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.

Docent Diaries: Bonnet House and the Prairie Avenue Connection

The entrance to Bonnet House

For many years, before I became a volunteer docent at the Clarke House and Glessner House museums, I vacationed in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. I would pass by Hugh Taylor Birch State Park, wondering who Mr. Birch was and why he had a park named for him. It wasn’t until I started my docent training that I learned about Birch. Birch was not only significant to Chicago history, but Florida history as well. On my most recent trip to Fort Lauderdale, I took a tour of Bonnet House and learned a little bit more about Birch and his extended family.

South Florida Paradise
Birch was a prominent corporate attorney who lived at 1912 S. Michigan Avenue and was part of Prairie Avenue society. A bit of an eccentric, Birch shunned crowds and preferred a more casual lifestyle. In the late 1890s, Birch traveled by train to Titusville, Florida, the end of the line for the railroad in those days. He then sailed further south by boat, encountering a storm that forced his ship ashore. When Birch saw the tropical beauty of the South Florida coast, he decided he needed to live there. He bought three miles of oceanfront property, that is now part of present-day Fort Lauderdale, for less than $1.00 per acre. According to the Genealogical Society of Broward County (GSBC), silent film director D.W. Griffith offered Birch $250,000 in 1920 for 2/3 of the land, but Birch refused the offer.

A Generous Wedding Present

View of the bird house in courtyard

In 1919, Birch’s daughter, Helen married artist and Prairie Avenue resident, Frederic Clay Bartlett (2901 S. Prairie Avenue). As a wedding gift, Birch gave the newlyweds 30 acres—a piece of his Florida estate. In 1920, construction, of what would eventually be known as Bonnet House (named for the bonnet lilies found on the estate), began and would continue for more than 20 years.

“Eclectic” Design
Bartlett was an artist and designer.  Among his works are the thirteen pre-Raphaelite murals that adorn Second Presbyterian Church at 1936 S. Michigan Avenue.  He had a practical interest in architecture and designed every aspect of Bonnet House. The home was modeled after a Caribbean-style plantation as interpreted by Bartlett. It includes a large courtyard with fountains and gardens. Almost every wall of the courtyard is decorated with paintings, pieces or art, and cultural artifacts from Europe and Asia. The docent that led my tour said there is no discernible decorating style. He described it as “eclectic,” which fits just fine. Bartlett painted almost every inch of the house, including intricate designs on the courtyard ceilings, walls, and floors. While the estate is large, it is not luxurious. Both Birch and Bartlett had luxurious homes in Chicago and elsewhere, but craved a more casual lifestyle. Fort Lauderdale, in the early 20th century was a sparsely populated tropical paradise that suited both men perfectly.

Carousel giraffes are typical of the whimsical artwork throughout the house

Art and Music Lovers
Frederic and Helen loved to travel around the world. During their travels, they purchased many Impressionist and post-Impressionist paintings, including A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte by Georges-Pierre Seurat. Helen was a talented pianist and composer, having several of her compositions copyrighted and published. Bartlett had his artist studio on one end of Bonnet House and Helen had her music studio on the other.

A swan swims in a pond on the estate

Helen died of cancer in 1925 and Frederic lost interest in their tropical retreat. He donated their important collection of paintings, including works by Picasso, Degas, and Matisse to the Art Institute of Chicago.  It was the first major collection of post-Impressionist paintings to be acquired and exhibited by an American museum. 

Six years after Helen’s death, Frederic married Evelyn Fortune Lilly, who was divorced from Eli Lilly. After their marriage, Evelyn convinced Frederic to return to the estate and the two turned Bonnet House into a one-of-a-kind retreat. The house looks pretty much the way it did during the 1930s and 1940s.

Frederic died in 1953. Evelyn continued to live and entertain at Bonnet House after Frederic’s death. She eventually gifted the estate to the Florida Trust for Historic Preservation in 1983, but continued to winter there until 1997 as part of the trust agreement. Evelyn died on July 1, 1997 at the age of 109.

Wrought iron railings were crafted in New Orleans

Bonnet House Survives
Bonnet House is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and is a City of Fort Lauderdale Historic Landmark. If you have the opportunity to visit Fort Lauderdale, a tour of Bonnet House is a must.  For further information, visit their website, http://www.bonnethouse.org/

Submitted by Stephen Reginald, Clarke House and Glessner House volunteer docent. Reginald is also a writer, editor, neighborhood blogger, and amateur classic film historian.

