Then & Now: Glessner House – Chicago

During the last few decades of the 19th century, many of Chicago’s elite families lived along a six-block section of Prairie Avenue, a north-south thoroughfare located on the South Side of Chicago.

Originally extending from 16th to 22nd streets, Prairie Avenue evolved into an upscale neighborhood after the Great Chicago Fire of 1871.

By the late 1870s, Prairie Avenue housed the finest mansions in Chicago, all equipped with their own carriage house – the grand homes of George Pullman, Marshall Field, Phillip D. Armour, John B. Sherman, Ebenezer Buckingham and William W. Kimball, among others.

By the 1890s, Prairie Avenue was one of the most exclusive addresses in the city. According to a guidebook published around the time of the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition, the street was described as “the most expensive street west of Fifth Avenue.” Others simply referred to the mansion-filled neighborhood as “Millionaire’s Row.”

Perhaps the most celebrated and striking residence on Prairie Avenue was the Glessner House.

Designed by noted architect Henry Hobson Richardson, the fortress-like mansion, located on the southwest corner of 18th Street, was constructed for John J. Glessner, one of the founders of the International Harvester Co.

Commissioned in 1885, designed in 1886, and completed a year later, the house for the Glessner family gave Richardson the opportunity to blend elements of French and English buildings he admired into a new type of American architecture.

The fortified looking home was constructed upon an Illinois dolomite foundation, with walls of Braggville pink granite. While the walls of the house were made using Chicago common brick, the structural bricks were hidden behind 8- to 10-inch-thick granite façade stones.

Designed in what became known as the Richardsonian Romanesque style, the stone fortress, with its granite walls and large Romanesque arches surrounding both front and side entrances, had very little ornamentation compared with the other stylistic Victorian mansions that lined Prairie Avenue. Many of Glessner’s prominent neighbors, including Pullman, found the rough-hewn stones of Richardson’s exterior distasteful.

Built during the turbulent Gilded Age, when many of America’s elite industrialists were living in extravagant homes, the Glessner House is a remarkably simple, comfortable home that is both medieval in character yet modern in its relationship to the urban environment. Unlike many other Prairie Avenue houses, the Glessner House was built close to the lot line and was attached to the house next door.

While the house contains more than 17,000 square feet, the interior rooms have an intimate feel, with each room having a certain purpose. The home contains five bedrooms for family and guests and eight for servants. There are 11 fireplaces and seven different staircases throughout the home. Although it was initially lighted with gas, the home was eventually electrified by the early 1890s.

After John Glessner’s death in 1936, the house was deeded to the Armour Institute (now the Illinois Institute of Technology), and the home was converted for business use.

In 1966, preservationists joined together and formed the Chicago School of Architecture Foundation to save the Glessner House and turn it into a museum. In 1970, Glessner House was listed on the National Register of Historic Places.