The Elks Memorial

On Thursday August 23, 2012, twenty-five members and friends of Glessner House Museum visited the Elks National Memorial at 2750 N. Lakeview Avenue in Chicago.  The Memorial contains one of the great interior spaces in the city, if not the nation.  Built for the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks, the building functions solely as a memorial – it is neither lodge hall or meeting space, although the national offices of the organization are located in wings to the north and south. 

Following World War I, there was a strong interest by the Elks to erect a memorial to the 1,000 plus members who died during the war (more than 70,000 served).  Following a competition sponsored by the American Institute of Architects, New York architect Egerton Swartwout’s design was selected, and the Hegeman-Harris Company was selected as contractor.  The former site of the Ernest J. Lehmann mansion (owner of the Fair Department Store) at the southwest corner of Diversey and Lakeview, directly across from Lincoln Park, was selected.  Construction began in 1923 and the building was officially dedicated three years later on July 14, 1926.  The cost of nearly $3 million was covered by a $3.50 per member assessment.  The memorial has been rededicated several times since to include Elks who gave their lives in subsequent wars and conflicts.  In recent years it has undergone an extensive restoration costing nearly $5 million.

The heart of the memorial is the domed rotunda which rises 94 feet from the floor.  A huge reflector in the middle of the dome is covered in gold and aluminum leaf, and lights reflecting off the leaf provide a warm and even illumination of the space below.  Numerous marbles from various locations in Europe and the U.S. are used for floors, walls, columns, and other appointments. 

A series of 12 murals depicting scenes from The Beatitudes surround the upper part of the rotunda, the work of Eugene Savage, who was awarded the Architectural League of New York’s Gold Medal of Honor for this work in 1929. 

Each mural is separated by a window designed by Montague Castle Studios of New York.  A series of eight murals beneath depict symbols of the chief branches of military and naval service. 

Four niches containing gilded bronze statues by James Earle Fraser represent Brotherly Love, Fidelity, Justice, and Charity – the four cardinal virtues of the Elks. 

Light fixtures by the Sterling Bronze Company adorn the north and south vestibules.

The west vestibule contains three murals by Edwin Howland Blashfield depicting charity, fraternity, and justice. 

The vestibule leads to another extraordinary space, the Grand Reception Room. 

This room contains more murals by Eugene Savage, including two wall murals “Paths to Peace” and “The Armistice” and several ceiling murals depicting the legend of Olympus.  The wall paneling is English oak, and the columns and floors are American white oak. 

Windows by Paris and Wiley of New York and chandeliers by the Gorham Company illuminate the space. 

The exterior is built of Indiana limestone and features a huge carved frieze by Adolph Weinman containing 168 life size figures. 

Weinman also designed two bronze groups in niches set into the north and south wings depicting patriotism and fraternity. 

Elaborate bronze doors leading to the memorial hall were designed by the Gorham Company.  Two bronze elk (one seen in the photo at the top of the article) designed by Laura Gardin Fraser, were awarded the Gold Meal of Honor at the Allied Arts Exposition in New York in 1929, for being the finest work of art done by an American woman that year. 

The memorial is currently closed to the public due to ongoing restoration but is expected to reopen in 2013.  It is a space well worth visiting.

Main Hall Restoration

The main hall at Glessner House Museum has undergone restoration work during the summer, which was unveiled to the public on Wednesday August 1, 2012.  The major components of the restoration are the recreation of the portieres and draperies and the modification of the reproduction light fixtures.

Historic photos show that the main hall featured portieres and draperies in the “Peacock and Dragon” design by William Morris.  Frances Glessner records selecting the fabric in a journal entry dated April 19, 1887 while she was visiting Marshall Field’s with Charles Coolidge, one of the architects who oversaw the completion of the house after the death of H. H. Richardson.  The “Peacock and Dragon” design was a bold pattern featuring alternating pairs of peacocks and dragon set amongst a lush and detailed background.  The woven woolen fabric was created by Morris in 1878 and was available in several colorways.  The modern reproduction, made by Sanderson, is exactly like the original except that the pattern is not as large, the original having a repeat measuring 43 by 35.5 inches. 