George Glessner and his love of technology

George Glessner was a precocious child, and always took a strong interest in anything scientific or related to the evolving technologies of the latter part of the 19^th century.  His mother records on a number of occasions in her journal comments that George’s tutors made about his abilities and interests.  In May 1886, when George was fourteen, she made the following entry:

“George is intensely interested in chemistry – and his laboratory is wonderfully arranged.  Dr. Mitchell (the tutor) says it is far ahead of his own.  George has all kinds of printed labels and signs.”

When the Glessners moved into their new home on Prairie Avenue in December 1887, George installed equipment in the schoolroom, including a telegraph and a signal repeated.  The telegraph allowed George to communicate with his friends in the neighborhood, as recalled by his father in The Story of a House:

“The school room, approached from the front door without going through other parts of the house was a rendezvous for George’s friends and teachers alike, for they were all comrades together.  Here they had their long, long thoughts of youth, their boyish activities, their fire brigade, their regularly organized telegraph company, presided over, as a labor of love, by Norman Williams, one of the ablest and most astute of lawyers, with wires connecting seven different residences of the members, all centering in this house.”

The signal repeater allowed George to receive alarms coming into the local fire companies.  George and his friends, the “fire brigade,” would run out to watch the fires, and in a number of instances, George would photograph the buildings after the fire had been extinguished, such as the image below.  Only a few residences in the city were equipped with these signal repeaters.

His meticulous attention to detail and fascination with modern machinery continued into adulthood, as recalled by his nephew John Glessner Lee:

“In Chicago, where he and his family occupied a house which was contiguous to and a mirror image of our own, he had a basement shop.  It was a metalworking shop with lathe and drill press, clean and neat with cabinets and drawers along the wall.  At The Rocks the main shop in the Tool Building was much more extensive than was really necessary – a complete line of woodworking machines and several metalworking machines as well, all driven by a monumental gasoline engine with massive flywheels and an elaborate series of shafts and belts.” 

His nephew also recalled the increasingly large role George played in the management of The Rocks:

“He undertook several major improvements, such as the installation of electric light with its own generating station, the acquisition of the old Bethlehem waterworks on Garnet Mountain and the piping from there to the farm’s reservoir.  In those days The Rocks boasted more than twenty buildings and over eighty men were employed.  How much of this activity he was responsible for I never knew, but I suspect that he had a major hand in most of it.”

He was chief owner and manager of the Bethlehem Electric Company and the managing director of the affiliated Lisbon Light and Power Company.  It was said that he “found his chief interest and enjoyment” in overseeing the operations of these two companies.   While serving four terms in the New Hampshire state legislature, he took particular interest in bringing electricity and other modern technology to all parts of the state.

George Glessner died on January 10, 1929 and in his honor, all businesses in Bethlehem New Hampshire closed the day of his funeral.   One can only imagine what he would think of the unimaginable advances in technology that have occurred since his passing.

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)

100 years ago, Christmas lights come to the Glessner house

Frances Glessner’s journal records an amazing amount of information on the house, including the yearly Christmas celebrations which took place.  Because of this, we know that it was exactly 100 years ago – 1911 – when the Glessners first used electric Christmas lights on their tree.  The following excerpt from her journal records this modern technology being introduced to the family and their guests:

“Cheney the electrician spent all of Saturday and Sunday (December 23 and 24) over our Christmas tree, and it was wonderfully pretty.  Mrs. Tramonti came to breakfast on Sunday morning and was here nearly all day helping to decorate the tree.  The tree itself was one of six that came from The Rocks, and was placed in an alcove made of curtains in the main hall, had many and various colored lights that “flashed” and twinkled; there were spot lights of various colors thrown on it, and snow fell from the canopy over it.  It was lighted first at 9 p.m. for our company at Sunday supper – 19 in all at table, and again at 10 o’clock on Christmas morning for the benefit of the children and our guests and the servants – 36 or 37 in all, so that the tree blazed for about two hours on Sunday night and about two hours on Monday morning and then was taken down.  It had its day and was no more.  And before evening we were back to the original condition with only the memory.”

Guests included architect Hermann H. von Holst and his wife, and a number of individuals connected with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra including conductor Frederick Stock and wife,  Frederick Wessels (Treasurer and Business Manager) and wife, Henry Voegeli (Asst. Treasurer and Asst. Business Manager) and wife, and harpist Enrico Tramonti and his wife Juliette.   The Tramontis, who lived at 2218 S. Prairie Avenue, were favorites of the Glessners, and Mrs. Tramonti sent the following note the day after Christmas:

“My dear Mrs. Glessner,

I have not thanked you half as much as I felt yesterday, for the beautiful Christmas you made for us!  It will be a long remembered one, the beautiful, inspiring tree, the fine family dinner, our beautiful present, and above all the sweet comforting feeling of being in a family (and such a one!) and being made almost to believe you belong to it – all that is above words, but I just want to tell you that we feel it deeply!

