Glessner House - July 1948

In July 1948 – exactly 75 years ago – a young photography student at the Institute of Design, by the name of Robert C. Florian, visited Glessner House to photograph the iconic structure for a class assignment. Those black and white images provide a valuable record of the house during its transitional period between Glessner family ownership and its rescue from demolition in the 1960s, when it was occupied by the Lithographic Technical Foundation. In this article, we will share Florian’s story and some of our favorite images he captured the day of his visit.

Robert Charles Florian was born on January 28, 1926, in Cicero, Illinois. He developed a keen interest in photography during his high school years, enrolling in vocational photography classes and serving as photographer for the newspaper and yearbook at Morton High School. One of his photos took second place in a statewide competition.

1944 graduation photo

 

Soon after graduation, Florian was drafted and was sent to the Great Lakes Naval Training Station just north of Chicago. His aptitude for photography was noticed, and upon completion of his naval training as seaman second class, he was sent to the naval base at Pensacola, Florida, for five months of intensive photography training, learning to take pictures the “Navy Way.” He completed the course, ranking second in his class, and immediately undertook further training for movie cameras. In May of 1945 he was shipped to Hawaii where he served as a Naval photographer until the close of the war.

Florian, at left, in Hawaii with his camera

Florian was discharged in May 1946. Like many young men returning from World War II, he took advantage of the GI Bill and the funds it offered for education. He soon enrolled in Chicago’s Institute of Design which “offered the most important photography program in the United States and was the seminal place for the education of the modern artist-photographer from the 1930s through the 1960s.” (Light and Vision: Photography at the School of Design in Chicago, 1937-1952, Stephen Daiter Photography, 1994).

The Institute of Design began its life in 1937 as the New Bauhaus, developed under the guidance of Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, and briefly headquartered in the former Marshall Field mansion at 1905 S. Prairie Avenue (one block south of Glessner House). In 1944 it was renamed the Institute of Design, and in 1946 moved into the former Chicago Historical Society building at 632 N. Dearborn Street (shown below).

Prominent photographers who served on the faculty included Arthur Siegel (a New Bauhaus student) who returned to the school in 1946 when Moholy-Nagy made the decision to separate photography into its own department, and Harry Callahan, who took over as head of the department in 1949 when Siegel left. Among the students at this time was a young man who later distinguished himself with his architectural photography – Richard Nickel.

During Florian’s time at the school, he was given assignments with a general theme, and then he would develop the idea and head out to shoot images. One such assignment from Arthur Siegel was “Cross-Section Middle-Class Chicagoans” for which Florian decided to shoot a series of photos of people riding the “L.” Florian’s images for that project survive in the Arthur Siegel archive at the Chicago History Museum, and two of them (one shown below) were featured in Chicago Classic Photographs, edited by Richard Cahan and Michael Williams (CityFiles Press, 2017).

The specific theme of the assignment that brought Florian to the Glessner house is not known, although a review of the images would indicate that it was specifically geared toward architectural documentation. Florian shot 48 negatives comprising 33 distinct views (several were shot at more than one exposure).

The black and white sheet film negatives, known as 520 film, measure 2-1/4” x 3-1/4,” and include those made by both Kodak and Ansco. The collection at Glessner House includes all of the negatives and one print, with his stamp on the reverse. 

Two original prints (one shown below) are located in the collection of the Ryerson and Burnham Libraries at the Art Institute of Chicago.

Although the exact camera Florian used is not documented, it is likely he used a Graflex. In 1947, the company released two new cameras – the Pacemaker Speed Graphic and the Pacemaker Crown Graphic – both of which used that film size. They were high quality cameras and were popular with the press. As such, they would have been excellent cameras for a university level photography program, introducing students to state-of-the-art cameras.

Graflex Pacemaker Speed Graphic, 1947

The Illinois Institute of Technology absorbed the Institute of Design in 1949, and Florian graduated from there on January 28, 1950 – his 24^th birthday. Among his fellow students was a young woman by the name of Virginia Lockrow; they married in September of that year. Florian worked for a time as a staff photographer for LIFE magazine and Coronet Educational Films. The couple settled in Berwyn, and both began their careers as art teachers – Robert at Main Junior High School in Franklin Park, and Virginia with LaGrange Grade School District 102.

