The Early History of Prairie Avenue - Part IV

Two weeks ago, we looked at the first four houses constructed on Prairie Avenue, all erected in the 1850s. This week we will examine building activity during the years of the Civil War, 1861 to 1865.

During an 1861 visit to Chicago, London Times reporter William H. Russell observed the early houses on the street while a passenger on the Illinois Central, noting “houses which must be the retreat of merchants and citizens of means.” Although the Civil War slowed construction activity in general, it is interesting to note that there were no less than nine houses built during that time frame in the 1600, 1700, and 1800 blocks of Prairie Avenue (none of which survive today).

1862

The first of the War-era houses was built in 1862 for the “Widow Grosvenor” at 1637 S. Prairie Avenue. It was the first of four houses constructed on the east side of Prairie Avenue; all the 1850s houses had been constructed on the west side. The widow was Cornelia (Bogart) Grosvenor, a native of Geneva, New York, born in 1809 and widowed in 1849, her husband having been a prominent attorney in that town. She came to Chicago and built her home, which was also occupied by her son Elisha William Grosvenor, a partner in the commission merchant firm of Grosvenor and Forsyth. 

Cornelia Grosvenor (1827 wedding portrait)

Only one known photo survives showing a portion of the house as originally built, it being a typical two-story brick Italianate style home. Her son married in Flint, Michigan in December 1865 and apparently left Chicago permanently. Within a year, his mother moved farther south and rented her home to the William Gold Hibbard family.

South side of the Grosvenor house as built, c. 1870

For many years it was the home of lumberman Jesse Spalding, who remodeled it in a severe manner to such a point that the original house design was completely lost within.

The Grosvenor house as remodeled by Jesse Spalding

The year 1862 also saw the completion of the home of Nicholas O. Williams at 1709 S. Prairie Avenue. He was the head of the firm of N. O. Williams & Co., dealers in hats, caps, furs, and buck goods. No known photos survive, but a description in the Chicago Tribune described the house, designed by W. W. Boyington, as being of brick and stone construction, with a cost of $10,000. It only lasted twenty years before being demolished for the new home of Palmer Kellogg, designed by Burnham & Root.

1863

A significant and long-standing house was built in 1863 for Wirt Dexter at 1721 S. Prairie Avenue, immediately south of the Williams home. The large frame home was described at the time as a “rambling” New England farmhouse, but also sported an Italianate style cupola to take advantages of the uninterrupted views all around. Dexter was a prominent attorney and served in a leadership capacity for many years with the Chicago Relief and Aid Society, including significant service in the years immediately after the Chicago Fire.

Wirt Dexter house prior to front addition, c. 1888 (Photo by George Glessner)

Dexter created quite a stir on Prairie Avenue in 1889 when he added a large brick addition to the front of his house, bringing it up nearly to the lot line. This especially annoyed next-door neighbor George Pullman who preferred large lawns in front of the homes. A later owner tore down the original frame house and moved the large brick addition back on the lot, but that, too, was demolished in the 1920s.

A more modest home was completed the same year at 1635 S. Prairie Avenue for Col. Robert Forsyth, who served as the general freight agent for the Illinois Central and later Chicago & Eastern Illinois Railways. Again, there are no known photos of the house, but a bit of information is provided by Addie Hibbard Gregory, in her book A Great-Grandmother Remembers. (Addie, age 8, moved into the Widow Grosvenor house in 1867 with her parents and siblings). Of the Forsyth house, she wrote:

“In the early days two of our neighbors, the Williamses and the Forsythes, had long bowling alleys in separate one-story buildings stretching down to the track of the Illinois Central, which followed the lake shore then just as it does today. The roofs of these alleys were arranged as pleasant places from which to view the lake . . . The grounds of the Forsythe home were most elegant. There was a fountain in the middle of the lawn which was surrounded by four white stone statues, and the narrow rectangular walks were made of small white clam shells.”

The house later passed through several owners and occupants and was demolished by the early 1900s.

1864

One house of note was completed in 1864, the large brick house at 1736 S. Prairie Avenue, for Granville S. Ingraham. Surviving photos show a third-story mansard roof which may well have been a later addition atop a more typical Italianate style house of the War period. Ingraham came to Chicago in 1856 and made a fortune as a wholesale grocer, later investing heavily in real estate. The 1870 census shows real estate valued at $225,000 and personal property of $100,000 (today the combined value would be well over $6 million). 

Granville S. Ingraham

Ingraham sold the house long before his death at his winter home in Pass Christian, Mississippi in 1892. It is best remembered today as the long-time residence of lead manufacturer Hugh McBirney.

