Madeline Yale Wynne

On October 28, 1904, Frances Glessner recorded in her journal: “I went to call on Mrs. Wynne to arrange to take lessons in metal work.”  She had her first lesson in silver work on November 29, and soon after fashioned a salt cellar which she presented to her husband as a Christmas gift.  The salt cellar, pictured below, is engraved “Made by F.M.G. for J.J.G. Dec. 25^th 1904” and is now in the collection of the museum.  Frances Glessner vigorously pursued her hobby for more than a decade, producing countless pieces of silverwork, most of which were presented as gifts to friends and family.

Frances Glessner’s teacher, Madeline Yale Wynne, was a distinguished metal worker and important proponent of the Arts and Craft movement.  She was born in Newport, New York in 1847, the daughter of the inventor of the Yale lock.  Her father possessed considerable artistic aptitude as a miniature painter, and as a child, Madeline spent countless hours in her father’s garden-studio.  She studied painting at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and later attended the Art Students’ League in New York, before advanced studies in Europe. 

Widowed at a young age, Wynne came to Chicago in 1893 and took up residence with her brother Julian in his home at 9 Ritchie Place (current address would be 1311 N. Ritchie Court).  The home soon became a Mecca for true lovers of art and literature, and the “imposing dowager” presided over a distinguished salon of Chicago artists and literati.  She and her brother also created a home workshop where they began producing unique and fascinating items of silver and jewelry.  Wynne’s designs, which frequently included enamels and semi-precious stones, were entirely original and usually featured obvious hammer marks (a trademark of Frances Glessner’s designs as well).  The examples below were illustrated in the June 1899 issue of House Beautiful.

Wynne was one of the 126 charter members of the Chicago Arts and Crafts Society when it was founded at Hull-House in October 1897.  Members included metalworkers, designers, potters, artists, writers, and architects, including Frank Lloyd Wright.  The Society’s constitution promised “to cultivate in its members, and through them in others, a just sense of beauty” particularly in the design and decoration of everyday articles.   Wynne was also a founder of the Deerfield Society of Arts and Crafts in Deerfield Massachusetts where she spent her summers for many years.

Wynne was a writer of some note and penned a short story called “The Little Room.”  The title was adopted by an important group of Chicago painters, sculptors, writers, and architects who formed themselves into an informal group in the 1890s which lasted well into the 20^th century. 

After the death of her brother, she took a studio in the Tree Studio Building.  She died in Asheville North Carolina in January 1918 at the age of 70. 

Lightner Museum Moves to Florida, Keeps Ties to Chicago

In 1946, Otto Lightner moved to St. Augustine from Chicago on account of his health.  On an earlier visit, Lightner had noticed the long vacant Alcazar Hotel, the second of the great hotels in St. Augustine constructed by Henry Flagler in his attempt to create a southern resort city.  The hotel, completed in 1888, had been designed by the nationally prominent architectural firm of Carrere and Hastings.  Designed in the Moorish Revival style, the massive structure with a central courtyard was constructed of poured concrete with elaborate terra cotta ornamentation decorating the walls and roofline.  The hotel contained a huge indoor swimming pool, the first such facility in Florida, and also featured elaborate spa facilities, massage rooms, and much more. 

The Alcazar Hotel closed its doors in 1931, and was purchased by Lightner for just $150,000.  He, in turn, donated the complex to the city of St. Augustine with the understanding that it would forever house his museum of collectibles.  Since the early 1970s, the building has housed both the museum and city offices.

The Lightner Museum opened in 1948, the huge spaces providing ample room for Lightner’s collections including furniture, architectural fragments, mechanical musical instruments, natural history, fine arts, ceramics, glass, toys and much more.  Lightner died in 1950 and was buried in the courtyard just outside the entrance to the museum.

Although located in Florida for more than 60 years, the Lightner Museum continues to hold a fascination for those with an interest in Chicago history. A number of objects from the Potter Palmer castle on Lake Shore Drive may be found there including a stunning pair of Carrera marble columns and a throne chair, both shown below.

Items from Prairie Avenue homes include the dining room furniture from the Blackstone mansion (1912 S. Prairie Avenue) and a beautiful gilt Aesthetic movement chandelier from the home of Kate Buckingham (2036 S. Prairie Avenue), see below. 

Even the infamous Everleigh Club, located at 2131-2133 S. Dearborn Street
in the heart of Chicago’s Levee district, is represented with a flamboyant Venetian glass chandelier.