1962 Toledo Glass Blowing Workshop; Florian front row, second from right

Florian had a deep interest in glass blowing and in 1962 participated in the Toledo Glass Blowing Workshop, a collaboration between glass artist and educator Harvey Littleton and the Toledo Museum of Art. The workshop is regarded as the birth of the American studio glass movement. Florian documented the workshop, the 1964 workshop at Madison, Wisconsin, and other glass artists in their studios. His collection of more than 600 negatives and prints now forms an important archive in the Rakow Research Library at the Corning Museum of Glass in Corning, New York.

Robert Florian died on January 18, 1989, just ten days before his 63^rd birthday. His surviving photographs, ranging from artistic images of everyday riders on Chicago’s public transportation system to his documentary images of Glessner House and the birth of the studio glass movement, are a testament to his skill as a photographer and form an important archive of the mid-20^th century as captured in black and white.

Frances Glessner Lee is married

This month marks the 125^th anniversary of the marriage of Frances Glessner and Blewett Lee. The ceremony took place on February 9, 1898, in the parlor of her parents’ Prairie Avenue home. It was a small affair attended by family and close friends, but a great effort went into all the preparations. In this article, we will examine the event from beginning to end.

Frances Glessner returned from her fourteen month Grand Tour of Europe in July 1897 and immediately joined her family at The Rocks, their New Hampshire summer estate. Soon, she met Blewett Lee, a friend of her brother George. The relationship developed quickly and just three months later, on October 17, Blewett asked her parents for her hand in marriage. However, Frances had not yet had her formal introduction into Chicago society, so although her parents consented to the union, the announcement was withheld until after her debut took place in late November. (Click here to read an article about the debut). The engagement was announced to the extended family over the Christmas holiday. On the last day of the year, Frances’s mother wrote in her journal that she had spent much of the day writing letters to friends announcing the engagement. The letter read as follows:

“We have a very precious bit of news which we wish to share with you and Mr. ___. Our Frances is engaged and to be married early in February to Mr. Blewett Lee. We should rather have her a little older than she will be then, but Mr. Lee is so nearly everything in the world that is good and perfect that we cannot find it in our hearts to interfere with their complete happiness. Mr. Lee is a well established practicing lawyer and is also a professor of law in the Northwestern University, is a man of very unusual parts, character and education. He comes from old and distinguished families, the Lees and Harrisons of Virginia. He and Frances are heartily in love with each other and if we must lose our only daughter, he is the one man in the world to whom we are willing to give her. So, we ask you to congratulate the young people upon their happiness and us too because our daughter loves so good a man and one whom we cordially love and approve.”

The letter noted the bride’s young age – she was just 19 at the time; her husband-to-be was 30. Chicago newspapers announced the engagement on January 2, 1898, the Chicago Tribune noting this about Blewett:

“Mr. Blewett Lee, whose residence is at the Chicago Club, was educated at the Universities of Mississippi and of Virginia, studied at Leipsic and Freiburg, graduated from Harvard, and, besides his practice here, is professor of constitutional law and equity in Northwestern University, and has recently been asked to take similar positions at prominent Eastern colleges.”

The Inter Ocean provided a few additional facts including the fact that Blewett had been in Chicago for four years, and that following his graduation from Harvard in 1889, he “began his practical legal experience” with Justice Horace Gray of the U.S. Supreme Court. None of the articles provides any information about Frances Glessner herself. In mid-January, the date of Wednesday, February 9 was announced. By coincidence, it was the same date as the wedding of Elizabeth Henderson, daughter of the Glessners’ neighbors who lived three doors to the south at 1816 S. Prairie Avenue.

Over the next month, the journal is filled with entries relating to the wedding planning, including multiple visits to Madame Weeks at 1521 S. Michigan Avenue. She was Mrs. Glessner’s preferred dressmaker and made both the wedding dress and most of the trousseau, with items such as the lingerie coming from Schlesinger & Mayer’s.

Wedding corset, embroidered cotton coutil
(Collection of the Chicago History Museum)

As presents began to arrive, a third floor room was converted into an area to display the variety of costly gifts, and Mrs. Glessner notes many occasions where she took friends up to see the gifts and the trousseau. A notebook was purchased in which to record all the presents and from whom they were received, with sections for silver, china, glassware, embroideries, bed linens, household linens, and table linens. The image below shows a portion of the silver on display in the third floor room. The chest of silver flatware, with service for 18, was made by Gorham in the Antique pattern, and was a gift from the Glessners, as was the hammered silver tea and coffee service at left. The silver platters came from Frances’s favorite uncle, George Glessner, and the silver trays from her brother George. All the pieces have been donated to Glessner House by the family.