The portieres are hung on both parlor doors, the doorway to the library, and the doorway leading to the master bedroom hallway.  Most importantly, a large panel conceals the doorways leading to the guest bathroom and servants’ hallway at the north end of the hall, which would have always been kept from view.  Single panels are also hung on each of the two windows flanking the curved door.  Brass rods, brackets, and drapery rings, matching the originals in scale and design were made for all openings. 

The wall sconces, which are reproductions made in the 1970s, have been retrofitted with “spider” brackets to accommodate the proper glass shades.  These shades, made in the 1980s by the Salviatti & Company studios in Venice, replicate the original “Murano” glass shades with their simple striped design on broad cylinders.  They match the shades found in the parlor, and have been in storage awaiting installation for thirty years.  In addition, the second floor sconces were reworked by recreating the beautiful six petal back plates and additional two petal detail on the stem.  All fixtures were repainted and repaired as needed. 

The hall now conveys more of the “cozy” feeling that the Glessners specifically asked Richardson for when discussing the design of the house.  The lush fabric makes the space seem more intimate and quiet, and helps relieve the repetition of the oak wall paneling which surrounds the room.

In coming months, additional work in the main hall will include the installation of a reproduction of the original William Morris Lily carpeting on the main stairs leading up from the front entrance and additional work on the first and second floor carpeting. 

The projects are being funded by generous gifts to the 125^th Anniversary Fund by Allan Vagner, Sandra Danforth, and Robert Furhoff. 

August 15, 2012 to mark bicentennial of the Battle of Fort Dearborn

August 15, 2012 will mark the bicentennial of the Battle of Fort Dearborn, the only battle ever fought on Chicago soil.  The event took place on land now occupied by the Prairie Avenue Historic District, with the traditionally-recognized site located on 18^th Street between Prairie and Calumet avenues. 

The reasons leading up to the battle are complex and involved a young United States, Great Britain, and the various tribal nations east of the Mississippi that had called the area home for hundreds of years.  On Tuesday August 14 at 7:00pm, Glessner House Museum will host a lecture “Don’t Know Much About the War of 1812?” where the factors behind the battle and the war will be discussed.  The lecture will present the conflict from a Native American perspective and will be given by Frances Hagemann and Barbara Johnson.  Hagemann (Ojibwe/Métis) is a retired University of Illinois at Chicago professor and a scholar-in-residence at the Newberry Library.  Johnson is a former teacher, freelance writer, and independent historian focusing on American Indian history. 

The Battle of Fort Dearborn, known for most of the past 200 years as the Fort Dearborn Massacre, has been the source of a great deal of controversy for many years.  In the 19^th century and for much of the 20^th century, the Native Americans who participated in the battle were simply seen as the enemy.  Today, however, there is a much greater understanding of the Potawatomi who were involved in the battle, in light of their desire to preserve their ancestral lands, and the various injustices that were imposed upon them by Americans as the country expanded ever farther west.  Simon Pokagon, the son of a Potawatomi participant in the battle, summed up the controversy when he said “When whites are killed it is a massacre; when Indians are killed, it is a fight.”