The collections at the museum are vast and varied from player pianos to buttons, and from an Egyptian mummy to brilliant cut glass.  Devotees of Chicago history owe a debt of gratitude to Otto Lightner for his efforts to preserve Chicago as it grew and thrived from the late 1800s past the turn of the 20^th century.

Lightner Museum Preserves Prairie Avenue's Past

In 1934, Otto C. Lightner, publisher of Hobbies magazine, opened a unique museum in a former mansion at 2816 S. Michigan Avenue.  The museum was a treasure trove of objects collected over the course of years, many from the leading homes in Chicago, on Prairie Avenue, Lake Shore Drive, and elsewhere.  Lightner acquired the decorative objects, light fixtures, stained glass, and architectural fragments, from the grand old houses as they were being demolished.

The house had originally been built for Charles W. Brega in the late 1880s.  The architect was Solon S. Beman, architect of the Town of Pullman and the Kimball mansion at 1801 S. Prairie Avenue to name but a few.  Brega was a prominent member of the Chicago Board of Trade and his elegant home on this fashionable section of Michigan Avenue reflected his business and social successes.  He lived there with his wife Fanny and their only child Louise, who later married a British army officer, Colonel Ralph H. James, and moved to England.  (Their son Charles James, became a well-known clothing designer in the U.S.).  After Brega died in 1906, his wife also moved to England, and the house was acquired by Franklin P. Smith, a prominent wire and iron manufacturer and one of the early settlers of Lake Forest. 

Lightner acquired the house from the Smith family in 1933 and immediately began converting the building into his museum.  The rooms were filled with fine objects from leading families – Potter Palmer, Edith Rockefeller McCormick, Victor Lawson, John Farwell, and many more.  Stained glass (including panels from the Chicago Board of Trade) filled the windows, furniture was crammed into every space, and countless curio cabinets were filled to overflowing with art glass and more.  The rooms were given themes and names – the Music Room, the Gold Room, the Textile Room, the Curio Room, the Egyptian Room, the Crystal Room, and the Oriental Room.  The museum also featured an especially fine collection of objects from the World’s Columbian Exposition.

Several objects from Prairie Avenue homes made their way into the museum including paneled doors from the Pullman house, a gold-plated chandelier from the Buckingham house, brass andirons from the Armour house, and a dining room – complete with glassware, china, paneling, furniture, and all – from the residence of Isabella Blackstone. 

As the collection grew, Lightner acquired the adjacent properties.  To the north he constructed a building to house his publishing business.  To the south, he planned a huge modern addition to the museum that would connect to the nearby Kohl mansion.  At the close of World War II however, due to ill health, Lightner made the decision to move to St. Augustine Florida and take his collections with him.  The publishing business was moved to 1006 S. Michigan Avenue, which still features a faded sign publicizing Hobbies Magazine on its side.

Next week: The Lightner Museum opens in St. Augustine

Encaustic tiles and President McKinley

Earlier this year, several hundred tiles on the kitchen, pantry, and servants’ hallway floors were reset, having broken loose from years of heavy traffic.  It had long been assumed that the tiles were English Minton, but an examination of the backside of one of the tiles revealed that they were American made encaustic tiles.

Encaustic tiles are tiles in which the pattern or figure on the surface is not a product of the glaze but of different colors of clay. They are usually of two colors but a tile may be composed of as many as six. The pattern is inlaid into the body of the tile, so that the design remains as the tile is worn down. Encaustic tiles may be glazed or unglazed and the inlay may be as shallow as an eighth of an inch, as is often the case with "printed" encaustic tile from the later medieval period, or as deep as a quarter inch.

The tiles in the Glessner kitchen are unglazed and in solid colors – terra cotta, tan, and gray.  The only pattern present results from the arrangement of the tiles, producing a checkboard pattern in the middle of the floor and a simple but pleasing border around the sides of the rooms.

The tiles were manufactured by the American Encaustic Tiling Company, at one time reported to be the largest tile manufactory in the world.  The company was founded in Zanesville Ohio (the town where John Glessner was born and raised) in 1874, initially operating under the name Fischer and Lansing Tile Company. The American name was adopted in 1876, and in 1881 they opened a showroom in New York.  In addition to dust-pressed encaustic floor tiles and standard utilitarian wall tiles, the company produced a wide variety of decorative art tiles as it rapidly grew and expanded its facilities.  