Thank you for all, dear Mrs. Glessner and believe me yours, all devoted

Juliette Tramonti”

No photograph exists of the Christmas tree from 1911.  The photo above shows the current tree on display in the museum, which also came from The Rocks estate.  It will be on view through December 31.

125 years ago today, the Glessners christen their new home

On December 12, 1886, exactly 125 years ago today, John and Frances Glessner “christened” their new house at 1800 South Prairie Avenue.  Although they would not move into the house for nearly another year – December 1, 1887 – the house was finished off to the point where they could walk through the entire building and clearly see what Richardson had created for them.  George Shepley, one of the three architects who took over Richardson’s office after his premature death in April 1886 (and the one primarily responsible for supervising the completion of the Glessner house), was visiting Chicago with his wife, so the Glessners seized the opportunity to show them the house.  The following is an excerpt detailing the event taken from Frances Glessner’s journal:

We took Mr. and Mrs. Shepley for their first view of the house.  They were in raptures over it.  Mr. Shepley said we were the first clients he had ever envied – but he would like to live in the house.  We left the carriage at 16^th St. and walked down to look at it.  We took down champagne and Italian bread to christen the house and have our first meal there.  We went all over the house.  Then to Field’s to see our rugs and some embroideries – then we dropped Mr. and Mrs. Shepley at the Richelieu.

This evening, December 12, 2011, sixty members, friends, and volunteers of the museum gather for a “re-christening” dinner to mark this notable event in the history of the house.  A full dinner, including champagne, will mark the occasion, after which William Tyre, Executive Director and Curator, will give a talk on the life and accomplishments of John Jacob Glessner. 

The celebration of the 125^th anniversary of the building of Glessner house will continue throughout 2012, culminating in December, when we mark the anniversary of the family moving into their beloved home. 

Schoolroom preserves Christmas traditions

On Saturday December 10 and Sunday December 11, the Glessner and Clarke House Museums will hold their annual Candlelight Tours.  These tours, held at 5:30, 6:00, and 6:30pm, focus on Christmas traditions and decorations of the mid- to late-nineteenth centuries.  A popular event for many years, the tours allow visitors the opportunity to experience the museums from a different perspective and explore how 19^th century families celebrated the holiday.  The Clarke House interpretation is based on extensive research of the period, whereas the Glessner House focuses heavily on the documentation left behind by Frances Glessner in her journal.  Reservations are required for the tours, call 312-326-1480.

A highlight of the Glessner tour is the schoolroom, a space designed specifically for the Glessners’ two children, George and Fanny, who were 16 and 9 respectively when they moved into their home in December 1887.  Since the celebration of Christmas in the family revolved around the children, it is not surprising that the decorations were largely confined to this space in the early years. 

The room is decorated with a small table-top tree, very similar to a tree the Glessner children decorated in 1888.  Such trees were common at the time, and preceded the larger trees which stand on the floor and became popular by the early 1900s.  Homemade ornaments including a tin foil wrapped bird and gold painted walnuts were typical decorations.

A somewhat unique part of the Christmas celebration undertaken by the Glessners was the “Christmas pie,” illustrated above.  Each year, Frances Glessner prepared the pie, which contained small toys buried in rice with rhymes written on paper labels attached.  Her journal entry in 1888 describes the tradition, “We had a lovely Christmas pie covered with holly and smilax.  The presents were buried in the tin pan in rice.  We had a great deal of sport pulling them out, the labels hung out.  There were rhymes on each one.”

Sitting near the pie is a plate with two gingerbread cookies waiting for Santa.  On the plate is a handwritten note composed about 1909 by Frances Lee, one of the Glessners’ grandchildren.  The note reads, “Dear Santa Clause – This year I want surprises.  Thank you very much for the lovely presents you gave me last year.  I wish you a merry Christmas and a happy new year, and please give my love to all the other children.  Frances Lee.”

Surrounding the tree are gifts typical of what George and Fanny received through the years – a toy stove, a train, metal soldiers and Indians, books, a scarf and mittens, oranges (a luxury food item at the time) and a set of dominoes, the latter of which were made for John Glessner’s company, Warder Bushnell & Glessner, and distributed as a promotional item.