In 2009, a more balanced view of the battle was presented to the public, when a small tract of land at the corner of 18^th Street and Calumet Avenue was dedicated as the Battle of Fort Dearborn Park.  The plaque reads as follows:

August 15, 1812

From roughly 1620 to 1820, the territory of the Potawatomi extended from what is now Green Bay, Wisconsin to Detroit, Michigan and included the Chicago area. In 1803 the United States government built Fort Dearborn at what is today Michigan Avenue and Wacker Drive, as part of a strategic effort to protect lucrative trading in the area from the British. During the War of 1812 between the United States and Great Britain, some Indian tribes allied with the British to stop the westward expansion of the United States and to regain lost Indian lands. On August 15, 1812, more than 50 U.S. soldiers and 41 civilians, including 9 women and 18 children, were ordered to evacuate Fort Dearborn. This group, almost the entire population of U.S. citizens in the Chicago area, marched south from Fort Dearborn along the shoreline of Lake Michigan until they reached this approximate site, where they were attacked by about 500 Potawatomi. In the battle and aftermath, more than 60 of the evacuees and 15 Native Americans were killed. The dead included Army Captain William Wells, who had come from Fort Wayne with Miami Indians to assist in the evacuation, and Naunongee, Chief of the village of Potawatomi, Ojibwe and Ottawa Indians known as the Three Fires Confederacy.  In the 1830s, the Potawatomi of Illinois were forcibly removed to lands west of the Mississippi.  Potawatomi Indian Nations continue to thrive in Michigan, Indiana, Wisconsin, Kansas, Oklahoma and Canada and more than 36,000 American Indians from a variety of tribes reside in Chicago today.

August, 2009

Sponsors:  Alderman Robert W. Fioretti, U.S. Daughters of 1812, Prairie District Neighborhood Alliance, Glessner House Museum, American Indian Center and  Illinois State Historical Society

This cottonwood tree, which stood on the north side of 18^th Street, between Prairie and Calumet avenues, marked the traditional site of the battle.  The location was identified by Fernando Jones, a Chicago pioneer and long-time resident at 1834 S. Prairie Avenue, who was shown the site by a Native American who had participated in the battle.  Jones later hung a sign on the tree that read, “Cursed be he that removeth the ancient landmarks.”

This photo of the tree, taken about 1888 by George Glessner, shows it towards the end of its life.  It was felled during a windstorm on May 18, 1894.  Souvenir hunters swarmed the site to retrieve a piece of the relic, but the main section of the trunk was salvaged by George M. Pullman (whose stable is visible at the left) and given to the Chicago Historical Society. 

Top photo:  Unveiling of the plaque at the Battle of Fort Dearborn Park, August 15, 2009. 

A Glessner Homecoming

On Friday August 3, 2012, a very special event took place at Glessner House Museum.  More than two dozen people gathered for the first ever Glessner family reunion.  Included in the group were three great-grandchildren, seven great-great grandchildren, and seven great-great-great grandchildren, along with spouses and partners.  A special guest was Nigel Manley, director of The Rocks Estate, the Glessners’ former summer estate in the White Mountains of New Hampshire.  The age range of the guests was 5 to 85, with participants traveling from California, Connecticut, Maryland, Montana, New Hampshire, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, and Vermont. 

After the initial gathering, family members posed on the curved porch in the courtyard, recreating a classic shot of Mrs. Glessner’s Monday Morning Reading Class taken in 1902.  Dinner and a presentation on John Jacob Glessner followed, and the evening concluded with tours of the museum.

Saturday activities included the Chicago Architecture Foundation architecture river cruise, and tours of important Tiffany sites including the Chicago Cultural Center, Marshall Field, and Second Presbyterian Church. 

The weekend concluded on Sunday morning with a visit to Graceland Cemetery, where family members visited the final resting place of John and Frances Glessner and their infant son John, along the west shore of Lake Willowmere. 

The reunion was one of the most significant events of the 125^th anniversary celebration.  In spite of the architectural significance of the house, first and foremost the house was a family home, a place of gathering for generations of the family and their friends.  The warm and cozy interior, a stark contrast to the bold rusticated granite exterior, was a specific request of the Glessners, who wished for their family and friends to always feel welcome when visiting.  A few excerpts from The Story of a House, written by John Glessner in 1923 for his children, give a glimpse of the Glessners’ idea of home:

“This story is addressed to my son, John George Macbeth Glessner, and my daughter, Frances Glessner Lee, for whose pleasure and profit it has been my pleasure and their mother’s to do many things, and especially to give them a happy home and a happy childhood, and to fit them for the responsibilities of living.”