By 1890 an enlarged factory was required, and the founders, based in New York, wanted to build it in New Jersey. The people of Zanesville, anxious to keep the company (and jobs) in their town, responded by passing a $40,000 bond to purchase land for the company adjacent to the Muskingum River and close to the local railroad.

The new plant was completed in two years and dedicated on April 19, 1892 with a celebration the likes of which was rarely seen at that time. 20,000 people attended the festivities arriving by foot, train, boat and horse-drawn carriage. Governor William McKinley (later President of the United States) was on hand to congratulate the citizenry for their foresight in maintaining this great company, which remained a boon to their community for the next forty years. The firm produced the famous nursery tiles designed by Walter Crane, and later hired Frederick H. Rhead (a major figure in American ceramics history) to head its research.  The Zanesville plant closed in 1935, a victim of the Great Depression, and the assets were acquired by the Shawnee Pottery Company.  Although American Encaustic no longer exists as such, it can be traced through a series of mergers and takeovers to the present firm of Daltile.

An interesting side note – John Glessner’s sister Mary, married Thomas Kimball and they built their home (shown above) in Canton Ohio which they subsequently sold to William McKinley.  It was from this home that he accepted the nomination for President of the United States.  The home no longer stands.

A Window into the Past

On Thursday July 14, the museum held its fourth annual “Treasures from the Collection” event for members and volunteers.  At the event, items from the collections not normally on display to the public are brought out for viewing, and curator Bill Tyre explains the stories behind them.  This year, items included clothing, signed photographs of musical friends of the Glessners, a brass fireplace fender from the Alexander Hamilton house, a collection of sterling silver serving pieces from a Prairie Avenue family, correspondence, photographs, and original drawings by Isaac Scott.  One textile in particular drew quite a bit of attention.

The woven silk lambrequin shown above displays a piece of fabric with an interesting history.  The cream colored damask fabric, believed to date to the period 1810-1820, features stylized wood-working tools in red including hand planes, saws, scribes, and pliers.  Prominently featured is the name “S*IOSEPH” or St. Joseph, set within a foliated frame.  St. Joseph, the earthly father of Jesus Christ was a carpenter, thus the connection to the various tools displayed. 

According to tradition, this is a surviving piece of the original draperies installed in the courtyard bedroom.   Although no historic photographs exist to verify this, a couple of other pieces of information support the story.  For one, the red and white colors of the fabric coordinate perfectly with the red and white De Morgan tiles on the fireplace.  For another, a letter recently discovered in the archives from the summer of 1887 (while the house was being finished) makes mention of a fabric selected by Frances Glessner and sent to the architects in Boston for draperies in this particular room.  This would support the fact that the Glessners did not choose Morris & Co. fabric for the draperies in the courtyard room, as they did for all the other bedrooms, but instead sent along a fabric of their own choosing.

How Frances Glessner came into possession of the fabric, which would have been between 60 and 80 years old at the time, is not known, although she did collect vintage textiles.  After the death of the Glessners in the 1930s, their daughter Frances Glessner Lee closed up the house and moved its contents up to the Glessner summer estate, The Rocks, in New Hampshire.  She took the St. Joseph drapes and had them reworked into lambrequins and shorter panels for her home there.  That is the form in which they exist today. 

The textile provides yet another clue as to the sophisticated tastes of the Glessners as they built and furnished their Prairie Avenue home.  Choices were often different from those being made by their neighbors, creating a truly distinctive and unique interior.  We are fortunate that so much documentation survives, so that we can interpret the home with such a high level of accuracy.

The Hegeler Carus Mansion in LaSalle Illinois

On Sunday July 10, Executive Director and Curator Bill Tyre gave a presentation on the history of Prairie Avenue as part of the Second Sunday lecture series at the Hegeler Carus Mansion in LaSalle Illinois.  The mansion is a fascinating house museum, recently designated as a National Historic Landmark.  And there are a few interesting connections between the house and Prairie Avenue.

The house was designed in 1874 by William W. Boyington, a prominent architect best known in Chicago for his design of the Water Tower.  Boyington was an early resident of the Prairie Avenue area, designing and constructing a home at 2107 S. Calumet Avenue, where and his family resided until 1871.  (Ironically he moved from the house just a few months before the Great Chicago Fire.  His home on Calumet escaped the fire; the new home into which he had just moved was completely destroyed).  While living on Calumet, he designed a spacious home for Levi Z. Leiter, original business partner of Marshall Field, across the street at 2114 S. Calumet Avenue.

