 and 7:00pm each week.  For more information on the Wheeler Mansion Market, visit http://marketatthemansion.wordpress.com/about/

Prairie Avenue mansion designated landmark

On January 5, 2012, the Commission on Chicago Landmarks gave its final approval for the designation of the Harriet F. Rees house at 2110 S. Prairie Avenue as a Chicago landmark.  The house was designated for its exemplary architecture, as the work of a significant architect, and as an outstanding example of our city’s heritage.   The designation is good news for preservationists who were concerned about the future of the house.  Although it is in the hand of dedicated owners, who have spent several years restoring the structure, the building was threatened in recent years by plans to build a large hotel on the block to accommodate visitors to McCormick Place Convention Center, located one block to the south.   Landmark status adds an important level of protection to the structure, the last surviving mansion on the 2100 block of Prairie Avenue.

The elegant row house was built in 1888 for Harriet F. Rees, the 70-year-old widow of James H. Rees, a prominent early real estate dealer and land surveyor, primarily remembered today for the set of maps he created of the Chicago area in 1851.  The architects, Cobb & Frost, designed a significant number of homes in the Prairie Avenue neighborhood, most of which have been lost, except for the Joseph G. Coleman house at 1811 S. Prairie Avenue.   The Rees house was designed in the Romanesque style and features a smooth limestone façade highlighted with rich ornamentation at the front entryway, on the oriel window, around the third-story arcade, and most prominently in the steeply pitched gable.

After Rees died in the 1890s, the house was purchased by Edson Keith Jr. who had grown up in a house at 1906 S. Prairie Avenue (demolished).  His daughter Katherine was raised in the house and in 1916, became the wife of architect David Adler.  She also published two novels, The Girl and The Crystal Icicle, before her untimely death in 1930, the result of an auto accident while traveling with her husband in France.  In later years, the building housed furnished rooms, and during the 1970s was converted to the Prairie Avenue Café. 

The interior is richly appointed and has survived largely intact, a pleasant surprise given its varied uses during the years.  Cobb & Frost designed an interesting moulding pattern that is used on the main staircase and around the doorways of many of the principal rooms.  The most prominent features however are the beautiful fireplaces which possess exceptionally fine tilework, each room being different.  The dining room fireplace is surrounded by a full wall of built in cabinets.

Near the rear of the first floor is the original hand-crank elevator, one of the first to be used in a private residence, no doubt installed for the widow for whom the house was built.

The interior of the house will be open for tours on Sunday June 10, 2012 as part of the annual Glessner House Museum fundraising tour, A Walk Through Time.  For further information, visit www.glessnerhouse.org.