On Saturday, February 5, the 900-pound Steinway grand piano was moved up to the second floor. The cook, Mattie Williamson, baked the cakes, and they were taken to Charles Smiley, Chicago’s premiere African American caterer, for icing. Mrs. Glessner noted that the “little brides which were on our wedding cakes” were taken in for repair, and that some of the preserved orange flowers from her bouquet were to be put in with Frances’s fresh flowers.

The day before the wedding, men came in to lay white muslin on the floors, and the florist came to decorate the rooms. White lilies adorned the music cabinet, and the parlor mantel was filled with a bank of ferns and orchids. The northeast corner of the parlor, where the ceremony was to take place, was hung with wild smilax and white orchids, tied back on either side with small wreathes of lily of the valley. The stairway was decorated with palms and azaleas, and a group of these stood in the hall in front of the door to the courtyard. An immense bunch of American beauties stood on the sideboard.

Out of town guests began to arrive, and presents were sent all day. Rev. Philip H. Mowry, who had presided over the wedding ceremony of John and Frances Glessner in 1870, traveled from Chester, Pennsylvania to perform the ceremony for their daughter. More out-of-town family arrived on Wednesday, some staying with the Glessners’ neighbors, the O. R. Keiths, at 1808 S. Prairie Avenue.

Rev. Philip H. Mowry

The ceremony was scheduled for 5:00pm. Madame Weeks and two assistants arrived at 3:00pm to dress Frances. The wedding gown was made of white satin with a deep flounce of double rose Venetian point lace which Mrs. Glessner had acquired from Rome. Frances wore a tulle veil and carried a bouquet of lily of the valley (which was preserved, see image below). She wore a handkerchief and point lace in her sleeves that her mother had worn when she was married. She borrowed a pearl headed pin from her mother and wore a diamond necklace given to her by Blewett’s mother, whose fragile health prevented her traveling from Mississippi to attend.

The bridal party:

·        Helen Macbeth, maid of honor, was the bride’s aunt. She was Frances’s traveling companion during her Grand Tour of Europe in 1896-1897. Helen had served as the maid of honor when her sister Frances married John Glessner in 1870.

·        Alice Hamlin of Springfield, Ohio. Her engagement to George Glessner was announced later that evening.

·        Frances Ream of 1901 S. Prairie Avenue, a childhood friend. She went on to marry industrialist and coal mine operator John Kemmerer.

·        Marion Ream, Frances’s oldest sister. Her first husband was Redmond Stephens and together they owned what is now the Charnley-Persky House. Her second husband, Anastase Vonsiatsky, was a founder of the White Russian Fascist movement in the United States and was imprisoned for espionage during World War II.

·        George Glessner, the best man, was the brother of the bride.

·        Dwight Lawrence was Blewett Lee’s partner in the law firm of Lee & Lawrence, and a friend of George Glessner. Lawrence initiated the introduction between Blewett and the Glessners. He later became a leader in the National Roosevelt Committee when Theodore Roosevelt ran for president on the Progressive ticket in 1912.

·        Leverett Thompson was a banker and later served as mayor of Lake Forest.

Alice Hamlin, Marion Ream, Helen Macbeth, and Frances Ream

Madame Weeks received a pin in thanks, as did each of the servants. The bridesmaids received brooches of stones and pearls, and wore white organdy, with Valenciennes lace, pink sashes and bows, and carried pink carnations. Helen carried white roses. The men each received three pairs of sleeve buttons.

The bridal party formed in the hallway outside of the Glessners’ bedroom. Close friends formed a passage in the main hall for them to pass through, and then followed them into the parlor. Members of the Chicago Orchestra were seated on the main staircase on platforms that had been made especially for them by the Auditorium stage manager. Theodore Thomas selected and arranged the music but was unable to be present due to another commitment. They played the “Swedish Wedding March” by Söderman followed by “Call me thine own” from the opera L’éclair by Halévy. Of the ceremony, Mrs. Glessner wrote:

“Mr. Mowry stood with his back to the corner – and read the full Episcopal ceremony. The young people made their responses clearly and without hesitation. They were married with a ring. Helen removed the veil, Blewett kissed his bride. John, General Lee and I congratulated them, then George, then the grandparents, etc.”

