The
Harriet F. Rees House, 2110 South Prairie Avenue
The tall, narrow, elegantly-detailed limestone house at 2110 S. Prairie
Avenue was the last of three designed by the firm of Cobb & Frost
on Prairie Avenue. (The others are the Joseph G. Coleman house at 1811
S. Prairie Ave. and the Osborn R. Keith house at 1808 S. Prairie Ave.,
razed 1968). Built in 1888 at a cost of $20,000 for Harriet F. Rees, a
widow, the Romanesque style residence features beautifully executed detailing
in its steep gable peak, third-floor arched window colonnade, and two-story
bowed bay. It originally shared a party wall on the north with the Mark
Kimball house, and abutted the Max Rothschild home on the south, so today
it looks rather out of place standing alone.
Harriet F. Rees was the widow
of James Rees (1813-1880), a real estate pioneer who established the concept
of abstracts of title when he formed a partnership with Edward R. Rucker
in 1847. Rees was 71 when she commissioned the Prairie Avenue house, and
died in December 1892. The house was sold for $42,500 to Edson Keith Jr.
who had grown up at 1906 S. Prairie Avenue. Keith’s daughter Katherine
married architect David Adler in 1915 and authored two novels. It was
about that time that the Keiths moved from Prairie Avenue and the house
was converted to furnished rooms. In the early 1970s, it housed the Prairie
House Café. The interior, however, has survived largely intact
and features intricate wood mouldings and beautifully tiled fireplaces.
Since 2001, the home has been owned by the Martorina family who have extensively
restored the residence.
Rees House Threatened with Demolition
The Harriet F. Rees house is one of only seven houses remaining on Prairie
Avenue, and is one of two that were not included in the Prairie Avenue
Historic District landmark designation of 1979, due to its “remote”
location south of 21st Street. Although listed on the National Register
of Historic Places on May 22, 2007, that designation does nothing to protect
the house. In 2007, McPier announced plans to construct a 1,500-room hotel
on the block including the Rees house, which sits just north of the massive
new west expansion of McCormick Place. The house was rated orange in the
Chicago Historic Resource Survey, which will trigger a 90-day review period
if a permit for demolition is applied for.
(February 2008)
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The Century of Progress
On May 27, 1933, exactly 75 years ago this month, Chicago welcomed the
world to the opening of its second World’s Fair, known as the Century
of Progress. Located along a broad swath of shoreline extending from Roosevelt
Road to 35th Street, the fair attracted over 39 million visitors during
its two year run. The fairgrounds were accessible from a number of entrances,
including one that was constructed over the Illinois Central railroad
tracks at Calumet Avenue and 18th Street, just one block east of the Glessner
house.
During the Columbian Exposition held forty years earlier, the homes along
Prairie Avenue were praised as must-see attractions in virtually every
guide book written for visitors to the city. Prairie Avenue’s status
in 1933 was markedly different. Addie Hibbard Gregory, a resident of the
street during both fairs, recalled in her book A Great-Grandmother Remembers
that “old Prairie Avenue bloomed again, but merely as a convenient
parking place for visitors to the Fair.” Building permits were issued
for several parking stations to service lots hastily laid out on the numerous
vacant parcels up and down the street, including the former site of the
Pullman house. Permits were also issued for no less than eight concession
stands along the street, clear evidence as to the huge numbers of people
that poured through the neighborhood on their way to and from the fairgrounds.
Demolition in the area continued unabated during the two years the fair
operated. In 1933 homes razed included the Charles Kellogg house at 1923
S. Prairie (shown at left), the Mark Kimball house at 2108 S. Prairie,
the Robert Roloson house at 2109 S. Prairie, and the Thomas Murdoch house
at 2130 S. Prairie. The Max Rothschild home at 2112 S. Prairie was demolished
the following year.
(May 2008)
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Opening of the Prairie Avenue Historic District
– 1978
The completion of the multi-year effort to create the Prairie Avenue Historic
District in 1978 was truly a cause for celebration. The Auxiliary Board
of the Chicago Architecture Foundation, under the leadership of Marian
Premer, was charged with the task of planning suitable activities to mark
the opening of the district over the weekend of September 15 to 17. The
district was formally opened on Friday September 15 with a gala event
sponsored by Marshall Field & Co. A fashion show, held in a huge tent
immediately south of Glessner, was followed by dinner and dancing, and
the raffling off of a new Cadillac. Marshall Field was the formal sponsor
of the opening, and their fall catalog featured models posing in front
of the surviving mansions. Their State Street windows featured vintage
costumes from the time of the Columbian Exposition.