Ingraham/McBirney house as it appeared circa 1890

More modest houses

Although most of the houses being built on Prairie Avenue at this time were substantial, a few modest houses made their way on to the street as well. These included a front-gabled home at 1812 S. Prairie Avenue (shown in the center of the image below) and a frame double house at 1726-1728 S. Prairie Avenue. 

1812 S. Prairie is the short house shown at center in this 1874 illustration

All of these were demolished in the 1880s and replaced with larger homes. Another home, built at 1630 S. Prairie Avenue, survived well into the 20^th century and had the distinction of being the smallest house on the street.

Calumet Avenue

Calumet Avenue, which lies one block east of Prairie Avenue starting at 18^th Street and then running south, developed a bit later than Prairie. Only one house is known to have been built by the War period and may have been constructed as early as 1859. This was the large brick home of Daniel A. Jones, built at the northwest corner of Calumet and 22^nd Street. Jones made his fortune in the packing and real estate businesses. He served for many years as the president of the Chicago Chamber of Commerce, being first elected in 1869 and leading that organization through the critical years following the Chicago Fire.

Jones died in 1886 and his house was demolished in 1911, to make way for the American Book Company building, constructed the next year on the site from plans by architect N. Max Dunning. It was designated a Chicago landmark in 2008 and was recently restored as part of the Marriot Marquis hotel property.

J. Q. Hoyt

A small number of homes were constructed on nearby streets during this period. One worthy of note was the home of J. Q. Hoyt, built in 1863 at the southeast corner of Wabash Avenue and 23^rd Street. The Hoyt family referred to their home as “Florence Place.” Were it not for the wooden sidewalk around the property, the large Italianate style home with exuberant trim and stately cupola could easily be mistaken for a country home rather than an urban residence.

Florence Place, circa 1865

John Quincy Adams Hoyt came to Chicago in 1856, making his fortune in wholesale groceries, and entering local Republican politics, being a close friend of General Ulysses S. Grant, John A. Logan, and Stephen A. Douglas. He served as alderman for many years and filled the role of acting mayor during a portion of the Civil War, when Mayor Julian Rumsey was absent. In 1868, Hoyt moved to New York City, where he was instrumental in funding the elevated railroad system. (Within weeks after the Chicago Fire, the house was converted into a hotel, maintaining the name Florence Place. In 1874, it reverted to private residential use.)

The Hoyt family enjoying the front porch of Florence Place, circa 1865

Conclusion

There was a building boom on Prairie Avenue following the Civil War. It is estimated that by the time of the Chicago Fire in 1871, there were 40 houses standing or under construction. The fire completely bypassed the neighborhood, leading to a second wave of construction immediately following, led by those whose homes had been destroyed.

We will resume this story in 2021, the year in which the City of Chicago will commemorate the 150^th anniversary of the fire. Those articles will focus on the impact the fire had on the residents and their businesses, and more importantly, the extraordinary impact the residents had on rebuilding the city.

The Monday Morning Reading Class, Part I

Monday Morning Reading Class, May 5, 1902
(Photo by George Glessner)

Today marks the 125^th anniversary of the first meeting of Frances Glessner’s Monday Morning Reading Class on November 21, 1894.  As her husband John noted in a tribute written shortly after her death in 1932, “Perhaps the Monday Morning Reading Class was her choicest activity and the one in which she took most pride and pleasure.”  In this first of several articles about the class, we will explore the origins of the class and how it was structured.

In his tribute, John Glessner noted that the idea for the class originated in an activity begun several years earlier, while the family was residing in their home at the northeast corner of Washington and Morgan:

Library of Washington Street house

“While living on Washington Street, Mrs. Glessner arranged a series of meetings of ladies in our library and parlors to listen to talks and readings about the latest books by scholars and experts, which were well attended and interesting and became the nucleus and forerunner of the Monday Morning Reading Class, so that that afterwards vigorous society had its origination and beginning then and there.”

Addie Hibbard Gregory, a member of the class for its entire 36 years of existence, recalled in her book, A Great-Grandmother Remembers, that Frances Glessner renewed the idea of her earlier meetings at the request of William Rainey Harper, first president of the newly formed University of Chicago:

“Early in the nineties, President Harper of the University of Chicago had asked Mrs. Glessner how the newly arrived wives and families of the university faculty could become acquainted with Chicago women, and we with them.  This class was Mrs. Glessner’s answer.  We were all grateful for the opportunity of meeting as soon as we did those delightful and clever women.”

John Glessner painted the picture of the University families arriving and his wife’s response in more colorful terms:

“When the University of Chicago was started and the staff drawn from all over the world with their families, all cultivated people but strangers to each other, found living conditions almost unbearable in crudely finished houses, with seas of mud in street and sidewalks, she made life more bearable by social attentions.”