At the conclusion of the ceremony, the orchestra played Mendelssohn’s “Wedding March.” After congratulations were offered all around, George stood by his mother, and Alice Hamlin by John Glessner, and their engagement was announced.

Signatures of the bride and groom, parents, and wedding party from the guestbook

The reception followed:

“Our tea table was set in the library. We put a fine damask cloth and then our old Maltese lace cloth. We had two pyramids of cake, white and black, one on each end. On top of these were the little brides used on our wedding cakes. We had a splendid basket of pink and white roses and ferns on the table. Then there were cakes the shape of a heart – candies with little white bow knots on top of them. We had frozen egg nog in the hall – tea and coffee in the alcove.”

(For cake recipes, see the "Cooking with Mattie" column posted February 1, 2023)

The reception was followed by dinner for 32 – the bridal party, family, Mr. and Mrs. Moore, Mr. and Mrs. Lawrence, and Governor and Mrs. Bushnell. The bridal party was seated in the dining room, the others were seated at three tables in the parlor.

The menu:
Oysters on the half shell, brown bread and butter, olives and celery
Chicken cream soup
Fish with cooked cucumbers and potatoes
Fillet of beef with brown sauce, with chestnuts, creamed mushrooms, celery, and jelly
Salad with sliced ham and hot crackers
Ice cream in the shape of four-leaf clovers
Cake, fruit, bon bons, coffee
Champagne throughout

John Glessner gave the toast to the bride:

“A toast for the bride – a good and loving daughter, a sweet and lovely bride who is to be a good and thoughtful and loving wife, whose joy is not in riches but in home making and the affection of husband and friends.

“To us old fogies these seem over young to marry yet and start out for themselves – but we old folks did it when we were young. The future is rose colored and rose scented for them as the looking forward was rosy for us and to us the color and the fragrance of the backward glance – the realization – is sweeter still.

“May it be so with these our dear children. Here pledge with me the health of the bride and the peace and comfort and joy of this new household.”

(The toast was later written out by Isaac Scott, and framed, as seen below)

The guests left at 9:00pm. Frances went to her room to change into her traveling costume – blue serge skirt, blue green and yellow plaid silk waist (swatch shown below), blue serge Eton coat, black velvet hat with scarlet roses, and a sealskin cape. Mrs. Glessner recorded how the evening drew to a close:

“Then we five sat down in our bedroom until time to go to the station. Then they – the two – went out alone together never to enter the home in the same way again.”

Waist fabric from book containing swatches of Frances's wedding dress and trousseau

The Elite News published an extensive account of the wedding, also noting the pedigree of the couple, a complicated issue given the role Blewett’s father played in the Civil War:

“Miss Glessner, through Madame Anna Bayard, who came to this country with her brother, old Peter Stuyvesant, the first Dutch governor of New York, and settled on Bohemia Manor, partly in New York and partly in New Jersey, traces her lineage to the family of the Chevalier Bayard, the knight sans peur et sans reproche, and Mr. Lee, through both the Lees and the Harrisons, goes back to Colonial Virginia and old established English families.

“Mr. Lee’s father, Lieut.-General S. D. Lee, was the Confederate officer detailed to demand the surrender of Fort Sumter at the breaking out of the war, and his grandfather, Hon. James T. Harrison, was selected by the whole of the Southern bar at the close of the war to defend Jefferson Davis if action should be brought by the Federal government against him for treason. Happily, this was not necessary, and both sides of Mr. Lee’s family accept the logical results of the war and are true and loyal citizens of our united country.”

Frances Glessner notes in her journal that on Saturday she felt her “first severe reaction” and could hardly get through the day. Serious illness was fast approaching, and on February 20 she underwent surgery in the corner guestroom and was confined to her bed for several weeks. Frances and Blewett Lee returned to Chicago on February 29 after spending their honeymoon in the South, and took rooms at the Hotel Metropole, located at 2300 S. Michigan Avenue.

The Lees held their first post-nuptial reception on April 12 at the Glessners’ home. On the same day and at the same hour, the former Elizabeth Henderson and her new husband, William H. Merrill, held their first reception at her parents’ home three doors away. This was no doubt carefully arranged, as the two families would have shared many of the same friends, making it convenient for them to visit both receptions at one time. John Glessner noted that 252 people attended their reception, but that his wife was not well enough yet to come down from her bedroom.

In early May, the young couple set up housekeeping in a first floor apartment at 120 E. 21^st Street, just a few blocks from the Glessners. On December 5, 1898, their son John Glessner Lee was born. It had been a whirlwind eighteen months since Frances Glessner returned from her Grand Tour.