On Sunday September 17, nearly 2,500 people attended “Sunday on
Prairie Avenue,” a festival modeled after the Columbian Exposition,
complete with craftsmen plying their period trades, a German oompah band,
a tintype photographer, a beer garden, Little Egypt, and an organ grinder
with his monkey, Mr. Monk. The line of people waiting to tour the Glessner
house stretched for more than a block.
This year, on September 6, the 30th anniversary of the opening of the
district will be celebrated with the Festival on Prairie Avenue, based
once again on the Columbian Exposition theme (see page 2 for details).
A special highlight will be the return of the organ grinder and his monkey
Mr. Monk, now 38 years old.
Creating the Historic District
The demolition of the O. R. Keith and George Wheeler houses at 1808 and
1812 S. Prairie Avenue in 1968 initiated a ten year campaign to create
the city’s first historic district. In 1972, Mayor Daley formally
created the Prairie Avenue Historic District committee, a joint venture
of the city and the Chicago Architecture Foundation, owners of the Glessner
House at the time. Various grants, including $350,000 from the State of
Illinois Open Lands program, permitted the acquisition of numerous parcels
(including those that now comprise the Women’s Park), the relocation
of the Clarke House, and the restoration of the 1800 block of Prairie
to its 1890s appearance with granite curbs, cobblestone gutters, period
lighting, and limestone sidewalks.
(August 2008)
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The Badger Family of Calumet Avenue
Alpheus Camillus Badger (known
as A.C.) was born in Dover New Hampshire in 1828. In 1850, he moved to
Louisville Kentucky where he entered into the banking business and married
Elvira Sheridan of Charleston South Carolina. At the start of the Civil
War, he moved his family to Chicago and opened the A.C. Badger & Co.
banking house. In 1869, he purchased a spacious lot on Calumet Avenue
and hired the architect and builder Daniel Crilly to design his home.
The spacious three-story dwelling stood immediately north of the new house
for Levi Z. Leiter, partner in the firm of Field & Leiter.
The Badgers had seven children,
five of whom lived to adulthood. Daughter Belle married Turlington Walker
Harvey, a prominent lumberman, founder of the company town of Harvey Illinois,
and a long-time resident of 1702 S. Prairie Avenue. Son Alpheus Shreve
Badger became a prominent resident of Kenilworth, residing in a Classical
Revival style home designed by Daniel Burnham in 1893, and still standing
at 326 Essex in that community. A. C. Badger suffered financial reverses
in 1899 and gave up his Calumet Avenue home at that time. In 1901, the
property was acquired by John B. Drake, Jr. who with his brother Tracy,
built and operated both the Blackstone and Drake hotels. The Badger house
was razed and replaced with a new Tudor-style home designed by Howard
Van Doren Shaw. A. C. Badger died at his son’s Kenilworth home in
1908 and was interred in Graceland Cemetery. His wife Elvira died in 1911.
The Leonidas V. Badger Doll House
In 1858, A. C. Badger’s father, Leonidas V. Badger, built a large
doll house based on the Portsmouth New Hampshire home in which he was
born in 1806. The house resided for many years in the Badger’s Calumet
Avenue home, and in the early 1900s was moved to the home of Alpheus Shreve
Badger in Kenilworth.
In 1925, the house was given
to the Children’s Room at the Art Institute, and three years later
was donated to the Chicago Historical Society. In 1980, it was given to
the National Society of the Colonial Dames in America in the State of
Illinois, who placed it in the newly opened Clarke House and funded a
major restoration. It was rededicated in 1987 and remains a very popular
item for visitors to the museum.
(November 2008)
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Motor Row Invades the Neighborhood
The transformation of Michigan Avenue between 12th Street (now Roosevelt
Road) and 26th Street into “Motor Row” began in 1902. The
high quality pavement made this stretch of road the perfect spot for test
driving automobiles, and eventually more than 100 automakers built dealerships,
investing more than $100,000,000 in the area by 1923.