In her journal entry for November 18, 1894, Frances Glessner wrote, “I have invited some of the young matrons on the south side to come here once a week for a reading class this winter.  The first reading is on Wednesday next – when they will lunch with me.”  The following week’s journal entry noted, “Wednesday my twenty-five ladies came for the reading aloud.  Miss Gaylord read to us.  We had Meneval’s Memoirs of Napoleon the first hour and The Memories of Dean Hole for the second hour.  Then we had our luncheon.”

Memoirs of the Baron de Meneval

Membership in the class was by invitation only - with two rules set in place.  One was that only married ladies would be invited, although a few exceptions were made through the years.  Secondly, and equally important, was the requirement that the ladies reside on the south side of the city.  In an informal history of the class written by John Glessner in 1925, he humorously noted:

“Membership was confined to the South Side – the mudsills of the North were frowned upon and taboo – only the South Side aristocracy of letters and beauty and gracious manners were drawn upon.  (Alas how the mighty haven fallen!  Our best people have been driven over the divide and we, the saving remnant, are merely permitted in tolerance to enter the sacred regions of north latitude beyond the river.)”

Members would have been residents of the south side at the time they were invited to join the class but were permitted to remain in the class if they later moved elsewhere, as many had by the 1920s.

Library at 1800 Prairie Avenue

The structure of the first class was set – the first hour would consist of more serious reading, usually of a historical nature, the second hour would feature lighter reading.  A paid professional reader would read selections from the books.  John Glessner, in his history of the class, noted “the labor the reader must give to find what to omit, what to explain, what to emphasize.  Every book has some dull pages and pages of indifferent interest that must be cut out to make for speed and to avoid tediosity.”   The selection of The Memories of Dean Hole also shows how current the book selections often were.  The book had just been published in 1894 by the Rev. Dr. Samuel Reynolds Hole, an English Anglican priest, horticulturalist, and leading expert on roses.  As Louise Goldsmith, another life-long member of the class noted, “he had visited Chicago the previous winter and we were all anxious to hear what he said about it.”

A few adjustments were made as well.  The first class was held on a Wednesday, but the class shifted to Monday the following week, and soon after the name “Monday Morning Reading Class” was adopted.  Invitations were extended to additional women, and the class quickly grew to fifty.  Additionally, it was soon determined that Miss Gaylord was not the ideal reader to lead the class.  Louise Goldsmith recounted:

“Miss Gaylord’s reading was very good; but she was young and could not have the broad knowledge and experience necessary for a full understanding of the erudite books she was proposed to read, so Mrs. Glessner looked about for someone who had the lighted torch of knowledge with which to illuminate the printed page revealing the thought of the writer in all of its clearness and strength.”

Miss Ann Trimingham

The new reader for the class, starting on December 17, was Miss Ann Trimingham, a former teacher at the West Side High School, and a sister of Louise Goldsmith.  She remained the reader until May 1902, “missing only one of the two hundred or more meetings.” 

Regarding the selection of the books, it was a democratic process from the start.  Louise Goldsmith recalled:

“Mrs. Glessner has always consulted the class with regard to the books, the one thing insisted upon by her and our reader was that they should be good literature worth spending time on.  Usually at the beginning of each year, a list of books has been presented to the class from which to select.  These books have been recommended by some outsider of known literary ability, by our own members, or by our reader.  A vote has then been taken and the choice of the majority has decided the question.”

The Glessner library (Photo by Chris Tyre)

Regarding the selection of the books, Addie Hibbard Gregory noted, “I, for one, am most grateful for glimpses into books which I should not have dared even to begin, in my busy life.”  She also recorded a delightful barb from New York, “We surely did not deserve the comment (or inuendo) of the eastern society journal which stated that it was ‘glad that Chicago women were learning to read, for Mrs. J. J. Glessner has organized a class for that purpose.’”

On the first Monday of each month, the class was followed by a luncheon, which frequently included musical entertainment.  A typical menu, recorded in 1895, featured sandwiches, baking powder biscuits buttered, sweetbread patties, coffee, hot chocolate, ice cream, and cake.”  The ladies would sit at tables of six, set up in the parlor and dining room.  Frances Glessner purchased a special set of luncheon china in a delicate blue and white pattern, which was reserved for the use of the monthly class luncheons.  (The maker of the hard paste porcelain with transferware decoration is unknown, as the pieces are unmarked).

Reading Class china

The first season of the class concluded on May 13, 1895, shortly before Frances Glessner left Chicago for her summer estate, The Rocks, in New Hampshire.  She recorded in her journal:

“Monday, the Reading Class came to luncheon.  Each lady came walking in carrying a bunch of large long-stemmed American Beauty roses for me.  There were thirty ladies – and it was a lovely sight to see them coming in processions of six or eight carrying these roses.  Frederick and John (butler and footman) arranged them in large vases in the dining room – all on the table, sideboard and side table.  It was very beautiful to look at and certainly a lovely attention to me.  We read our Fyffe for an hour and then Miss Trimingham read her last Fortnightly paper to us – on Sydney Smith and his friends.  After that we had luncheon, then a little music, then goodbye for the summer.”