Early Modern Architecture: Chicago 1870-1910

Exhibition with photo of Glessner House at far right

On January 18, 1933 – exactly 90 years ago – the Museum of Modern Art in New York City opened its second architectural exhibition. Entitled Early Modern Architecture: Chicago, 1870-1910, the exhibition was curated by architect Philip Johnson, who noted in the official press release that, “Chicago, and not New York, is the birthplace of the skyscraper.” Thirty-one Chicago buildings were featured, including three of H. H. Richardson’s four Chicago commissions – the Marshall Field Wholesale Store, and the Glessner and MacVeagh houses. In this article, we will explore how Johnson came to curate the exhibit, how the buildings included demonstrated the development of “modern architecture,” and how the exhibition helped to restore Richardson’s legacy.

The Museum of Modern Art and Philip Johnson

The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) had its beginnings in 1929, when a group of seven collectors and patrons decided to challenge the conservative policies of traditional museums, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in particular. Founding director Alfred H. Barr, Jr., had a vision that it would soon become “the greatest museum of modern art in the world.”

MoMA started out in six rooms in the Heckscher Building at Fifth Avenue and 57^th Street. Within months, 1,500 people a day were visiting the galleries, so in May of 1932, the museum moved into a six-story house at 11 West 53^rd Street owned by John D. Rockefeller, Jr. (his wife Abby Aldrich Rockefeller was one of MoMA’s founders). Five years later, the site was cleared for construction of the present building.

Museum of Modern Art in 1933

Architect Philip Johnson (1906-2005) attended Harvard University after which he traveled extensively in Europe, becoming exposed to the work of Le Corbusier, Walter Gropius, and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. In 1930, utilizing a considerable fortune from his father, Johnson financed the architecture department at MoMA. Two years later, he was named curator, and soon arranged for Gropius and Le Corbusier to visit the United States. He also negotiated the first American commission for Mies van der Rohe.

This photograph of Philip Johnson was taken on January 18, 1933, the day the exhibition opened.

In February 1932, working with architectural historian Henry-Russell Hitchcock, Jr., Johnson organized the first exhibition of modern architecture at MoMA, entitled Modern Architecture: International Exhibition. They simultaneously published the book International Style: Modern Architecture Since 1922, which introduced modern architecture to the American public.

Early Modern Architecture: Chicago 1870-1910

Johnson’s second exhibition for MoMA was announced in early January 1933. The press release quoted Johnson:

“Chicago, and not New York, is the birthplace of the skyscraper. Few people realize that on the ashes of the Chicago fire of 1871 there was built the only architecture that can truly be called American. The great names in the building of the frontier city were three architects, H. H. Richardson, Louis Sullivan and Frank Lloyd Wright, who, with their followers, made the end of the nineteenth century the greatest epoch in the architectural development of our country. They created a native product not indebted to English or continental precedent.

“To these men goes the credit of bridging the gap between the Crystal Palace of steel and glass in London in 1851 and the skyscraper of today. They were the first to take advantage of the shift from masonry to cast iron and from cast iron to steel. This independent American architecture finally succumbed to the wave of classical revivalism which the World’s Fair first brought to Chicago in 1893.”

The press release went on to note that Johnson and Hitchcock had spent the summer of 1932 in Chicago collecting information and photographing important buildings. It also noted that the exhibition would be “the first record of a great architecture which is vanishing rapidly under the sledgehammer of the housewrecker.” This was a poignant statement given that five of the buildings included in the exhibit had already been demolished.

Johnson felt that there were two main reasons why Chicago became the center of architectural development in the late 19^th century. The first was its inland location which “removed it from the influence of traditional architecture active on the Atlantic seaboard.” The second was the fire of 1871 which brought countless architects to the city to assist in the rebuilding and finding ways to construct taller structures.  

The exhibition consisted of photographs of 31 Chicago buildings, and one from New York, included to show how backward thinking the latter city was at the turn of the century. Each photograph was accompanied by an explanatory wall label prepared by Johnson and Hitchcock:

“We don’t want people merely to look at this show, we want them to study it and carry away with them a conception of what went into the making of the greatest epoch in our American architecture.”

Glessner House was the only building included for which the plan was displayed, clearly demonstrating how its innovative floor plan was central to the significance of its design. The Auditorium building was the only one for which an interior view was included, which revealed “Sullivan’s power of original design.”