The elaborate interior decoration of the Hegeler Carus mansion is the work of August Fiedler, a talented German-American who excelled in interior design and furniture making.  Although he designed many interiors in Chicago and elsewhere, most have been lost, leaving the Hegeler Carus as the largest and most intact surviving example of his work.  A few pieces of furniture in the house appear to be the work of Isaac Scott, the talented designer who created many of the pieces of furniture and most of the picture frames in the Glessner house.  Fiedler and Scott were known to work together.  In a journal entry from May 1876, Frances Glessner notes the arrival of the “small bookcase” (now in the master bedroom) that was designed by Scott but made by August Fiedler. 

The Hegeler Carus mansion was completed in 1876, at which time Edward and Camilla Hegeler moved in with their large family.  Hegeler had made his fortune in the zinc smelting business, and by 1880 it was largest such business in the U.S.  In 1887, Hegeler launched The Open Court Publishing Company to provide a forum for the discussion of philosophy, science and religion, and hired the German scholar Dr. Paul Carus to serve as managing editor.  Carus wrote 75 books and nearly 1,500 articles in his lifetime and is credited with introducing Buddhism to the western world through his text The Gospel of Buddha According to Old Records.  He married the Hegelers’ daughter Mary in 1888.

The Glessners owned at least one book by Carus, entitled Nirvana, A Story of Buddhist Philosophy, published in 1896 by The Open Court Publishing Co. (and shown above).  The beautiful book is printed on crepe paper with silk thread tied binding and double leaves folded Japanese style.  Takejiro Hasegawa of Tokyo illustrated and printed the book which featured stunning color woodblock prints produced by Suzuki Kason.   The book is part of the museum collection today.

Today a trip to the Hegeler Carus literally transports the visitor back more than century.  Although faded from more than a century of use by three generations of one family, the house and its contents are incredibly intact, from the original Fiedler painted decorations on the walls and ceilings to the wonderful custom made furniture.  It is well worth the 95 mile drive from Chicago to see this architectural and historical treasure.  For more information, visit http://www.hegelercarus.org/.

The Story of International Harvester

This is the second of two postings giving a brief overview of John Glessner’s business.

The last half of the 19^th century saw fierce competition in the reaper industry.  John Glessner’s company, Warder Bushnell and Glessner, was large and successful but was dwarfed by the two giants in the industry – McCormick and Deering.  In August 1902, the competition came to an end with the formation of International Harvester, a merger of five companies:  McCormick Reaper Company, Deering Harvester Company, Warder Bushnell and Glessner, Plano Manufacturing Company, and Milwaukee Harvester Company.  Not surprisingly, negotiations were long and difficult.  Representatives from the five companies were placed in separate rooms and messengers carried offers and counter-offers back and forth.  Records indicate that John Glessner played a leading role as a mediator, helping to strike an agreement that all could live with.  When the new company was formed, Glessner was appointed a Vice President and served as Chairman of the Executive Committee.  The company was capitalized at $120,000,000, making it one of the very largest corporations in the U.S. and the world at that time.

In 1907, the company completed a new headquarters at 600 S. Michigan Avenue, designed by architect Christian A. Eckstorm, well known for his industrial and warehouse buildings.  He designed a state-of-the-art modern building featuring a steel skeleton, high-speed elevators, electric lights, the most advanced mechanical systems of the day, and a floor plan designed to maximize natural light for all of its interior office spaces (not unlike the design of the Glessner House).  The 15-story Neoclassical brick-clad building featured beautiful stone detailing including a massive bracketed stone cornice, one of the largest ever designed in Chicago.  Prominently situated directly across the street from Grant Park, the building exemplified the City Beautiful movement and contributed to the civic consciousness that anticipated Daniel Burnham’s famous Plan of Chicago of 1909.   (The building was sold in 1937 to the Fairbanks-Morse Company, and has been owned and occupied by Columbia College since 1975.  It is now known as the Alexandroff Campus Center).

John Glessner retired as Vice President and Chairman in 1919 but remained active in the company for the remainder of his life.  He retained office space at Harvester and came to the office daily until just a few weeks before his passing in January 1936, one week before his 93^rd birthday.

In 1985, International Harvester sold its farm equipment business to the Case division of Tenneco, and focused exclusively on the manufacture of trucks.  The name of the company was changed to Navistar in 1986.  Today, it is North America’s leading producer of medium and heavy duty trucks, school buses, and mid-range diesel engines.