The Glessner House School Room

Photo by Hedrich Blessing, 1987

The last stop on a tour of Glessner House Museum is the school room.  Situated at the southeast corner of the house, it is the only family space located at the basement level.  Although more simply finished than other spaces within the house, in some ways, the school room most effectively shows Richardson’s brilliance in executing the floor plan for the house, and how carefully he considered function and circulation.  In this article, we will examine those issues, as well as taking a look at the room as its function changed over the course of the last 129 years.

A SCHOOL ROOM FOR THE CHILDREN

As originally designed, the room was to serve as the school room for the Glessners’ two children, George and Fanny, who were aged 16 and 9 respectively at the time the family moved into the house in December 1887.  It is the only room in the house to be finished in pine.  This does not reflect a desire to cut costs, for even the servants’ bedrooms are trimmed in quarter sawn oak.  The pine is more a reflection of the overall design of the room, which incorporates many features of the Colonial Revival that became popular following the centennial of the United States in 1876.  The room is dominated by a huge paneled fireplace faced in dark brick.  Dentil trim, a beamed ceiling, and fluted pilasters all reflect Richardson’s interest in using Colonial detailing, and pine was considered the most appropriate choice for these types of interior spaces.

What is most impressive about the room, however, is how it is accessed.  Located just inside the main entrance of the house, three doorways enable the room to function as an independent space within the larger house.  The entrance way leading from the main hall down six steps can be closed off with a paneled pocket door, making the doorway all but invisible to visitors going up and down the main stair case.  Having the room located at the front of the house allowed for the friends of the Glessner children to easily come and go without disrupting activity elsewhere in the house.

A second doorway, up two steps at the southwest corner of the room, leads to the entrance from the porte cochere.  In this way, the children and their friends would have had direct access to the courtyard when the weather was favorable for outdoor activities.  This doorway also opens to the base of the three-story spiral staircase, which allowed the children easy access to their bedrooms and bathrooms on the second floor. 

The third doorway, at the northwest corner of the room, leads into the basement, accessed by going up two stairs.  The floor level of the basement is 24” higher than in the schoolroom – which was dug deeper to permit greater ceiling height in the room.  The first room in the basement off of the school room was possibly used by George Glessner as a dark room.  It is known that he did develop some of his negatives at home, and the proximity of this space to the schoolroom, combined with the fact there is only one small window, would have made it an ideal space for this purpose.  Continuing through this room, one has access to the full basement and then the staircase leading to the kitchen.  In this way meals could easily be taken to the children and their tutor, again without disrupting other activities in the household.

It is interesting to note that all three doors in the room are solid oak.  In each case, however, the door has been faced in pine on the school room side – even the door leading into the basement has the more expensive oak on the basement side of the door – clearly a sign that pine was not used to save money!

The room had central heat, as did the rest of the house, but in this space, which is nearly 50% below ground level, a large radiator was hung on the north wall of the room, and then covered with a huge brass panel.  Presumably that system worked well.  The radiator has long since been disconnected, and, as a result, the room continues to be the coolest in the house during the winter months.

In addition to the large work table in the middle of the room (originally the dining room table in the Glessners’ previous home), ample bookshelves held the children’s books and other items related to their school work.  Numerous cardboard boxes, carefully numbered, held hundreds of George’s glass plate negatives.  Of particular interest, along the north wall beneath the radiator, was a table which held various pieces of George’s equipment including a telegraph that connected to several of his friends in the neighborhood, and a fire alarm that was connected directly to the Chicago Fire Department.  (For more information, see the blog article “George Glessner and His Love of Technology” dated January 2, 2012).

Not surprisingly, the room functioned as the center for Christmas celebrations when the children were young.  In December 1888, George photographed the small table-top tree displayed on the school room table, decorated by the children on Christmas Eve.