Philip Johnson with the building models; Glessner House is partially visible at far left

The only three-dimensional items included in the exhibition were three models showing the progression from masonry to steel:
-The All Masonry Building
-The Masonry Building with Metal Skeleton
-The Steel Skeleton Building
The models were built by Alfred Clauss (1906-1998) a German architect who, in collaboration with his wife, architect Jane West Clauss, is credited with designing one of the earliest examples of the International Style in the United States. (The development of distinctive split-level homes was known as “Little Switzerland” and was located outside of Knoxville, Tennessee.)

The exhibition catalog included chronologies of both the technical and aesthetic development of the skyscraper, along with selected architect biographies. Johnson’s comments are brief but telling. Of William LeBaron Jenney, he credits him with the first use of steel skeleton construction, but notes he was “a technician rather than a designer.”

Henry Hobson Richardson

He praised H. H. Richardson:
“In his later work the importance of reminiscent elements of design grew less and less, but his originality as an architect was based on the integrity of his use of traditional construction rather than on technical innovations. To the new national architecture, he contributed not methods of building but a formative spirit.”

Louis Sullivan was clearly a favorite:
“Applying the basic stylistic discipline of Richardson’s Marshall Field Wholesale Store to the new skeleton construction, Sullivan first found a dignified clothing for the skyscraper. In his work of the late eighties and early nineties, his designs emphasized the vertical. Soon, however, he found a more logical expression of the underlying construction with a scheme of wide windowed horizontality. Sullivan led for two decades a considerable group of architects known as the Chicago School, but he alone made of the early skyscraper an aesthetic invention.”

Burnham & Root received mixed reviews, Root being noted as “one of the more original Chicago Richardsonians.” But after his death in 1891, “the prolific work of the firm, beginning with the general supervision of the World’s Fair, was rarely original or distinguished in design.”

Johnson made several comments in the catalog noting the negative impact the World’s Fair of 1893 had on the development of modern architecture.

Buildings included in the exhibition

The exhibition included 31 buildings in Chicago, ranging from the 1872 Field Building (architect not identified) to Carl Schurz High School, a design of Dwight Perkins completed in 1910. Most were tall buildings located in downtown, but the range included a synagogue, an armory, a park pavilion, a school, and five houses.

Louis Sullivan was represented with eight buildings, designed in partnership with Dankmar Adler, or from his independent practice. Four buildings represented the work of Burnham & Root and D. H. Burnham and Co. Richardson, Jenney, and Richard E. Schmidt each had three buildings, while Holabird & Roche had two.

A short paragraph described each building. Among the more interesting entries are the following:

Leiter Building I
William LeBaron Jenney, 1879
“An important step toward the skyscraper: the use of cast iron posts between the masonry piers introduces more light. The design is crude, but the general horizontal ordering foreshadows the more finished designs of the later steel skyscrapers.”

Home Insurance Building
William LeBaron Jenney, 1884-85 (demolished 1931)
“The crucial step in the creation of the skyscraper. The metal skeleton supports all the weight of the building except the exterior walls which are partially self supporting. . . In principle, the building has ceased to be a crustacean (chief support by masonry shell) and is already implicitly a vertebrate (chief support by skeleton). Jenney did not yet realize the revolutionary quality of the device he had employed above the second floor.” 

Marshall Field Wholesale Store
H. H. Richardson, 1885-86 (demolished 1930)
“The masterpiece of commercial architecture in masonry, and the strongest single influence on the design of Chicago commercial architecture of the next generation. Even when this influence was no longer direct, the aesthetic discipline of regular and simple design continued.”

Glessner House
H. H. Richardson, 1885-1886
“Here, as in the Marshall Field Wholesale Store, Richardson generalized and recreated the traditional elements of design which he had earlier borrowed directly from the Romanesque. The disposition of the plan with the main rooms opening toward the court rather than toward the street is unusual in America.”

MacVeagh House
H. H. Richardson, 1885 (demolished 1922)
“Less original than the Glessner House this house by Richardson is nevertheless superior to most work of the Richardsonians of the eighties.” 

First Infantry Armory
Burnham & Root, 1890
(Note: located just four blocks from Glessner House)
“The contrast of tiny windows and colossal portal, the avoidance of fussy detail, and the fortress-like scale of the whole, illustrate the possibilities of the free traditional design which existed in Chicago before the World’s Fair. The medievalism is hardly Richardsonian but rather that of the projects of the early nineteenth century in France.” 