Two of the dealerships closest to the Glessner house were built exactly
a century ago, and survive today as part of the Motor Row Historic District,
designated a landmark in 2000. The firm of Jenney, Mundie & Jensen
designed the showroom for Locomobile Automobile Company at 2000 S. Michigan,
which replaced the Second Empire style home of banker George Schneider.
In recent years the building was converted to condominiums known as Locomobile
Lofts, with the Locomobile name still prominently displayed in terra cotta
in the parapet wall. Ernest Walker, an architect originally employed by
Henry Ives Cobb, designed the building for the Maxwell-Briscoe Automobile
Company at 1737 S. Michigan. That building replaced the home of General
Anson Steger. The building has since been extensively renovated by its
current owner, McHugh Construction Company.
(February 2009)
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The William H. Reid House, 2013 S. Prairie
Avenue
This three-story Classical Revival style house, completed in 1894, is
an excellent reflection of the popularity of that style, following the
World’s Columbian Exposition the previous year. The home was originally
one of a row of attached houses which extended south from 20th (now Cullerton)
Street. It was built for successful banker William H. Reid, who had occupied
another house on the same site since 1870. Reid’s first wife, Eleanor,
died in 1888, and he married Caroline Whittlesey the following year. This
new home may have been built at her request, as it is considerably larger
and is more in keeping with her others homes - a summer estate in Ottawa
Illinois, and a winter home in the Ozarks near Eureka Springs Arkansas.
The architects of the house were Beers, Clay & Dutton, a firm organized
in 1891. A feature of their residential designs, which appears here, is
the Palladian window at the third level, marking the location of the elegant
ballroom. More important however, is the use of steel-frame construction
in its design. Carl Condit, in The Chicago School of Architecture, states
that the house “appears to have been the first steel-framed residence
and thus applied the techniques of Chicago construction to the private
dwelling.”
The interior is noteworthy, both for its detail, and its remarkable state
of preservation. A grand mahogany staircase, numerous fireplaces in marble
and mosaics, a dramatic music room with stained glass dome, and a spacious
dining room paneled in tiger maple are among the architectural treasures
that have survived intact.
A Preservation Success Story
The Reid house was threatened with demolition in the 1950s, when many
of the adjacent houses were razed to create parking for a nearby business.
The owner, Jerrold Nedwick, who operated his rare book business from the
home, refused to sell. In 1968, Donnelley & Sons attempted to acquire
the property to create additional parking for their employees. The attorney
handling the sale, Mary Neff, convinced Donnelley to lease the home to
her, and she purchased it outright in 1977. She carefully preserved the
house until her death in 2001. The following year it was acquired by the
current owner Oscar Tatosian, who has undertaken significant work on the
house, and had it listed on the National Register in 2003.
(May 2009)
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The Marshall Field Jr. House, 1919 S. Prairie
Avenue - Part I
The history of this house, located at 1919 S. Prairie Avenue, begins in
1883, when architect Solon S. Beman was commissioned to design the structure
for William Murray, a speculator on the Board of Trade and the maternal
grandfather of Prairie Avenue author Arthur Meeker. Within a few years,
the house was sold to Murray’s brother-in-law, Charles Schwartz,
who in turn sold the house to Marshall Field Jr. in 1890 for $65,000.
Field and his wife, the former Albertine Huck, did not spend much time
in the house as they travelled extensively and maintained a home in England.
In 1902, they hired the firm of Daniel H. Burnham and Company to significantly
enlarge and remodel the house. In order to accommodate the addition, Field
acquired a 20-foot strip of land from his father, whose own house and
garden stood immediately to the north. The completed house was among the
largest on the street, containing nearly 20,000 square feet of space,
14 fireplaces, and a regulation size squash court over the coach house.
The exterior was finished in red brick and sandstone, and the capital
of the south porch column was carved with a series of four faces, believed
to be those of Field, his wife, and parents. The Fields did not enjoy
their home for long. In November 1905, Field Jr. accidentally shot himself
in the library of the home while cleaning a rifle for an upcoming hunting
trip. He died five days later, leaving a widow and three small children.