“Mankind is ever seeking its comforts and to achieve its ideals.  The Anglo-Saxon portion of mankind is a home-making, home-loving race.  I think the desire is in us all to receive the family home from the past generation and hand it on to the next with possibly some good mark of our own upon it.  Rarely can this be accomplished in this land of rapid changes.  Families have not held and cannot hold even to the same localities for their homes generation after generation, but we can at least preserve some memory of the old.” 

“The description of this home may give some indication of how a man of moderate fortune would live in the latter part of the 19^th century and the earlier part of the 20^th – an average man with a modicum of this world’s material possessions, but by no means rich, except in family and friends.”

“We have lived with (our possessions) and enjoyed them; they are a part of our lives.  We don’t realize how many they are and how much a part of us they are until we begin to catalogue them in our minds.  We don’t know what we should do without them nor what we can do with them.  The best we can do now is to make this imperfect record, together with these photographs, to perpetuate or at least suggest the spirit of the home.  That home was ever a haven of rest.  It was no easy task to make it so, but it was so made and so kept by the untiring and devoted efforts of your mother.”

(A full reprint of The Story of a House, including the full text and more than sixty illustrations, was produced in 2011 as part of the 125^th anniversary celebration and is available for sale in the museum store).

A Visit to The Rocks

In late July 2012, museum director/curator Bill Tyre and museum docent John Waters traveled to The Rocks, the Glessners’ former summer estate in the White Mountains of New Hampshire.  The estate was an important part of the lives of the Glessners who would spend four to five months there each summer.  Their two children, George and Frances, in later years made The Rocks their permanent year-round home.

The Glessners selected the location due to its positive effects on George, who found immediate relief from his severe hay fever when first traveling there in 1877.  After spending several summers in a large resort hotel, they purchased the first 100 acres of land in September 1882.  Within a year their home, known simply as the “Big House” was completed based on a design by Isaac Scott.  Scott designed numerous other structures on the estate including a carriage-horse barn, a playhouse for Fanny, an observatory, gardener’s cottage, and a series of summer houses.

John Glessner continued to buy surround acreage and eventually the estate grew to incorporate about 1,500 acres of land, much of it purchased to prevent it from being deforested.  Glessner was an early conservationist and in 1903 joined the Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests.  The area closest to the Big House was elaborately landscaped by family friend Frederick Law Olmsted, and was later reworked by his sons, one of whom attended Harvard with George Glessner.

Architect Hermann H. von Holst, another family friend, designed several structures on the estate in the early 1900s including The Ledge (a home for George and Alice Glessner), the entrance gates, an enlarged horse barn, a combination sawmill-pigpen, and a cow barn. 

The Rocks functioned as a thriving farm.  John Glessner was especially interested in raising prize winning poultry.  His crops won numerous awards at the annual state fair.  The farm supplied the family and staff with food not only in New Hampshire, but in their Chicago home as well.  Glessner also used the estate as a testing ground for new equipment being developed by Warder Bushnell & Glessner (later International Harvester). 

In 1977, most of the estate was donated to the Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forest by two of the Glessner grandchildren, John Glessner Lee and Martha Batchelder.  Much of the land has been allowed to return to its natural forested state.  The site is open to the public year-round, and various trails cut through the property, including one trail that goes past the various remaining structures from the Glessner period. 

Nigel Manley has served as director of the estate for 26 years.  The operations are supported in large part by the growing of Christmas trees, and the museum acquires its live Fraser fir each year from The Rocks, continuing a tradition begun by the Glessners in the 1880s.  For more information, visit http://www.therocks.org/.