(Fyffe is a reference to Volume I of The History of Modern Europe by Charles Alan Fyffe, which by the third class had replaced Meneval’s Memoirs of Napoleon, as class members had found it to be “rather dry.”  Sydney Smith (1771-1845) was an English humorist, writer, and Anglican cleric).

Mary Curzon, Vicereine of India

Mary Victoria Leiter, daughter of Levi and Mary Leiter, was born in Chicago on May 27, 1870.  Her father was the co-founder of the Field and Leiter dry goods business, which later became Marshall Field & Company.  Leiter also made a fortune in Chicago real estate, becoming one of the single largest landowners in the city during its period of phenomenal growth in the late 19^th century.

The family home was located at 2114 S. Calumet Avenue (shown above as it appeared in the 1890s) and was designed in 1870 by architect W. W. Boyington, a Calumet neighbor best remembered today for his design of the Chicago water tower.  The Leiters left Chicago in 1881 and made their home in Washington, D.C. where they became part of that city’s elite social circle.  Their Chicago home was sold to John B. Drake, proprietor of the famed Grand Pacific Hotel, who engaged Cobb and Frost to significantly remodel the home.  It was demolished in 1935.

Mary Leiter received an excellent education from private tutors, a French governess, and a Columbia University professor.  Her best friend in Washington D.C. was Frances Folsom, who in 1886 married President Grover Cleveland, aged 49.  Frances was just 21 years old at the time, the youngest woman ever to serve as First Lady.

The U.S. Ambassador to the Court of St. James introduced Mary Leiter to London society in 1894, where she met a Conservative Member of Parliament, George Curzon.  The couple had three daughters, and the youngest, Alexandra, later married Edward Metcalfe, the best friend, best man, and equerry of Edward VIII. 

George Curzon accepted the position of Viceroy of India in 1898 and was elevated to the Peerage of Ireland as Baron Curzon of Kedleston.  He and his wife, who received the title of Vicereine of India, arrived in Bombay on December 30, 1898 and her beauty and grace soon made her hugely popular throughout India.  To this day, no American has ever achieved a higher rank in English royalty.

In 1902, the Curzons organized the Delhi Durbar to celebrate the coronation of King Edward VII, and it was touted at the time as the “grandest pageant in history.”  Among those in attendance was a former Prairie Avenue neighbor, Addie Hibbard Gregory, who wrote about the event in her book, A Great-Grandmother Remembers.  At the state ball, Mary Curzon wore an elaborate Worth gown, known as the peacock dress (shown at the top of this article).  The gown was made of gold cloth embroidered with peacock feathers with a blue/green beetle wing in each “eye,” which gave the appearance of emeralds.  (The dress is now on display at the Curzon estate, Kedleston Hall). 

Lady Curzon became a proponent of the artisans and manufacturers in India and wore Indian fabrics making them fashionable throughout India as well as London, Paris and the capitals of Europe.  She placed orders for her friends and strangers alike, and assisted the silk weavers, embroiderers, and other artists to adapt their work to Western tastes and modern fashion.  In addition, she helped revive native arts that had been all but forgotten, providing employment to many artisans. 

She also had a strong interest in medical reform and led the movement to establish hospitals for women and appointing female doctors.  The Lady Curzon Hospital in Bangalore is one of several established during her time in India. 

An ardent conservationist, Lady Curzon learned about the Great One-horned Rhinoceros of Kaziranga and traveled to the area during the winter of 1904 to see them.  Her interest led to her husband establishing the Kaziranga Proposed Reserve Forest, now the Kaziranga National Park.

Lady Curzon’s suffered serious health issues during her years in India and trips back to England to convalesce were unsuccessful.  She and her husband returned to England in August 1905 after he resigned his post, but her health was failing and she died on July 18, 1906 in their home at 1 Carlton House Terrace, Westminster, London at the age of 36. 

Lord Curzon had a memorial chapel built in her honor, which was attached to the parish church at Kedleston Hall.  The chapel, designed by G. F. Bodley in the decorated Gothic style, was completed in 1913.  The sculptor, Sir Bertram Mackennal, created a stunningly beautiful and touching effigy of Lady Curzon which, per her husband’s wishes “expressed as might be possible in marble, the pathos of his wife’s premature death and to make the sculpture emblematic of the deepest emotion.”  Lord Curzon’s effigy was later added to lie beside that of his wife, as his remains do in the vault beneath.