THE CHILDREN ARE GROWN

Both children married in 1898, at which time the Glessners made the decision to convert the school room into a sitting room.  The central table and its chairs were given to George and his wife Alice, who returned them to their originally intended use in their dining room.   Plans originally called for an extensive redecoration of the room, and in January 1899, Frances Glessner noted that Louis Comfort Tiffany had been consulted about ideas for the space; those plans were never executed.  

The Glessners commissioned A. H. Davenport, the Boston-based firm that had made numerous pieces of furniture for the house when they first moved in, to make new pieces for the room.  The furniture included a sofa and adjustable back chair, copies of pieces in their library, both covered in the same cut-velvet fabric, Utrecht, by Morris & Co.  A sofa table was designed with a removable panel on the top to hold books.

LATER HISTORY

The Lithographic Technical Foundation occupied the house from 1946 until the mid-1960s.  Ironically, they returned the room to its original function as a class room.  In the image below, taken in 1946 by Hedrich Blessing, the room is furnished with a series of student desks, suitable for the seminars and other training sessions held in the house.

After the house was rescued from demolition in 1966, the school room took on a new use.  Given its proximity to the front door, it functioned perfectly as an office, the executive director and her assistant easily able to answer the door when visitors arrived, often for impromptu tours.

By the mid-1970s, significant work was needed in the room, including the floor which was badly rotted due to there being only a dirt floor beneath.  The entire maple floor and chestnut sleepers beneath were removed, concrete poured, and a new maple floor installed.  

Missing sections of bookcases were recreated, and repairs were made to the staircase and fireplace. 

Eventually, the offices were moved elsewhere in the building, and the room was restored to its original appearance as the school room.  Many of the original items, including a Morris Sussex chair, vases, pictures frames, and numerous books, were returned to the museum by the Glessner family and were put back into the room, based on the historic photos taken by George Glessner.

Today, the school room, with its books and writing tablets spread across the table, gives the appearance George and Fanny have just stepped out for a few minutes.  The space is of special interest to the many children who visit the house – unable to imagine the idea of their teacher coming to them, and having a classroom in their own home.  It reinforces the importance of education that the Glessners placed on their children, prompting John Glessner to recall:

“Over the threshold of this has passed a regular procession of teachers for you – in literature, languages, classical and modern, mathematics, chemistry, art, and the whole gamut of the humanities and the practical, considerably beyond the curricula of the High Schools. . . Of this I am sure, that it gave to each of you a great fund of general information, a power of observation and of reasoning, an ability and desire for study, and to be thoroughly proficient in what you might undertake.  If ever there was a royal road for that, you had it . . .”

Glessner House dining room chairs

The four chairs in the dining room – two arm chairs and two side chairs – are part of a dining room set designed by Charles Coolidge of H. H. Richardson’s architectural firm.  Created for the Glessners’ Prairie Avenue house, the set originally included two arm chairs, 16 side chairs, and a six-foot round table which expanded with leaves to accommodate all 18 chairs.

Charles Coolidge, born to a prominent Boston family, graduated from Harvard in 1881.  During the following year, he supplemented his studies with architectural courses at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and worked in the office of Ware and Van Brunt.  During that time, he also traveled to Europe to examine great architectural monuments.  He was hired as an architect in Richardson’s office in 1882, and there learned to integrate the principles of his early training.

Richardson believed in the complete design of every aspect of a building, often including the design of furniture in his architectural commissions.  For many of his buildings, original furniture forms were carefully designed to integrate in scale and character with the architecture.  During the design of the Glessner house, Richardson advised his clients that their existing furniture was inappropriate in style for their new house, and successfully urged them to allow his firm to design new furniture for their formal rooms.  Coolidge is credited with the design of the dining room table and handsome spindle-back oak chairs, an attribution later recorded by John Glessner in his 1923 The Story of a House, “The furniture in the dining room is from designs by Charles Coolidge . . . executed by Davenport.”