This view shows the Bee House designed by Isaac Scott for Frances Glessner in 1896.  It was elaborated carved by Scott who also added a series of quotes relating to Mrs. Glessner’s interest in beekeeping.  In the 1930s, it was remodeled into a pool house, when the Glessners’ daughter-in-law added an in-ground swimming pool.  In recent years, it has been faithfully restored to its original design.  The Big House would have originally stood just to the left of the Bee House, just up the hill.

Elaborate carved brackets and fascia in the Bee House by Isaac Scott. 

Log cabin playhouse, designed by Issac Scott for Fanny Glessner in 1886.  Today the house functions as the visitor’s center for The Rocks Estate.

Big Rock Summer House, one of several designed by Isaac Scott in the 1880s.  It is the only one still standing.

This house began as the gardener’s cottage.  After the marriage of George Glessner and Alice Hamlin in 1898, it was remodeled and enlarged for their use.  After a new house, The Ledge, was built for them, the cottage became the home of Frances and Blewett Lee.  By 1938, it became her year-round residence until her death in 1962.  It is now owned by the North Country Council.

View of the White Mountains from the area behind the cottage.  This large flat area was graded and used as a tennis court when Frances Glessner Lee’s children were young.  Note the chaise lounge to the right carved from a solid block of granite found on the grounds.

A portion of the original terraced gardens designed and installed by Olmsted and his sons. 

This beautiful combination structure housed a sawmill on the left and a pigpen on the right.  It was designed by Hermann V. von Holst in 1906.

Today, the building houses an interesting exhibit about the New Hampshire maple industry, showing equipment used to harvest maple syrup. 

Each year, the museum acquires its Fraser fir from The Rocks.  This is the Christmas tree selected to stand in the main hall of the museum for 2012.

The De Morgan vase

One of the most beautiful and striking objects in the museum collection is a robust and colorful vase displayed on the music cabinet in the northwest corner of the parlor.  The piece is the work of one of the late 19^th century’s most innovative ceramic artists, William Frend De Morgan (1839-1917).  The large vase, nearly 16 inches tall, features circular lug handles set against a bulbous baluster-shaped body.  Masted Medieval vessels under full sail navigate seas filled with jumping fish in green, blue, turquoise, and yellow.  An ouroboros, a mythological serpent-like creature who symbolizes the cycle of life by eating its own tail, decorates one of the sails on the ship.  (Interestingly, the same creature can also be found in the carved ornamentation on the front of the house). 

De Morgan was born in London and enrolled in art at the Academy Schools in 1859.  Three years later, he met William Morris, and abandoned painting to join Morris’ team of designers.  He executed numerous glass and tiles designs, and painted panels for furniture designed by his associate Philip Webb.  While working on stained glass, De Morgan discovered that silver pigments caused an iridescent surface on the glass.  His subsequent experiments on tiles to reproduce this effect resulted in the first luster tiles being produced in 1870.  In 1872 he opened a pottery works and over the next decade produced some of his finest work, including many pieces based on traditional thirteenth century Islamic pottery from Turkey, Persia, and Syria.  His “Persian colours,” as these ceramics came to be known, became the hallmark of his work and the fashion throughout Victorian England.

This vase was most likely produced in De Morgan’s ceramic works in Sand’s End, London, and would have been purchased by the Glessners about 1890.  Large vases such as this were the most expensive pieces produced, and  were painted by De Morgan himself, or under his close supervision.

The Glessners owned a number of other pieces by DeMorgan including tiles which decorated the fireplaces in the master bedroom and courtyard bedroom. 

Hermann von Holst and the Glessners

Hermann von Holst was a prominent Chicago architect in the first decades of the 20^th century.  His acceptance to take over Frank Lloyd Wright’s practice in 1909, when Wright left for Europe with Mamah Cheney, has largely overshadowed a significant and productive career.

Hermann Valentin Von Holst was born on June 17, 1874 in Freiburg, Germany.  In 1891, his family moved to Chicago when his father, Hermann Eduard von Holst accepted the position as head of the Department of History of the newly formed University of Chicago.  It was soon after that John and Frances Glessner became acquainted with the family through their intimate friendship with William Rainey Harper, president of the University.