Auditorium Building
Adler & Sullivan, 1887-89
“The treatment here of the masonry bearing walls shows strongly the direct influence of the Marshall Field Wholesale Store. The lower portions have been influenced by the Marquis de Vogüé’s publications on early Syrian architecture. Only in the tower appears the beginning of Sullivan’s more personal style.” 

Walker Warehouse
Adler & Sullivan, 1888-89
“Here the flatter surfaces and the more vertical grouping indicate the direction Sullivan’s manner was to take as it freed itself from the influence of Richardson.” 

Carl Schurz High School
Dwight H. Perkins, 1910
“This building owes little specifically to Sullivan. But it indicates the ability of the members of the Chicago School to find a new type of design for new problems. Especially in such a school is the superiority of their inventions over the archaeology of the stylistic revivalists clear.” 

Johnson included one New York building in the exhibition – George B. Post’s Pulitzer Building (also known as the World Building), completed in 1890. He was clear in his disdain for the design:
“Although at its completion the tallest building in the world (349 feet), this New York tower is progressive neither in structure nor design. It has masonry bearing walls on the exterior, 12 feet thick at the base, and only the interior is supported on wrought iron columns. Yet the Home Insurance and Tacoma Buildings had been completed several years earlier. 

“The conventional scheme of academic Renaissance design (the dome of the Invalides has been placed on top of the Louvre) is characteristic of the Eastern architecture of this period and is inappropriate and devoid of scale.”

Chicago’s awareness of the exhibition

Despite Johnson’s praise of Chicago’s architecture, it appears that the exhibition, which ran for five weeks, received little attention in Chicago. The Chicago Tribune carried a brief article entitled “Chicago Architecture in Gotham” two weeks after the exhibit opened.

However, Chicagoans were given the opportunity to see the exhibit for themselves, when it traveled to Chicago that summer. In a move that would be considered unusual today, the exhibition was installed not in a museum, but in the interior decoration galleries at Marshall Field & Co. This was a smart move, and probably resulted in many more Chicagoans being exposed to it than if it had been installed in a traditional setting. Additionally, that was the first summer of the Century of Progress World’s Fair and, for many visitors to Chicago, a trip to Marshall Field’s was an absolute must.

It was an ironic twist of fate that the exhibition ended up at Field’s. Clearly one of Johnson’s favorite Chicago buildings was the Marshall Field Wholesale Store by H. H. Richardson – a structure Field’s had razed just three years earlier.

Conclusion

The 1933 exhibition is the earliest to have brought attention to the innovative design and plan of Glessner House. Richardson had slipped into obscurity by this time, and with Prairie Avenue in significant decline, few would have an opportunity to see the house in person. If they had, they would have seen it blackened with soot and surrounded by empty lots, shuttered houses, and factories.

Three years later, Henry-Russell Hitchcock, Jr. curated The Architecture of H. H. Richardson and His Times at MoMA, to commemorate the 50^th anniversary of Richardson’s death. (Johnson had abruptly resigned as curator in late 1934). The exhibition opened on January 14, 1936, just six days before John Glessner’s death at the age of 92. Hitchcock’s accompanying book was instrumental in restoring Richardson’s legacy, and even made the case that the distant roots of European Modernism were actually found in the United States.

Of the 31 Chicago buildings featured in the exhibition, five had been demolished by 1933. An additional 13 have since been razed, leaving 13 survivors (listed in chronological order):
-Glessner House
-Auditorium Building
-Leiter Building II
-Monadnock Building
-Anshe Maariv Synagogue (Pilgrim Baptist Church, some exterior walls remain)
-Charnley House
-Winslow House
-Reliance Building
-Schlesinger-Mayer Building (Carson, Pirie, Scott)
-Gage Building
-Nepeenauk Building (Chapin & Gore Building)
-Humboldt Park Pavilion
-Carl Schurz High School 

Philip Johnson at Glessner House, 1995

When Glessner House went up for sale in 1965 and was threatened with demolition, Philip Johnson became one of the most outspoken advocates for its preservation. In an interview with the Chicago Daily News, Johnson referred to it as “the most important house in the country to me.” He stood behind his words and provided $10,000 toward the $35,000 purchase price. His appreciation for Glessner House extended back more than three decades to his 1933 exhibition, a time when he probably would have never imagined the critical role he would one day play in its preservation.