MARSHALL FIELD, JR.
The story of Field Jr.’s death at the age of 38 continues to stir
controversy today. Although officially ruled accidental, rumors have long
circulated that he was in fact shot by a prostitute in the infamous Everleigh
Club, or was despondent and was trying to commit suicide. The true story
of his death may never be known.
(August 2009)
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The Marshall Field Jr. House, 1919 S. Prairie
Avenue - Part II
Following the tragic death of Marshall Field Jr. in 1905, his widow and
three young children moved first into the Marshall Field house at 1905
S. Prairie Avenue, and then permanently to England, where the widow remarried
and died in 1915. The house was sold for $40,000 to Dr. Milton B. Pine,
founder of the Gatlin Institute, established in 1900 for the treatment
of drug and alcohol addiction. The institution opened its doors in late
1909 (see “Jag Cure Dazes the Elite” below) and operated for
approximately ten years, after which the Bremerman Urological Hospital
took over the building. That institution failed within a few years, and
by 1928 the property was deeded to the Resthaven Home for Convalescent
Women and Girls, which treated women with psychiatric problems. By the
1960s, it was occupied by the Monterey Convalescent Home which operated
until it was closed in the mid-1970s. Fearing the demolition of the building,
the Chicago Architecture Foundation purchased the structure in 1977, later
reselling it with a protective easement. A plan to restore the building
and open a restaurant failed in the early 1980s, and the building sat
empty and decaying for the next 25 years, although a subsequent owner
did renovate and occupy the second floor of the coach house, the former
squash court. Finally in 2003, the building was acquired by a developer
who restored the exterior, and gutted the badly deteriorated interior
to create six luxury condominium units, the first of which was occupied
in late 2007.
Jag Cure Dazes the Elite
Excerpts from an article in the Chicago Tribune, November 20, 1909
“A mysterious stranger of more of less bibulous tendencies has made
his appearance in the most exclusive residence district of Prairie avenue
- and the aristocratic inhabitants are aghast.
“Doctor Milton B. Pine comforts the dazed Prairie avenue denizens
with the assurance that his patients yield quickly to persuasion, and
that a howling procession of tolerably repentant D.T.’s need not
be expected. Millionaires, senators, and judges have been among his clientele.
“J. J. Glessner, vice president of the International Harvester company,
heard of the invasion calmly. ‘Ah, a new neighbor!’ he observed.
‘Perhaps twenty-eight new neighbors,’ it was suggested. ‘That
is the number of available apartments for ex-tanks.’ Mr. Glessner
declined to comment further.”
(November 2009)
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The Transformation of the Street Takes Hold
(1910)
The decline of Prairie Avenue
was well underway by 1910, but there were few clues in walking down the
street. A hospital for drug and alcohol addition, dressmaker, college,
and publishing office now occupied former residences, but their outward
appearance remained unchanged. Large loft buildings began sprouting up
on adjacent Indiana Avenue, and Michigan Avenue was well on its way to
becoming “Motor Row.” Prairie Avenue, however, was irreversibly
altered in 1910 when a pair of frame row houses at 1609-1611 S. Prairie
Avenue was demolished and replaced by a four-story loft building.
The brick building extended up to the sidewalk, cost $22,000 to construct,
and housed an auto repair business on the first floor with a windshield
manufacturer up above. In that same year, the first significant home on
the street was razed. The mansion at 1620 S. Prairie Avenue had been built
in 1865 for the Rice family, but is remembered as the home of Robert Law,
who acquired it in 1870. Shortly after his death, it was sold to Frank
Hibbard who occupied it until 1910, when he sold it to his sister Alice
Stirling, who lived next door at 1616. She had the home demolished and
the property remained unimproved until the substation for Commonwealth
Edison was completed on the site in 1925, designed by Hermann von Holst.
Robert Law
Robert Law was born in England
in 1822 and came to the U.S. in 1843. He was the most prominent coal merchant
in Chicago, arriving here from Galena in 1856 after completing the section
of the Illinois Central railroad between Galena and Freeport. Law served
three terms in the City Council in 1861, 1862, and 1880. When he died
on February 24, 1898, he left an estate valued at $1,200,000 (the equivalent
of $30 million today).
(February 2010)
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