Von Holst received his B.A. from the University of Chicago in 1893 and continued his studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he earned a B.S. degree in Architecture in 1896.  He returned to Chicago and entered the firm of Shepley, Rutan & Coolidge (successors to H. H. Richardson) where he became head draftsman and remained until establishing his own office in the Rookery Building in 1905. 

By the time he opened his own practice, von Holst had become a close friend of the Glessners.  Although the same age as their children (he was born the same year as their son John who died as an infant), von Holst became a regular visitor to their Prairie Avenue home.  When his father retired from the University of Chicago in 1900 due to ill health and returned to Germany, it was as though the Glessners “adopted” the younger Hermann, making him part of family celebrations at Christmas and other times of the year.  They also provided him with several early commissions at their summer estate, The Rocks, in New Hampshire.   In a letter from von Holst to the Glessners dated February 24, 1905 he states, in part, “I shall always remember with great pleasure the fact, that when I opened my office the first order came from you, which I consider, in a half superstitious way, a good omen.”  Those early commissions included a large horse barn addition to the carriage house, a sawmill-pigpen, a cowbarn, additions to the cottage residence of Frances Glessner Lee, and a residence for the Glessners’ son George, known as the Ledge (shown at the top of the article).

Another significant commission for von Holst was the summer home known as Glamis, built for Frances Glessner’s brother George Macbeth of Pittsburgh (shown above).  Located adjacent to the Glessners’ summer estate in Bethlehem, New Hampshire, the sprawling residence featured eleven bedrooms and combined the shingle style of the northeast with the Prairie style of the Midwest.  Bryant Tolles, in his book Summer Cottages in the White Mountains, praises the house as “one shining example of von Holst’s abilities” and goes so far as to declare it the most significant example of summer country estate architecture in northern New Hampshire.

In 1909, von Holst moved his office to Steinway Hall, where he became part of an influential group of Prairie School architects, including Frank Lloyd Wright.  It was in that same year that Wright abruptly left for Europe with his married client Mamah Cheney.   Wright asked several architects to take over his office and open commissions, all of whom refused until von Holst accepted in conjunction with Marion Mahony Griffin (who had complete control of architectural design), her husband Walter Burley Griffin, Isabel Roberts, and John Van Bergen. 

In 1912, von Holst published Modern American Homes, which, although it only contained a few of his own designs, embodied the “back to nature” movement of the time and serves as an important record of the developments in Craftsman and Prairie style architecture.  (It has since been reprinted by Dover Publications as Country and Suburban Homes of the Prairie School Period).  In presenting a copy of the book to Frances Glessner for Christmas in 1912, von Holst inscribed the book as follows, “To Mrs. Glessner – Your ideals and ideas for the American Home have ever been an inspiration, to seek and strive for beauty along simple straightforward lines.” 

Von Holst actively taught throughout this period, serving as a professor of architectural design at the Chicago School of Architecture at the Art Institute of Chicago and in the Department of Architecture at the Armour Institute of Technology (later the Illinois Institute of Technology).  He also published other books and served in several professional organizations, including the Architectural League of America and the Chicago Architectural League. 

He continued to practice in Chicago through the 1920s, designing a number of buildings for Peoples Gas and Commonwealth Edison, including the ComEd substation which still stands at 1620 S. Prairie Avenue (detail above).  One of his larger commissions was Condell Memorial Hospital in Libertyville, dedicated in June 1928.

By the late 1920s, von Holst relocated to Boca Raton, Florida where he headed a group that completed a charming subdivision of 29 homes in the Spanish Revival style known as Floresta.   His own home in the subdivision, Lavender House, was completed about 1928.  He retired from architecture in 1932 but remained active in civic affairs in Boca Raton, serving on the City Council which granted him honorary life membership in 1953 just two years before his death.