Coolidge’s design combines as great a range of historic reference and influence as Richardson’s architecture.  The plain rectilinear form, oak construction, and simple leather seat cushion suggest furniture of the American Arts and Crafts Movement.  Round, tapering spindles which flatten into a near-square central shape provide the primary decoration.  This use of spindles recalls the Colonial Windsor chair, as well as contemporary furniture based on 18^th century English vernacular furniture designed by William Morris.  These spindles and the delicately curved stiles of each chair also contribute vertical balance to a room with predominantly horizontal lines.  The curve of the chair rail could be a stylized version of a Chippendale chair rail, another popular Colonial style; yet it is so stylized that its vegetative serpentine lines also evoke early Art Nouveau tendencies.  The only other detailing, a spiraling acanthus leaf carved in low relief, wraps around the handhold of each arm chair.  The acanthus leaf was consistently used by Richardson on both architecture and furniture, and is used in several places throughout the Glessner house.  The spare lines, minimal ornament and stylized historic reference in these chairs affirm a very modern design concept – one which clearly forecasts later dining room chair designs by Frank Lloyd Wright.

The furniture was executed by A. H. Davenport and Company, which executed a number of furniture pieces for the Glessners’ new house.  Davenport’s chief designer, Francis Bacon, had previously worked as a designer in Richardson’s office.  Bacon first designed furniture for Herter Brothers, and began working in the office of H. H. Richardson in 1883.  He became the principal designer for Davenport two years later.  Because Richardson’s office was extremely busy by that time, the firm gave the furniture commissions for many of their late buildings to this talented former employee.  On December 1, 1887, Frances Glessner noted in her journal, “Yesterday we continued our moving . . . We found a car load of our furniture had come from Davenport, and had it brought here, unloaded and most of it unpacked.  It is very beautiful.”

Museums features iconic William Morris chair

NOTE:  Since this article was first posted in December 2011, there has been considerable discussion as to whether this chair was, in fact, produced by Morris & Co.  Although a reputable appraiser in Chicago did identify it as such, it appears that the chair may have been made by A. H. Davenport & Co., the Boston-based company which produced numerous pieces of furniture for the Glessners when they moved into their new home on Prairie Avenue in 1887.  Several key features of our chair including the shape of the spindles and arms, the shape and splay of the front legs, and the cut, color, and finish of the quarter-sawn oak have been identified as iconic trademarks of Davenport work, and not at all typical of the similar chairs being made by Morris & Co.  (January 2, 2014)

The museum is proud to have an example of one of the most admired furniture designs of Morris & Company: the adjustable-back Morris chair. Big, roomy, and incredibly comfortable, it is a chair in which one of the Glessners could easily spend an evening reading by the fire. The chair has wide arms to accommodate books, a loose cushioned seat, and a reclining back that is adjustable by a hinge at the base and held secure with a brass rod across the back (see detail photo below). In a sense, this was the first Lazy-boy (albeit the former is arguably a more striking composition).  The original Morris chair - as it is simply referred to today - was designed by Philip Webb in 1866 for Morris & Co. At the time, the company’s business manager, Warington Taylor, recommended that Webb create a chair based on one he had seen belonging to an old Sussex carpenter.

Eventually many variations of the design were being produced in different styles (Flemish, Spanish, Mission), materials (oak, mahogany), and price points ($4.25- $100).  By 1905, nearly every manufacturer at the New York Furniture Exchange displayed some form of the chair and it went on to become a must-have for every household in America.

Webb’s design is the most common; however it is not the style that the Glessners chose. William Watt, another designer for Morris & Co., designed our Morris chair in 1883. The two styles, though not far apart in age, are quite different. Webb’s design is more formal with beaded scrolling and a slightly curved frame - more reminiscent of the Queen Anne style, while Watt’s simplistic form is a nice example of arts and crafts design.

Our Morris chair, located in the library, has an oak frame and is upholstered in green velvet.  An historic photograph of the library taken in 1888 shows that the Morris chair was originally upholstered in a patterned fabric. It seems highly probable that a William Morris designed upholstery was used to match or compliment the adjacent sofa which also shows a richly patterned fabric. 

Contributed by Jessica Blemker-Ferree (Intern, 2010)